'THE SWARM'.....YRR'S, MINE AND OURS.......

 The Swarm (2023-Mini-Series)    I really looked forward to enjoying the hell out of this ambitious, German produced 8 episode series. 

             And in various chunks and spurts, I did. 

             But I'm also sad to report that much of it, way too much of it, turned out to be a boring slog to get through. For six of its 8 episodes, it wallowed, as if in quicksand, in the tedious, superfluous soap opera  troubles of its characters.  

               And all the exciting, ominous sci-fi action-adventure-suspense sequences would slow down to a crawl to make way for the groan-worthy "Days Of Our Lives" crapola.

               The premise, which couldn't possibly be more timely, seizes you by the throat and gut. Based on a worldwide best seller by Frank Schatzing, it presents an up-to-the minute 'War Of The Worlds' scenario........with the two worlds in combat  sharing planet Earth - humanity on the land versus a sentient lifeform that's lived in the oceans since the dawn of oceans. 

                The 'Yrr' (as they're dubbed by the scientists who figure out their existence) function as a collective of single cells into one intelligent mass,  And they're pissed and ready to rumble. 

                Fed up with humankind turning their oceans into toxic dumps, the Yrr declare war on us......sending out whales, crabs, mussels, deadly species, fatal viruses to wreak death and destruction upon us uncomprehending humans.  And when the Yrr start generating tsunamis to wipe us out in mass quantities,, a small band of scientists finally theorize we're in the Yrr's crosshairs and they're out eradicate us. 

                Stuffed with that sudsy filler I've already complained about, the first six episodes dawdle and poke along. Thankfully, by the final two episodes 7 and 8, the writing and direction focus completely on the ultimate showdown between humans and Yrr. The science gang travel to arctic seas to meet the Yrr on their home turf, with the intent of either making peace with them or learning what'll destroy them. 

                  While Schatzing's book comes to a most definite conclusion, the mini-series indulges in a fanciful "2001" array of visuals before serving up an abrupt, surprising end. It leaves viewers the option of either coming up with their own explanations and settle for waiting for the next season......

                Personally, I hate that kind of corporate smoke-and-mirrors cliffhanger nonsense......forever dangling closure in front of viewers, making us all think we've been tricked into watching nothing but an extended trailer for Season 2. 

                  BQ calls bullshit. And that's why I'm only handing out 2 & !/2 stars (**1/2) . Well put together, with excellent work from the entire cast. But if there are in fact more episodes in the works, the showrunners might consider keeping their eye on the ball......less human angst, more Yrr!

                 

THE GOLDEN GLOBES 2023......THE ROAD TO HELL, PAVED WITH WOKE INTENTIONS......

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 The Golden Globes 2023   They're baaaaaa....aaaa....aaa...ck!

            Cancelling the Globes last year for their lack of diversity seemed like comically absurd overkill to me.....

             Really?  That's why NBC kicked the show off the air?

            Time for a reality check. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association was, from the start,  never anything more than a bunch of bottom-feeding shmoozers whose coveted 'awards' were always available to the highest bidder.

             But oh how the Hollywood-ers loved the ceremony show......allowing them to get liquored up on free booze and have their ballooning egos stroked with prize statuettes. 

              And oh how America loved watching it as a ludicrous guilty pleasure....the spectacle of seeing their favorite movie and TV stars sloshed to the gills and running off at the mouth.....

              The Hollywood elite comfortably closed one eye to the Globes' corruption......until the HFPA became finally undone by the wave of woke cancellations.....(to be fair, the wokesters had a point. ) 'A foreign press club without a single member from Africa or Asia or the Middle East?   What the hell......where'd they all come from? Norway?  The moon?

               Last might, the Globes returned, seeking redemption, reeking of apology and making pathetic stabs at resurrecting the show's rollicking vibe of ..."let's all get drunk and celebrate ourselves!!"

               Nope. Uh-uh......not quite. But not for lack of trying by many of the hard-partying drinkers in attendance. Overall, though the stench of woke punishment and parole ultimately defeated their brief eruptions of enthusiasm, squashing the fun flat.

               The misery commenced right away with the terrible choice of host. I've never heard of or laid eyes on Jerrod Carmichael, a gay black comedian.......or to put it more accurately, the world's most unfunny gay black comedian. 

                Based on last night, I wouldn't mind never hear of or seeing him again, either. 

               I'll not go into that painful, bizarre piece of performance art that constituted his monologue, leaving  the crowd perplexed and unsure as to whether they should laugh or cringe.  Spoiler Alert:  it sounded like they mostly cringed. And they spent the rest of the evening loudly conversing among themselves, ignoring Carmichael's repeated warnings to shut up, as if functioning as their high school principal. 

              Not that they missed much in his periodic, pathetic outbursts of  'comedy'......dumb tasteless gags involving Whitney Houston and scientology.

               More bizarre moments followed:  The announced winners, determined to restore the golden days of reveling in heartfelt, overlong acceptance speeches, would tolerate no interruptions to their half drunken blathering.  They turned their fury on Chloe Flowers, the pop pianist whom the Globes parked stageside to noodle out a few tunes like a cocktail lounge toiler.  The celebs falsely held her responsible for decisions to play those musical "get your ass and your ego off the stage" prompts. 

               But leave it to Eddie Murphy to provide the singular moment that summed up the Golden Globes and how they're regarded by both the film industry and TV viewers at home......

               Given the so-called 'Cecil B. DeMille trophy (the Globes' equivalent of a Lifetime Achievement award) Murphy began his speech much in the way as previous recipients did, with a modest sense of humbling gravitas and gratitude..........which turned out to be nothing more than set up to unleash a showstopping repeat of Will Smith's warning about the dangers of speaking his wife's name...........

                BQ gives Eddie a hearty 'Bravo!'.......for not only being true to his own rambunctious nature but pulling the rug out from the Globes' ever pretending they're anything more than a joke....

                And one last special nod to actress Natasha Lyonne, whose 30 second riff on how time is fleeting was infinitely funnier than the entirety of Jarrod Carmichael's appearances throughout the 3 hour and 20 minute ordeal. 

                My few suggestions for the 2024 telecast.......hire an actual, real, genuinely funny comedian to host the show. And if by some miracle, you convince Chloe Flowers to return, let her play Billy Joel's 'Piano Man' all through the show and at least put a tip jar on her piano........   

                

               

'KILLING EVE' - SEASON 3.........KILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS......

 Killing Eve - Season 3    We don't get into watching a whole lot of TV series........we couldn't even count how many series we've never laid eyes on  that have racked up multiple seasons and hundreds of episodes......

             But this one grabbed us from its start...........with its irresistible, central idea of a high strung, repressed MI6 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and her tumultuous, dangerous love-hate relationship with her quarry, a mad, mad, mad Russian assassin, Villanelle (Jodie Comer). 

             We don't want to demean or downplay the contributions of the supporting cast here, playing a variety of British and foreign agents.......especially Fiona Shaw as Eve's iron-willed boss......but the main attraction was always the lethal back-and-forth between Oh and Comer.

              Everything else was window dressing........

              And Season 3 of this show disappointed us severely, because it's all about the window dressing.

             Yes, the supporting actors get their moments to shine here, including Kim Bodnia as the ever duplicitous Konstanin, a Russian operative whose shifting loyalties disguise the fact he's only in it for himself.

              But the the showrunners lost sight of why people watch this show at all.

             We want lots and lots of Eve, who's coping with her growing dark side and lots and lots of Villanelle, who's beginning to not enjoy her busy life as a psychotic murderess. 

              This third season, unfortunately only doles out spoon-sized bites of these two characters, as if they're rationing them.

               The episodes play out like the people who created this show completely forgot what it was about in the first place. 

                From what we've read about other TV series, "Killing Eve" is by far not the first show that's gone off the rails in its third season. Some such shows manage to get their mojo back in their subsequent seasons while others kill themselves off altogether. 

                 We're hoping like hell that this show bounces back........

                 Cause we still can't wait to see what happens next to these two remarkable characters......(and we can't enough of the incredible work that Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer put into their portrayals of these deliciously twisted women)

                  For this time around......sorry, this season's at best a 2 star gone-astray mess. (**)

                

'I AM THE NIGHT'............CHINATOWN-LITE

I Am The Night (2019)    .......damn.......we were so prepared to love this......

                  Just the thought of it got our juices flowin'.......sleazy, corrupt,  racism-stricken 1965 Los Angeles.....criss-crossed with the infamous, unsolved 'Black Dahlia' murder of the 1940's, where a struggling young actress was found horribly mutilated.........hoo boy!

                   We shouldn't have gotten our hopes too high.........coming from cable network TNT, who gave us that incoherent, stillborn costume parade, "The Alienist"......

                    "I Am The Night", presented in 6 hour long episodes, is equally incoherent......in six hours of storytelling, it never figures out whose story it's telling........or why.

                     But unlike the completely unwatchable "Alienist", this fiction-based-on-true-crime tale gets rescued by Chris Pine's wild, bravura performance.  He's a spectacular one-man show in this.......and he should make room on his shelf for a  hugely deserved Emmy......

                    Playing a drugged-up, burned out PTSD-afflicted Korea war vet, Pine's Jay Singletary barely ekes out a living as a seedy freelance journalist. Poking into the lives of the rich and well-connected earns him regular beatings at the hands L.A. cops......

                    In a parallel storyline, deer-in-the-headlights teen Fauna Hodel (India Eisley) after being raised by her adoptive black mother, discovers she's the granddaughter L.A. socialite Dr. George Hodel. (Jefferson Mays). Hodel, for all his wealthy trappings, is a loathsome psychotic sadist.......not to mention the un-indicted but thoroughly suspected murderer of the Black Dahlia.

                     After a few episodes, Singletary and Fauna's stories finally intersect........but all the series' subsequent scenes never find a single purpose or focus.......they're randomly stitched together, sometimes energized by Pine's startling, take-no-prisoners performance.

                    The show's creators throw everything into the mix.......the Watts riots, a side trip to Hawaii and even drag in the famous WTF plot twist from "Chinatown".......but the show seems to have no idea where it's going......until its forced to finally wrap things up in the sixth and final episode.

                    India Eisley's Fauna wanders through the series like a dazed Alice In Sleazyland......(except when, out of character, she suddenly becomes efficient at helping Singletary dispose of a dead body)..........and strangely, Eisley affects some kind of unidentifiable accent......(we're guessing it's Eisley's idea of what a white girl raised by a black mother would sound like.....we think....)  Stranger still, though this plays out in 1965,  her wardrobe stays anchored in the 1950's, outfitting her like an extra from 'Grease' or one of the original Mouseketeers........

                    The show ends up as a rickety,slapped together thing, with not a single moment's thought put into constructing its plot.......(or making its point either).......but Chris Pine grabs this shaggy, shuffling enterprise by its throat and by the sheer force of his talented work, gives it the illusion that it's telling a coherent tale.........(the "Alienist" had no such performance in it, so you can see what a difference it makes.....)

                      2 stars (**), solely for Pine. Somebody give this guy a series or a film that worthy of him......

                   

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP..........SINGERS, MINIONS, A THUG AND HIS EX-BOSS..........ALL UNMASKED......

               What a day......what a night.........as everybody had their masks ripped off, exposing them to us all.........with only the singers garnering love and respect......

                   Michael Cohen............the deepest irony of this testimony.......presenting himself as a cautionary tale to Republicans.......warning them that sacrificing their brains and souls to become Baby Orange minions will ruin them.  Any of 'em smart enough to take Cohen's words to heart?  Nah.

                   In any case, The hearing proved a spectacular showcase of Cohen's refurbished,  new persona......with the Mask Of Thuggery ripped off by looming prison time, we all got our first good look at Cohen 2.0......humbled, contrite, ready for his whuppin'.......Sincere?  Who cares.....as long as the documentation he presented hold us.....

                   The GOP  It's ridiculous to keep addressing them by their official titles (Senator, Congressman, etc, etc)  They serve neither the country nor the Constitution........they've reduced themselves to worms, minions in the service of one man only. Their Public Servant masks have melted right off their faces.

                     Baby Orange....... just couldn't leave the Hanoi summit without disgracing himself and the office he's entirely unfit for. B.O. takes Kim Jung Un at his word.......that the tubby little tyrant, murderer of his own family members, knew nothing about utter destruction of the imprisoned young American Otto Warmbier.   As if Baby Orange needed to remind anyone  any further of what a hellish, bottomless abyss of a human he is......that mask of International Statesman come sliding right off.....

                    But on a happier note, not all the unmaskings were toxic.......

                   The Masked Singer.   We normally despise the plague of network singing competitions, but who could resist this one?  Celebrities performing their hearts out while decked out in ornate, bizarre costumes that look left over from Fellini's "Satyricon".......they had us at hello. And we don't mind admitting we had as much fun as the celebrity panel in trying to guess their identities/  Mindless, cheesy fun......and we can't wait for Season 2......

"LINDSAY LOHAN'S BEACH CLUB"........WHERE UNREALITY GOES TO DIE.......

Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club (MTV-2019)    Only Beloved Daughter could coerce us into watching episodes of this pop culture landfill..........

                  We weep and mourn for the precious minutes of our life we wasted on such a swirling mass of excrement........

                    Leave it to the lizards of MTV to assemble this perfect storm.........the collision of one of their all too typical reality show casts with the sad, wasted human wreckage that is Lindsay Lohan......

                    Lohan, the once promising, now washed up starlet continues her persona as a pitiable figure......the woeful result of upbringing by one of the world's worst set of parents - a fame hungry idiot mother and a criminal father.

                    After a film career undone by booze and drugs, the MTV series shows her literally washed up on a pristine beach in Mykonos, Greece......co owning and managing a bar, cabanas and lounge chairs with an obsequious, preening little worm named Panos.

                     Panos bills hiimself as "Creative Director".......and his greatest achievement in creativity is dubbing himself a 'creative director'........

                    Into the mix comes the standard MTV collection of 'reality' characters........the usual feckless, clueless, rootless bunch of Millennials gasping and grasping for their 15 minutes of reality-show fame. They accomplish this mainly by picking staged fights with each other........

                    Hilariously, these dopey, ex-bartenders and waitresses have been hired as "Ambassadors" for what Lohan constantly refers to as 'representing my Brand'......

                    Their great task?  No different than Bar Girls who've been working cheap dives since the dawn of liquor........shmooze customers into running up huge drink tabs.......

                     For a show that bears her name, Lohan herself appears only sporadically......used like a pop-up cardboard prop to ensure the show title's truth-in-advertising..........we see her and that genius of creativity Panos  expressing grave concern that their "Ambassadors" aren't pushing enough hooch and cabana rentals........

                     Not even guilty fun to view as a trainwreck, the show reeks like year-old garbage from beginning to end........a shitcake of worn out reality show tropes capped off by the exhausted Lohan, presiding over what's left her celebrity, babbling on about maintaining her 'brand'..........

                     Worthless sludge, unfit for anyone's consumption. Zero stars (0)

"YOU" (LIFETIME CHANNEL SERIES).......THE CURSE OF THE 10 HOUR STRETCH........

You (Lifetime Channel Series) (2018)   We realize that in today's swollen entertainment market, movie deals for novels are few and far between........

             Besides, unlike tireless scribes of the cinema Golden Ages, few of today's screenwriters possess either the talent or ambition to compress a novel into a swift, coherent 2 hour movie.......

             But welcome to the New Age Of Cable & Streaming.......where all those books piled up on the Barnes & Noble New Release shelves can now find renewed life as series that stretch out 10 hours or more......

              Before everyone shouts out 'Hallelujah'! at this idea......we're starting to think of this novelistic mini-series boom as both a blessing and curse......

              Elongating these books out to 10 hour long episodes isn't necessarily healthy for them.....or all that entertaining for us......

              Examples?   Turning the dense, nearly impenetrable "The Alienist" into a lengthy series made the material even more stillborn than it already was.....as compelling to watch as an oil painting.

             And we may find ourselves in the minority here, but we thought HBO's popular adaptation of "Big Little Lies" was drained of most its sardonic humor by the artsy-smartsy pretensions of its director.....

               Which brings us to "You", the Lifetime Channel series based on Caroline Kepnes's best-seller about a sociopath stalker and his prey.

               We already posted on the book and its equally chilling sequel, "Hidden Bodies".....in which Kepnes wittily details the bloody misadventures of charming, serial psychopath Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager who's a menace to the objects of his affection.

               Think of Joe as a self-absorbed Millennial version of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley......who barely skates unscathed through all the murders he commits and rationalizes that none of this is really his fault.......(maybe in future books, Kepnes should have him run for President....)

                For the first few episodes, the mini-series version had us at 'Hello'......containing everything we loved about the book........the dark, dark humor, the snappy patter, and for once, a justifiable, clever use of social media to move the plot along.......Based on the first episodes we viewed, we gave it an initial 4 star rave when we posted about it on 9/11/18.......

               We learned our lesson well......BQ will NEVER again review a limited mini-series and gush out love for it until we've sat through ALL the episodes..........

                Our love soon soured.......and for us, so did the series.......as it began to suffer from the enforced bloat of elongating the book into 10 episodes of 65 minutes each......

                 Repetition set in. And even more repetition. And more still.  The show began to look like a serial killer version of 'Groundhog Day'....with the pace slowed down to a crawl as slightly different versions of the same events unfolded over and over again......

                 By the time "You" lurched into its final 10th episode, all the grisly fun and suspense of the book had been drained away. And when the show sprung its last, tacked on, ludicrous twist, we were too busy sighing with relief that we'd come to the end of it......

                 BQ memo to this series' showrunners and writers.........10 friggin' hours?  Sorry, but you folks didn't do anybody any favors.........and you inflated a great book until you turned into a slow moving bore. 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)......(how about a 2 to 3 hour version of "Hidden Bodies"?)

"YOU"........LATE NITE STALK-SHOW APPEARANCES.........

You (Mini-Series- 2018)    Oh the tongue-in-cheek irony......

              Where else would the series version of Caroline Kepnes's darkly sardonic thriller land but on on the Lifetime Channel.........home to countless cheesy stalker-suspensers.........

               The channel's schedule is already heavily loaded with with its very own stalk-a-thons...with titles  along the lines of "I'm Watching You"....."She's being watched"......"Watching Her"....etc, etc, etc.......'round the clock stalking whenever you need an endangered heroine fix........

               But here's the rub........Lifetime's stalk-a-ramas, in their own way, aren't far removed from the Hallmark Channel's year 'round seasonal, chaste romances.........slow paced to the point of stillness and mass produced like sausage.

               "You" may indeed share the basic plot structure of a Lifetime movie.......(creepy guy slowly insinuates himself into the life of his prey)......but "You" arrives with a far higher pedigree than boilerplate Lifetime product.........based on a best selling novel, it's witty, well written,well acted,   snappily paced and most clearly a quality effort.

                 So the whole stalking thing seems to serve as the only reason it landed in the sea of cheese that comprises the Lifetime schedule..........(imagine "The Way We Were" suddenly popping up right in the middle of one of  Hallmark's 'Love At the Cookie Contest" movies.....)

                 Not that we're complaining.......having birthed itself on a basic cable channel, it means we don't have to pay HBO, Showtime, Amazon or Hulu to check it out.  Very cool.

                  In her book, the first of two, author Kepnes cleverly created her own variation of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley........he's Joe Goldberg, a seemingly harmless Ripley-esque dweeb who fixates on Beck, a beautiful creative writing graduate student who walks to into the bookstore where Joe works.

                   Ah, true psychotic love. It's stalk at first sight.

                 Joe's anything but harmless and he wastes no time launching into all manner of insidious machinations to make Beck his one and only,including swiping her cellphone.   The perverse fun in the pilot episode, as it was in the novel, is in the layer-by-layer peeling off  of Joe's mask of normality.....(his thuggish next door neighbor, however, sees right through him as no doubt others will.....)

                   A role like Joe provides a challenging tightrope walk for an actor, (how much empathy....how much psychosis), but so far Penn Badgley (of 'Gossip Girl') deftly navigates his way through the rocky shoals involved in bringing such a multi-faced character to life.

                   This show's off and running out of the starting gate and we can't wait to grin 'n grimace through all the future twists and turns......you can bet we'll post on it again as we look in on Joe Goldberg's further creepy adventures........for now, BQ stalks the opening of "You" with 4 stars (****)......premium thrills without buying a Premium channel.....what more could you want?

               

             

'THE BAD SEED' (LIFETIME CHANNEL REMAKE).......ROB LOWE AND LOWER.......

The Bad Seed (2018)    Not much we can work ourselves up to say about this thoroughly tepid Lifetime Channel remake.......directed by and starring Rob Lowe........

                Naturally, it features routine, mundane acting by Lowe and the supporting cast, befitting a made-for-TV movie.........so you shouldn't expect to see anything remotely like the shouting-to-the-rafters performances given by the 1956 film version's cast, all of them imported from the Broadway show.

                And like most TV movies, it pokes along at its own measured pace as if it has all the time in the world to lay out its story.........

                 A few pluses stood out, here and there.........

                 12 year old McKenna Grace, who looks like a midget Katie Holmes,  turns in fairly skillful work as the murderous child......not resorting to Patty McCormack-level screeching until the finale.....

                  Speaking of Patty.......the original baddest of all bad seeds turns up as a friendly psychiatrist.......just enough time to throw in a meta joke or two about how little McKenna  "reminds me of myself...".....heh, heh, heh.....yeh, we get it.

                  This new version transforms 'Leroy', the evil child's handyman nemesis, into a snarky, scheming babysitter.....played by Sarah Dugdale as if possessed by Aubrey Plaza.....(not a bad idea, but carrying over the original character's threat of 'the little pink electric chair for girls' sounds jarringly out of place today.......no self-respecting psychotic child of the new millennium would fall for it. )

                    For today's more bloodlusting audiences, a few of the child's murders are fully depicied instead of occurring offscreen. And since there's no longer any censorious Production Code to decree the child suffer punishment,  we knew the filmmakers didn't have to resort to hurling a lightning bolt at her like the original film did......literally.

                    Given the primal, stark nature of the story, we suspect that every generation will receive its very own remake of "The Bad Seed".........personally, we'll stick with our very own screwy, way-over-the-top Warner Brothers original.........for this version, a so-so 2 stars (**).

                 

UNHINGED BINGE! BQ GOES CRAZY OVER THE CRAZY, FUNNY 'KILLING EVE'...........

Killing Eve (2018)    We rarely have the time or the patience to binge a TV show..........(not with a neverending pile of books waiting to be read......)

               Broke down and did it with this show...........surprise, surprise......didn't regret one minute of it.

               For at least half of the 8 episodes, this show dazzled the hell out of us.......left us with our mouth agape......when we weren't laughing out loud.

                And the laughs are intentional. The show puts on a funny/scary/witty/sexy high-wire act that careens like a runaway truck on a curving mountain road with no guardrails........

                Two actresses anchor the show, each of them getting the kind of a role-of-a-lifetime that every actor prays for before they go to bed.........Sandra Oh as Eve,  a low level British Intelligence employee who's given a chance to track down Villanelle (Jodie Comer), a spectacularly lethal, psychotic Russian assassin.

                In the course of the series, these two obsessed women engage in a bravura duel of wits, guns, knives and sexual arousal..........not for a minute can take your eyes off them.

                 And who would want to?

                 To be honest here, the second half of the series loses some of its frenzied mojo as it bows to the mechanics of  its plot, which transfers much of the action to a grim Russian prison......slowing things down a bit.

                But Oh and Comer are never less than riveting......apart and together.  After dutifully soldiering through a lifetime of supporting roles, Oh grabs hold of her role for dear life.......a mixture of fear, courage and vulnerability that's guaranteed to fetch awards.

                Comer makes La Femme Nikita look like a Teletubbie.  Frightening and hilarious all at the same time, she's a bubbly Angel Of Death who likes hanging around to watch her victims gasp out their last breath. .......her wide-eyed enjoyment and curiosity at the agony she dispenses could give you nightmares......if it wasn't for Comer making you guiltily chuckle at her own amusement.

                 When here exasperated Russian handler attempts to gauge her level of insanity with  psychological testing, she wears a flowing, frilly white ball gown......a Cinderella from Hell.....

                 The last mini-series we unhappily plowed through (as you wonderful, regular BQ visitors know), was the scrambled, beyond boring,  nearly unwatchable "The Alienist".   Take our word for it, this one's the polar opposite........it'll pin you to the wall from the first episode.

                  4 stars (****).......a funhouse thrill-ride that'll leave you salivating for Season 2...... the BQ can't wait......

TRIUMPH & TEARS.....ONE LONG NIGHT OF TV WITH MVPs NICK FOLES AND MANDY MOORE

Super Bowl 51 (2018) & This Is Us (2016)

             NBC, bless its rapacious, corporate heart, engineered a Sunday evening of close to 6 hours of programming designed to put America through an emotional rollercoaster........

              We speak, of course, of the Super Bowl pitting the scrappy underdog Philadelphia Eagles against that loathsome, malignant dynasty, the New England Patriots.......followed by a monumentally tragic episode of the already heart-wrenching series, "This Is Us"......

               You might have needed tranquilizers to make it through the football game and then several boxes of tissues to survive the drama episode......

               In case we forgot to mention it, the BQ is the more sedate, whitebread version of the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air......West Philadelphia born and raised.

               So we don't have to describe our reaction to watching our home team triumph over the Patriots, an evil, preening, self-satisfied cabal who've been cheating and spying their way to victory for years.

               Watching this game was the equivalent of viewing a steel cage match between Trump and the disabled reporter he so cruelly mocked during the 2016 campaign..........and seeing the incredible spectacle of the reporter kicking Trump's cheeseburger-inflated ass to the floor.....

               Yes, it felt that good.

               And the Eagles accomplished this not with their star quarterback, sidelined with a season ending injury.......but with Nick Foles, their backup guy.  The unintimidated Foles let more air out of the Patriots' egos than the air they once let out of their footballs to connive their way to a win.

               But the evening of the game's highs and lows was far from over..........

                NBC next plunged us into an hour of "This Is Us", which finally revealed the long unseen demise of its most beloved character, Jack Pearson, the flawed but stalwart loving father perfectly played by Milo Ventimiglia.

                As Nick Foles became the annointed MVP of the Super Bowl, the "This Is Us" MVP was most certainly Mandy Moore, who with uncommon skill and grace, took on the devastating scenes in which her character is confronted with the sudden death of her husband.

                Even though we could practically hear the sound of millions of TV viewers  sobbing their eyes out, we also felt a measure of happiness for Moore, who's been skirting around the peripheries of TV and films for over a decade now, an underappreciated talent and an untapped resource.

                To use football imagery, it's been nice to see her catch the plum role-of-a-lifetime and run with it into the endzone.  Mandy Moore and Nick Foles, the two MVPs, made one hell of an unforgettable night of TV together.

                 Did we scream for joy during the game? You bet. Did we cry during "This Is Us"?  Hmmm......uh....nah, it must have been an allergy or something that made our eyes water....just a tad. Maybe a tad and a half......

                 For both shows, for both MVPs, Nick 'n Mandy......5 stars (*****) both FIND OF FINDS.

               

ONE NIGHT OF TV MADNESS..... ABC'S REVOLTING REMAKE....... 'SVU' NAILS ITS ULTIMATE PERP....BABY ORANGE.....

         Two gaudy spectacles splashed across rival networks last night.......one of them an extended, laughable trainwreck.....and the other, one of the most blood-soaked, hate-drenched indictments of the Trump era we've ever seen on TV so far.....

           First, the trainwreck, ABC's monumentally embarrassing remake of "Dirty Dancing."

           Only greedy, ratings hungry network executives could possibly have thought this was a good idea. The original, a low budget, hastily slapped together raggedy thing, caught lightning in a bottle.....one of those little miracles of filmmaking where everything comes together to make some accidental magic....

           So the network, looking to fill up three hours of air time, foolishly attempted a giant, inflated Macy's Parade balloon version of the film.......dragging out negligible subplots, miscasting the lead roles badly and generally making the film appear like a bloated Alternate Dark Universe version that slipped through a black hole and on to the network schedule.

           We won't waste time recollecting all the ludicrous moments in this disaster.....nor will we even mention the names of the actors who found themselves trapped in the maelstrom......there's no need to smear them any further......they probably feel humiliated enough as it is.....

           Meanwhile, as ABC's travesty unraveled before unbelieving eyes, "Law & Order: SVU" presented its two-part season finale, a non-stop horror show centered around an unspeakable rape-and-murder attack on a Muslim family....

           Earlier in the season, NBC yanked one of 'SVU's episodes,one of their "this is purely fictitious, but you damn well know the true story we ripped off for this" episodes.....one which depicted a distinctly Trumpian politician played by Gary Cole.

           We don't know if the season finale served as a rebuke to the network for pulling that episode,but we do know the show came roaring back with this stunning example of the "Trump effect" on American society.....the unleashing of previously hidden hatred and bigotry into the country's mainstream....the polluting of America with bullying, prejudice and violence, all publicly displayed and endorsed by the so-called President.....

           Neither Baby Orange or anyone playing an imitation of him appears anywhere in the show....but you can feel the pernicious, toxic, Trump-filled atmosphere that infects the storyline from beginning to end.  It's a perfect hellish storm that leaves nobody in the episode untouched, littered with destroyed lives, broken bleeding bodies and terrible,vexing moral quandaries for the SVU team.

            Typical of an SVU episode, there's no comforting closure, even with the capture and conviction of the two odious Trumpanzees responsible for the rapes and murders....(one of them referencing his glorious leader's remark about all Mexicans being rapists) By the time the episode fades to black, you realize that there's only one real hateful perpetrator hovering over all this misery......and he's still at large, on the loose.....and dangerous to the nation....

            For "Dirty Dancing"....Zero stars (0), a project that never should have existed. For the Law & Order:SVU"  season finale....4 stars (****) for its unflinching portrayal of what the country's reaped with the chaotic reign of Baby Orange.....