Moon Knight (Disney+): A TV Review

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A completely forgettable and unforgivable mess of a Marvel series.

Marvel has not exactly covered itself in glory in the wake of the staggering achievement that was the narrative arc which culminated with Infinity War/Endgame.

Black Widow and Shang Chi were rather generic Disney/Marvel movie ventures and Eternals was the worst film Marvel has churned out in its history.

The Spider-Man Sony/Marvel movies have fared a bit better at the box office, but even those have been pretty lackluster films, Spider-Man: No Way Home being the exception. The other Sony/Marvel movies, Venom and Morbious, have been pretty disastrous.

In this post-Endgame era, Mickey Mouse’s minions have tried to branch out from feature films to television, giving us a plethora of Disney + content that has been more miss than hit.

WandaVision and Loki were flawed but at least ambitious. Hawkeye was a more conventional work, but entertaining nonetheless. Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a middling misfire. What If…? an animated shitshow. And now there’s Moon Knight, which is easily the worst of the bunch.

Moon Knight is, like the lead character in the recent sorry Sony/Marvel movie Morbius, a bit of an obscure superhero in the Marvel canon.

Moon Knight is one of the superhero personas of Marc Spector/Steven Grant - a guy with a split personality. Spector is a rough and tumble American mercenary and Grant is an effete Brit who works at an Egyptian museum. Moon Knight is the avatar for the moon god Khonshu when Spector’s personality is in charge, and when Grant is in charge that avatar is Mr. Knight.  

If that all sounds a bit much that’s because it is, and Moon Knight doesn’t do much to quell the confusion.

Moon Knight is, like Morbius, a pretty fascinating character once you do the comic book reading necessary, but also like Morbius, the character is poorly served by the studio’s attempt to take him mainstream because the vehicle used is so atrocious.

The series Moon Knight, like the film Morbius, is an utter abomination it is so awful.

The series runs for 6 episodes, and yet it’s pacing is so bad, its storytelling so stilted, its action sequences so dull, it felt like watching a 40 hour death march.

The series takes its sweet time actually introducing Moon Knight, a fatal error as he’s the only remotely interesting thing in it. Instead, it plays coy with Steven Grant’s perspective, and actually cuts away anytime something interesting is about to happen and Moon Knight is supposed to show up.

When Moon Knight finally does arrive on screen, he is accompanied by the most egregiously choreographed, poorly shot and dismally edited action sequences you’ll ever witness.

And it isn’t just the action sequences, as everything about Moon Knight looks and feels cheap.

A huge problem with the show is that Oscar Isaac simply can’t carry a series on his own, as he lacks the requisite charisma and star power, nevermind the acting ability.

Isaac’s appeal has long eluded me. He is routinely terrible in movies (try watching him in those Star Wars pieces of shit) and yet people fawn all over him like he’s some great actor/movie star.

That said, last year I saw him in the Paul Schrader film, The Card Counter, and I thought he was fantastic. His performance was underplayed, subtle and riddled with complexity. Finally, I began to see what other’s saw in Oscar Isaac…and then… he turns around and churns out the embarrassment that is Moon Knight.

All of Isaac’s versions of Moon Knight, be it Mark Specter or Steven Grant, are dead-eyed, dreadful and dull. By the way, Isaac’s British accent as Steven Grant is Dick Van Dyke level of hackneyed.

Speaking of dreadful, Morbious was a truly dreadful movie and, ironically, the geniuses behind Morbious and Moon Knight are on the same creative page as there’s a sequence in Morbious that is copied in Moon Knight.

In the sequence, there’s a sort of horror chase through a hallway with corporate zone lighting in it where the only lights that go on are the ones immediately above the person walking. It was enormously amusing to me that Moon Knight used the same exact lighting technique in an equally flaccid horror chase scene. Apparently unoriginal minds think alike.

Another major issue with Moon Knight is that the whole Egyptian gods thing is a tough sell, as once you start getting into supernatural instead of superhero, things become even more silly than usual pretty fast. Eternals suffered from a similar failing.

And Moon Knight doesn’t seem to be connected in any way to the rest of the Marvel Universe, so the series feels even more irrelevant. For example, why when giant Egyptian gods are fighting and civilians dying, wouldn’t the Avengers get involved?

To me, the most remarkable thing about Moon Knight is how instantly forgettable it is, and how atrociously made it is.

But rest assured, despite Moon Knight being a major mess, Marvel still managed to get its weak-kneed woke agenda into the series. There’s one sequence where a little Egyptian girl says to Scarlet Scarab (a female Moon Knight-esque character - it’s a long story), “are you an Egyptian superhero?”, and she replies with pride, “Yes I am!” That sequence made me cringe so hard I nearly defecated.

But rest assured, all that virtue signaling garbage is just icing on the cake of awfulness that is Moon Knight.

The bottom line is that if Moon Knight is what the future holds for Marvel, then the future is bleak indeed.

©2022

Winning Time (HBO): A TV Review

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A second rate recounting of a first rate story. Just more fool’s gold from Adam McKay.

The title of the Adam McKay produced HBO series that chronicles the critical 1980 NBA season for the Los Angeles Lakers, Winning Time, subtly says a great deal about why the series is ultimately a failure.

Winning Time is based on the Jeff Pearlman book Showtime, which was aptly titled since it documented the birth and growth of the Showtime Lakers, which, along with Larry Bird’s blue-collar Boston Celtics, revitalized the NBA and the game of basketball itself in the 1980’s.

“Showtime” in this context has multiple meanings in that it refers to the Lakers flashy, up-tempo offense, Magic Johnson’s jaw-dropping passing ability, million-dollar smile and superstar charisma, and the team’s new glitzy, Hollywood-friendly image.

But “Showtime” is also a cable channel and HBO’s main competitor, so they couldn’t name the series “Showtime” despite that being the perfect name. It would be like McDonalds naming their new burger the Burger King.

So, “Showtime” was jettisoned and the series became the banal and boring Winning Time, which sounds eerily similar to the 90’s Saturday morning show and Saved by the Bell wannabe, Hang Time, about a high school basketball team. Hang Time starred former NBA player Reggie Theus and gave the world Anthony Anderson, and also set the art of acting back to the Stone Age.

Winning Time is little more than a glossier, glitzier, adult-version of Hang Time. In case you were wondering…that’s not a compliment.

Winning Time attempts to do the near impossible, make a compelling drama/comedy that has a cultural/political agenda and is filled with famous real-life characters, while believably capturing the essence of professional basketball as played at the time.

Ultimately, the series clangs off the rim in its shot at greatness because it is so ham-fisted in nearly everything it tries to do.

As a basketball fan the thing that was most uncomfortable about watching Winning Time is that the basketball in it is just cringe-worthy. This is not surprising since basketball is a very difficult sport to fake – see White Men Can’t Jump for proof of that, and in high school the drama nerds were too busy starring in Brigadoon rather than on the basketball court.

In recreating the 1980 Lakers (and their opponents) you first have to find actors who are big enough to be believable, and who share a resemblance to their famous characters. Once you have that…which is no easy task, then those actors need to be able to play decent basketball, which is highly unlikely since if they could be as remotely good at basketball as the character’s they portray, they wouldn’t be two-bit actors.

Quincy Isaiah is a perfect example. Isaiah has a passing resemblance to Magic Johnson, and does an excellent job of capturing young Magic’s exuberant essence off the court. But on the court, Isaiah’s pudgy physique and his lack of basketball skill is, frankly, distracting and embarrassing.

Most of the rest of the players, be they Lakers or Larry Bird or Dr. J, suffer a similar fate, and no matter how much the director’s try and hide the awkward un-athelticism on display, you simply can’t tell this basketball story without showing basketball, and the basketball on display is an abomination.

The only real exceptions are Solomon Hughes as Kareem, and DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon, and even they more look the part than actually play it.

Hughes is a 7-footer who played at Berkley and had a cup of coffee in the NBA. He perfectly captures the sullen brooding of Kareem off the court, and while his skyhook is definitely a bit wonky (which begs the question…why has no big man over the last 50 years tried to emulate the single most successful basketball shot in the history of the sport – Kareem’s skyhook?) he makes for a somewhat believable presence on the court.

As for Devaughn Nixon, he looks so much like Norm Nixon it freaked me out…but then I looked him up and he’s Norm Nixon’s son, so mystery solved.

Unfortunately, most of the non-basketball playing cast members throw up an airball as well.

For example, Jason Segel’s over-acting as assistant coach Paul Westhead is high school drama club reject level of awful. Segel’s Westhead is a feckless, Shakespearean fancy-pants with no lips and even less balls. Segel may be charming in various comedies, but he is an absolutely atrocious dramatic actor.

Adrien Brody, whose face looks like it was found in Picasso’s garbage bin, is, astonishingly, supposed to play super model-looking, Gucci mannequin and future Hall-of-Fame coach, Pat Riley. Brody is appallingly bad in the role. And watching Brody try to chew gum like Riley is one of the more alarming things I’ve ever witnessed, it’s like watching a brain-damaged camel chew on a truck tire.

Jason Clarke plays Laker icon Jerry West, aka The Logo, like he’s auditioning for a community theatre production of The Shining. West has made a stink about his portrayal in the series and is threatening legal action, and frankly, I don’t blame him. Clarke is a fine actor, but his choices as West are so absurd as to be insane.

One of the lone bright spots is John C Reilly as Dr. Jerry Buss. Reilly captures the degenerate clown show that is Jerry Buss. Buss, like many successful men of that generation, was a delusionally depraved douchebag and thought of himself as a cross between Hugh Hefner and James Bond.

Of course, Reilly’s Buss is funny because he’s so ridiculous in his tight jeans, unbuttoned shirt and with his scientifically impossible comb over, but he’s also pathetic, manipulative and disgusting, as he keeps pictures of all his sexual conquests and uses his wealth and the terminal illness of his mother to basically sexually assault a nurse.

Buss’s smoke and mirrors purchase of the Lakers, and his revitalization of the team, which ultimately led to the birth of the modern NBA, is an important story, but Adam McKay is incapable of properly telling it.

McKay uses his usual bag of tricks, like breaking the fourth wall and using different film stocks to give a visual flair to things, but this doesn’t elevate the material but rather feels like empty parlor tricks.

Winning Time, like all of McKay’s “serious” works, is loaded with the director’s personal politics, in this case there’s a plethora of pandering regarding misogyny and the patriarchy. These cultural political issues in Winning Time are a lot like McKay’s various filmmaking quirks in that they feel manufactured and used to cover up fundamental flaws in the storytelling.

McKay came to fame as Will Ferrell’s comedy caddy and then made the leap with the extraordinarily impressive The Big Short. The Big Short was a stunning achievement, one which I never would have thought a director like McKay could’ve made…but he did it.

But since The Big Short, McKay has tried to tackle equally complex material and has floundered. Vice, the story of Dick Cheney, was an ambitious failure. Don’t Look Up was a scattershot attempt to make a climate change satire, and it fell flat. As more time passes and more “serious” McKay projects see the light of day, it becomes more and more clear that The Big Short wasn’t the beginning of a great run, but rather an outlier from an ambitious but artistically very limited storyteller. Winning Time is just more proof of this thesis.

Ultimately, Winning Time is a loser because it’s a story of Shakespearean scope and scale about basketball made by someone who has neither any genuine insight into human nature nor a true understanding of the complexities of the game. As any big man worth his salt would say as he swatted a sorry shot into the third row, I say to Adam McKay and Winning Time, “get that weak shit outta here!”

©2022

The Dropout (Hulu): A TV Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A middling misfire of a movie of the week posing as prestige TV.

Years ago, before streaming services and even before cable tv, there was a network television phenomenon called The Movie of the Week (MOTW). MTOW was usually a second rate, ripped from the headlines hack-fest, starring some up-and-comer or down-and-outer, that produced a compelling commercial for itself but an abysmal two-hour movie.

Hulu, Disney’s backwater repository for all of its non-Disney-fied properties, seems to want to brand itself the modern-day home for the MOTW which it has stretched out into Mini-Series of the Week.

For example, a few months ago Hulu premiered Pam and Tommy, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, a mini-series which tells the true story of how a celebrity sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee came to be and changed the world for the worse.

Hulu also recently premiered another mini-series called The Girl from Plainville, starring Elle Fanning, which tells the true story about a high-profile case about a high school girl who was prosecuted for allegedly talking her boyfriend into killing himself.

Hulu’s The Dropout falls into this now familiar category, as it stars Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried, and tells the true story of a high profile, scandalous event - Elizabeth Holmes scamming most everybody with her smoke and mirrors blood testing company Theranos.

Like the old MOTW, Hulu’s star-studded, ripped-from-the-headlines mini-series make for better commercials than they do actual series. For instance, Pam and Tommy generated a lot of light but ultimately no heat as it was an exercise is play-acting and vapid socio-political pandering.

The Dropout produces similar results but is even more vacuous and artistically banal than Pam and Tommy.

Pam and Tommy at least started off promisingly enough and then went precipitously off the rails, but The Dropout is a tortuous slog from the get-go. I almost didn’t make it through the first episode. And then was so turned off by its amateurish script, its incoherent structure and mundane production that I stayed away for weeks until I finally bit the bullet and watched the rest of the eight-episode series.

As evidenced by her work in David Fincher’s Mank, Amanda Seyfried is a fine actress, and she does her best as the peculiar Elizabeth Holmes, but Holmes is such a cartoon character that she feels impenetrable (maybe the point of why she turned herself into a cartoon character!) and Seyfried’s performance feels more like imitation than acting.

Seyfried never pierces Holmes’ armor and thus we are left with a rather shallow performance with her doing little more than mimicking Holmes’ bizarre speaking voice and not much else.

Other performances are equally underwhelming if not uncomfortably broad. William H Macy is atrocious as Richard Fuisz, a neighbor of Holmes and competitor. His prosthetics are an embarrassment to the profession.

Much like Pam and Tommy turned their story into a feminist screed about the evils of the patriarchy, The Dropout follows this familiar path. The series paints Holmes as both victimizer and, of course, since she’s a woman swimming in the shark-infested, unfathomable waters of the patriarchy, also a victim.

The show never dares confront the most obvious and most interesting truth about Holmes which is that she rose to the power solely BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN.

The big wigs, and she had a plethora of big wigs, from investor Don Lucas to Rupert Murdoch to former Secretary of State George Shultz, who backed her and went to great lengths to protect her, did so because they wanted to signal their virtue and 21st century feminist bona fides. Holmes sensed their weakness and exploited her femininity to manipulate the ‘noble intentions’ of these pillars of the male power structure.

The media gets off easy too in The Dropout, as its role in her rise to power is diluted if not outright ignored. The media’s gushing, deferential coverage is what built the formidable myth of Holmes as the girl power Steve Jobs. The media wanted Holmes to be a feminist icon and did all it could to print the legend and avoid the truth.

Both the media and the powerful men she duped, were promoting the credo of the 21st century, image over merit. This credo fuels the entirety of our society, and is a reflection of a country and culture in a death spiral.

Ultimately, the problem with The Dropout, and Pam and Tommy, and Hulu’s MOTW approach, is that it too is only interested in image and not in merit, not just in their storytelling but in their hiring and production.

Yes, the stories of Elizabeth Holmes and Pam and Tommy Lee are on their surface interesting, but Hulu doesn’t bring any insight to them, just shallow recreation and exploitation. We learn nothing about Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, we just witness her do things we already knew she did.

The Dropout, like Pam and Tommy before it, seems to exist for no other reason than for Hulu to signal its virtue and to have viewers passively mutter, “oh yeah, I remember when that happened in real life” as they sit comatose on their couch watching famous people play-act as other famous people.

As Orwell once wrote, “to see what is in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle”, and the makers of The Dropout are disinterested in life beyond their proboscos. The story of Elizabeth Holmes is chock full of lessons and morals for our decadent and delusional age, but The Dropout is incapable of seeing what is in front of its own nose, and instead prefers to close its eyes and imagine a different, more politically Twitter friendly, less complex, more Manichean, world instead.

The bottom line is that The Dropout, like Pam and Tommy before it, is a terribly wasted opportunity. It’s nothing more than an empty-headed movie of the week posing as prestige TV, stretched out over eight grueling weeks. There is absolutely no reason why anyone, anywhere, should ever waste their time watching this middling monstrosity.

©2022

Slow Horses (Apple TV+): A TV Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite a brilliant cast, this cliched spy thriller is a rushed and rather derivative piece of television.

Slow Horses, the British spy thriller which just finished its first season on Apple TV+, is an odd duck of a show.

The series, based upon the 2010 Mick Herron novel of the same name, tells the story of a group of MI5 misfits sent to a mind-numbing, soul-sucking, bureaucratic no man’s land called Slough House, where they are meant to waste away their careers on meaningless drudgery as punishment for their various failings.

The show, the first season of which runs six episodes, attempts to balance a somewhat comedic tone against the overloaded tensions of a spy story involving kidnapping, murder, double-crosses, triple-crosses, spy agency conspiracies and white supremacy.

The reason I navigated the labyrinth of Apple TV and tuned in to Slow Horses was because Gary Oldman, one of my favorite actors, was the series lead.

I was not disappointed with Oldman’s performance, though I was disappointed that his character was not as featured as I had hoped (or been led to believe). Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, an old school spy wasting away in the purgatory of Slough House for some undescribed mortal sin. Oldman’s Lamb is caustic, acerbic, odious, repulsive and gloriously funny. OIdman so embodies the disheveled anarchy that is Lamb you can almost smell his flatulent stench wafting through your living room.

Equally good is Kristen Scott Thomas as cold-blooded, clench-mouthed MI5 matriarch, Diana Taverner. Taverner is an uptight operator supreme and her visceral repulsion of Lamb tells you all you need to know about her own sense of superiority.

Jack Lowden plays River Cartwright, an up-and-coming young buck of an MI5 agent who steps in a pile of shit and finds himself in the stink that is Slough House. Cartwright is the most superficially constructed MI5 agent in the show but Lowden does a terrific job of making him compelling.

The acting across the board is excellent. The supporting cast, most notably Olivia Cooke, Dustin Demri-Burns and Rosalind Elazor as a group of Slough House agents, all do solid work.

What makes Slow Horses so odd though is that despite superb work from the cast, the show is painful to watch because the script is utterly abysmal.

I will avoid giving away any plot points or spoilers out of respect for those who may want to watch the show, but I will say that the six episodes of Slow Horses is so crammed full of spy cliché after spy cliché and absurd plot twist after absurd plot twist as to be ridiculous. None of it is remotely believable or, to be frank, very interesting. Slow Horses is so manufactured and derivative that it feels like…well…just another stupid TV show.

I kept thinking of the 2018 British drama Bodyguard as I watched Slow Horses. Bodyguard, which starred a very good Richard Madden, started off interesting but then quickly devolved into egregiously ridiculous spy shenanigans and became unbearably buffoonish. Slow Horses stumbles the same way, wasting its bevy of captivating performances with outlandish plot twists that come too fast and too often.

The six-episode arc of the first season felt abbreviated and rushed. The story may have, may being the imperative word, worked better if it were stretched over a 12-episode season, thereby spreading out the narrative and giving time for the drama, and the plot, to build and seem more believable.

The politics of Slow Horses is just as trite as the storytelling, as the show decides to use the allegedly edgy, but actually old and tired, trope of having white supremacist be the villains. I understand the urge to placate and pander to a certain segment of the audience with this sort of politically charged, and painfully politically correct, storyline, but that doesn’t diminish how vacant, vacuous and vapid it is.

And while the conspiracy angle of Slow Horses is, in theory at least, intriguing, in execution it falls decidedly flat.

At the end of season one of Slow Horses, they show clips from the upcoming season two, so the show will definitely be around for a bit longer. But if season one is any indication, despite the glories of Gary Oldman and Kristen Scott Thomas, this old spy dog just won’t hunt.

If you want to watch the show for the brilliance of Gary Oldman, I don’t blame you, just go into it with low expectations for the series and an understanding that Oldman isn’t the star, just a sterling piece is an otherwise terribly mismatched puzzle.  

©2022

Severance (AppleTV+): TV Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

SEVERANCE

SEASON ONE - NINE EPISODES - APPLE TV +

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A dramatic and insighftul meditation on the cult-like nature and profound evils of corporate America.

Severance, Apple TV’s sci-fi psychological thriller which just concluded its first season, is one of those TV shows that is a joy to watch despite it being such a viscerally uncomfortable viewing experience.

The series follows the trials and tribulations of Mark (Adam Scott), a rather soul-sucked, dead-eyed worker at an ominous bio-tech firm named Lumen, who undergoes a procedure called “severance”, which implants a chip in his brain in order to separate his work memories from his non-work memories.

Every morning Mark steps into the elevator at Lumen and as it descends into corporate hell, his outside life is erased. Then as the elevator doors open at his assigned floor, he awakens to a repeating, Orwellian, work-day nightmare complete with torture chamber break rooms and mazes of endless white hallways leading to nowhere.

At the end of the work day Mark enters the same elevator and the process is reversed, and he returns to his regular, rather sad life, none the wiser as to what has been afflicted upon him, and what he’s been up to all day at Lumen.

Speaking of which, the job Mark and his three co-workers actually do all day at their computers is a mystery even to them as they do it, as they’re never told what exactly it is they’re doing, but considering the brutal cruelty beneath the fake-smiling façade of management, it is most likely profoundly nefarious.

I will avoid going any further into the plot and machinations of Severance because it is best experienced, ironically enough, with a “severanced” mind that is clear from bias and distractions.

And Severance most definitely should be experienced, because it’s a brilliant mediation and examination of the cult-like nature of corporate America, and the banality of evil that is big business bureaucracy.

Severance resonates because it is deeply in tune with the insanity that is America’s mindless and soulless corporate culture as it becomes, with every passing day, ever more deeply intertwined with the modern-day religion that are the socio-political movements du jour.

Severance expertly but subtly comments on the current cancer that is American corporate culture. Lumen is a stand-in for, among other things, big tech, with its yearning for a thought-reducing social credit system and its compliance-inducing addiction to cancel culture. It’s also commenting on the cavalcade of companies forcing Human Resources-inspired indoctrination seminars disguised as “sensitivity trainings” on their workers, as well as the relentless and vacuous public moral preening and pandering of corporations which they use to distract from their pernicious behavior in private.

Lumen, the morally self-righteous, ethically-challenged company at the center of Severance, is Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Pfizer, Walmart, Goldman Sachs or any other too big to fail behemoth that is above the law and runs our corrupt corptocracy as they exploit and brutalize their workers.

The show is so good at replicating what passes for life in the spirit-stomping, soul-crushing, mind-shrinking fluorescent hell of corporate America that it was at times physically uncomfortable to watch. Having in my younger years been a prisoner in corporate America’s suffocating gulag, Severance triggered my PTSD so severely it made my legs ache and my colon twinge.

The first season of Severance consists of nine episodes, six of which are directed by Ben Stiller. I’ve never been a fan of Stiller’s directing. His previous foray into tv was the Showtime mini-series Escape at Donnemara, which came in as a lion and went out like a lamb. That mini-series was a disappointment as it opened bursting with dramatic potential but ultimately ran out of steam mid-way through and then fell flat on its face at the finish line.

Severance is the exact opposite. The series starts slowly…so slow that I almost bailed on it. But after sticking with it through the first few episodes, I was rewarded for my patience. The series builds more and more dramatic momentum as it hurtles toward the final two episodes of the season which are gloriously nerve-wracking.

A large part of why Severance works so well is its stellar cast.

Adam Scott plays protagonist Mark with a morose aplomb. The great John Turturro is absolutely phenomenal as Irving, the straight-laced company man. Britt Lower is undeniably captivating as Helly, the enigmatic new employee. And Zach Cherry is terrific as Dylan, the master of the mysterious task the office is assigned.

Equally outstanding are Patricia Arquette, as Ms. Cobell, the steely-eyed boss, and Tramell Tillman as her ruthless henchman, Seth.

And last but not least, Christopher Walken gives a sterling performance as Bert, a worker at a different division of Lumen who befriends Irving.

The combination of a culturally relevant story, a well-crafted sci-fi script, deft direction and an impeccable cast, make Severance an alarmingly compelling series and one you should definitely check out. It starts slow, but stick with it, it’s well worth it.  

©2022

Life and Beth (Hulu): TV Review

LIFE AND BETH

10 EPISODE SERIES ON HULU STARRING AMY SCHUMER

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT.

I like Amy Schumer…or at least I liked her 2013-2016 Comedy Central sketch comedy show Inside Amy Schumer, which was a clever knock-off version of Dave Chappelle’s Comedy Central show Chappelle’s Show, which ran from 2003-2006.

Unfortunately, since the initial success of Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer’s comedy has gone precipitously downhill and she has devolved into being little more than a parody of herself.

For example, in 2015 she wrote and starred in Trainwreck, which was directed by Judd Apatow, who was the big comedy director/producer of the time, which was meant to catapult her into the upper echelons of Hollywood and the public consciousness.

But a funny thing happened on the way to comedy stardom, or not-so-funny as the case may be…Trainwreck, ironically enough, was a trainwreck. Trainwreck was a distillation of all the worst things about Schumer but its most grievous sin was that it wasn’t even a little bit funny. To give an indication of how ill-suited Amy Schumer was for the big screen, former pro-wrestler John Cena comedically outshone her and was easily the funniest thing in the whole movie.

The climax of that film, where Amy dances seductively with cheerleaders in order to impress her boyfriend, is the cringiest of cringe for all the wrong reasons. What made Schumer interesting as a comedian was her bravado embrace of this heretofore somewhat anathema archetype of the party girl/disinterested slut. But Trainwreck reduced her to groveling to get the good guy, which obliterated the comedy archetype she had so masterfully embodied up to that point.

Since the failure of Trainwreck, Schumer has kicked around and done nothing of note except for some annoying tampon commercials.

But now in 2022…she’s back with her high-profile co-hosting job at the Oscars and Life and Beth, a series on Hulu.

To Schumer’s credit, of the three Oscar’s hosts this year she was the funniest, but that’s like being the tallest midget in the Lollipop Guild. This year’s Oscars will, of course, forever be remembered for Will Smith’s egregious slap, but I must admit that as I watched Life and Beth, I felt more and more empathetic with Will Smith as the urge to slap someone became overwhelming. I guess Amy Schumer just brings that out in people.

Life and Beth is one of those shows that you watch and don’t care about anyone in it, don’t care what happens and don’t want to keep watching but for some reason, usually mental/emotional/entertainment fatigue, you just keep watching it. It is a mind-numbingly narcissistic celebration of victimhood sad-sackery with nary a laugh to be found in the manure pile of endless ennui.

The show is ten episodes long, and each episode runs between 25 and 30 minutes, but they are the longest 25-30 minutes of your life. I pride myself on not checking to see how much time is left in movies or shows when I watch, but in a 25-minute Life and Beth episode I found myself checking three of four times how much was left to bear, and being shocked and dismayed at how much more I had to endure.

The story of the show is that Beth, played with a rote, dead-eyed indecisiveness by Amy Schumer, is a wine saleswoman in NYC in a dull and dour relationship with an absurd co-worker. Her relationships with her family are strained as she’s estranged from her father, her mother is a domineering nag and her sister avoids her.

Beth’s true narrative journey begins when her mother dies in a car accident and Beth is thrown into a storm of existential angst that leads her back to her Long Island childhood home (where she is haunted by poorly executed and casted flashbacks to her teen years) and falls for a local farmer, John (Michael Cena), who is somewhere on the autism spectrum…apparently the annoying part of it.

John is so repellent and Beth so repugnant, and Beth’s attraction to John is so lifeless, that their courtship is akin to watching two convicts assigned to the same prison cell try and figure out who gets the top bunk.

Beth’s character arc makes no sense and carries no dramatic weight because she doesn’t seem like a real person and none of her relationships, be it with her mother, sister, best friends, father or boyfriend, seem remotely authentic or genuine.

Comedians, like all damaged people, have a tendency to conflate and confuse pity with love. Schumer is no different, as she wants us to pity Beth thinking that means we love her. The problem is that Beth is so dull that she generates neither pity nor love. The only pity I felt was for myself for thinking I had to keep watching this banal drivel.  

Life and Beth is one of those shows that seems to be more interested in being diverse and inclusive than it is in being funny or interesting. The show boasts a plethora of minority characters, including Murray Hill as Murray, Beth’s transgender boss, but the diversity feels painfully forced. But to be fair, the manufactured feel of the inclusivity could be a function and extension of the show being comedically anemic and devoid of humor.

The one thing I did find amusing throughout the show was a piece of purely unintentional comedy hiding in plain sight, namely, whoever dressed Amy Schumer had a wonderful sense of humor, but I’m afraid Amy wasn’t in on the joke. Nearly every outfit Beth wears, is a God-awful embarrassment, unflattering to the extreme, that accentuates the very worst of her features.

Schumer’s wardrobe is so atrocious that it reminded of an acting coaching client I once had, a very accomplished actress and truly beautiful woman, who scored a prominent guest spot on a highly popular tv show. On the show, they dressed her in what may be the ugliest sweater in the history of clothing. This puffy, fuzzy sweater with a giant triangle attached on one shoulder, was a crime against humanity, an absolute abomination, so much so that my client’s manager refused to use her terrific performance on her reel because the aggressive ugliness of the sweater overpowered her acting and would repulse casting directors. Nearly everything Amy Schumer wears in Life and Beth is the equivalent of that sweater.

Amy Schumer’s wardrobe aside, Life and Beth is not funny…at all. If you wanted to check it out just to see if there’s a laugh or two, don’t waste your time because, trust me, there isn’t.

If you’re looking for laughs go into the vault and watch Inside Amy Schumer, and remember a time when she was bawdy, ballsy and brash and best of all…funny. It seems like such a long, long time ago.

©2022

The Cuckold vs the Comedian - The 2022 Oscars Round Up

THE OSCARS NEEDED A KICK IN THE ASS…BUT GOT A SLAP IN THE FACE

Well, the Academy Awards happened last night and I need to apologize to readers for being so wrong on my Oscar prediction post. I ended that post by writing, “In ten years, no one will remember CODA. In five years, no one will remember CODA. In a year, no one will remember CODA. And by Monday morning, no one will remember these Academy Awards.”

Boy was I wrong. CODA didn’t need a year to be totally forgotten as it’s already out of mind just 24 hours after winning Best Picture because these Oscars were rendered unforgettable due to “The Slap”.

As I’m sure everyone knows by now, Will Smith got up and bitch-slapped Chris Rock on-stage at the Oscars after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada and her bald head. After the slap, Smith sat in his seat and yelled to Rock that he needed to “keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth”.

Watching it live it first felt like a comedy bit, but then it became clear it wasn’t, which made it easily the most compelling moment at the Oscars in my lifetime.

HOW DO THE OSCARS SUCK? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

The fact that this was one of the all-time awful Oscar telecasts leading up to, and then after, that bitch-slap, should come as no surprise. As a rule, the Academy Awards generally suck, but this year the Oscars turned up the suck to 11.

Speaking of sucking, the opening for the show was a pre-taped performance from Beyonce at a tennis court in Compton. Beyonce’s status as some sort of entertainment Queen amuses me no end as she is a middling talent at best, and her Oscar opening performance was excessively anemic and the song relentlessly bad.

After Beyonce’s video, the three hosts, Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes came out and stumbled through some half-hearted, hackneyed attempts at humor. The comedy throughout all fell flat, which was a recurring theme of the evening.

Equally awful were the live musical numbers, which, good lord, can we stop with the fucking musical numbers. No one wants to see or hear that garbage. It is always awful. Always.

The most alarming thing about the Oscars, besides the bitch-slapping, was the egregious directing of the show. The camera would often cut to audience members responding to things on-stage that viewers at home had not been shown. And there were technical gaffes, like cutting to the Williams sisters during Will Smith’s speech, which resulted in extended periods of time with nothing but an Oscar logo on-screen, which were catastrophic.

Speaking of catastrophes, poor Liza Minnelli was wheeled out near the end of the show with Lady Gaga to give an award. Liza is wheelchair bound and cognitively not all there. I don’t say this to demean her, but she never should’ve been on that stage, it wasn’t fair to her. It was incredibly uncomfortable watching her ramble and babble on in utter confusion in front of millions of viewers. Lady Gaga was very gentle with her and handled the situation gracefully, but neither woman should’ve been put in such an awkward position.

OSCAR THE TERRIBLE

The overall theme of the show seemed to be how can the Academy Awards be as unlikable as possible? With raging mediocrities like CODA winning Best Picture, Will Smith winning Best Actor, and Jane Campion winning Best Director, the core cinephile audience was bound to feel letdown and betrayed. With the hosts and award-recipients reflexively and relentlessly signaling their virtue by pushing some insipid political-cultural agenda that was so vapid as to be embarrassing, wider audiences must have felt like the Academy Awards were actively trying to alienate anyone not all in on woke cultural issues. Not exactly a great strategy to build or maintain an audience.

THE CUCKOLD VS THE COMEDIAN

As for the Will Smith – Chris Rock brouhaha, I have some thoughts.

First off, I completely understand the impulse to crack somebody in the head for no other reason than they deserve it. In Will Smith’s eyes, Chris Rock deserved it. That said, in the real world you can’t just smack somebody because they said something you don’t like. You know why? Because that is a crime called assault. Violence is bad. Condoning it is bad too.

And here is another point to consider, and that is that Smith was wise to slap Rock and not punch him, because punching someone can have catastrophic medical and legal results even if not intended. You can kill somebody with a single punch, it happens far more frequently than you’d think.  

I have to say I do find it curious that Smith was so emotionally overwhelmed and out of control that he hit someone on national television, but was conscious enough to hit with an open hand and not a fist.

Another curious thing is that video evidence shows Will Smith laughing uproariously at the same joke that ultimately inspired him to commit assault on national television.

KING CUCK

Adding to the oddity is that Will Smith is a public cuckold, as his wife Jada has stated that she, in fact, repeatedly had sex with her son Jaden’s friend August Alsina, during their marriage. Classy. Apparently and conveniently, Jada then convinced Will to make their marriage “open”. Host Regina Hall actually made a joke about Will and Jada’s “open relationship” early in the show but for some reason that didn’t send Will into an uncontrollable rage at all.

The truth is that Will Smith has always been, and will always be, an incorrigible douche-bag and mealy-mouth twat. He’s no man defending his wife from slander, he’s a hyper-sensitive cuck lashing out at his own emasculation.

Smith is as full of shit as anyone in Hollywood, which is really saying something, and his antics at the Oscars would’ve gotten any other actors expelled from the ceremony. Imagine if Mel Gibson had done that. He would’ve been expelled and arrested.

My hope is that now that Smith has revealed himself to be an asshole, and he has finally gotten his Oscar, that he can please go away forever, but of course he won’t.

Will Smith is a shitty actor, shitty rapper, shitty father, shitty husband, shitty person. His wife Jada is a deplorable human being, his kids are blights on the earth. The Smiths are a collection of the most malignant, noxious narcissists imaginable.  

HYPOCRITES AND THE FORKED TONGUE OF A MAN-CHILD

Smith’s speech after the assault sickened me too. The hypocrites in the audience clapped for this clown after he assaulted somebody in public and said that God called him to be a vessel for peace and love. Will Smith should’ve been grabbed by security and escorted off of the premises, not cheered as he wept during his insipid Oscar speech.

Look, as I said, I understand the impulse to beat the hell out of somebody, hell, I’d like to beat the hell out of Will Smith for making such awful movies and such putrid music, but I wouldn’t do that because I’m a grown man who understands the dangers of violence and its consequences. Will Smith is a 53-year-old, grown man too, he should know better. He’s not a child, he’s not some teenager or twenty-something under the sway of an over-abundance of testosterone and weak impulse control. He’s a grown man. If a grown man is going to hit somebody, it better be a life and death situation, not a hurt feelings situation.

The reality is that Will Smith isn’t a man at all. He’s never been a man and he’ll never be a man. A real man wouldn’t get his panties in a bunch over a joke and sucker-punch somebody he knew wouldn’t hit him back. It was a despicable and disgusting thing to do.

BETWEEN CHRIS ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

As bad as all this is for Will Smith, it’s much worse for Chris Rock.

Rock made a living walking around with big balls on the comedy stage, and now he’s been castrated on live television. After the slapping, when Will is yelling to “keep my wife’s name out your mouth”, Rock responded, “I will”. So weak, so terribly, terribly weak.

I get that Rock was shocked and that’s why he didn’t defend himself or retaliate, but with the verbal lashing he was receiving, it’s unconscionable that Rock didn’t just double-down and start trash talking Jada and talking about how Will is a cuck. He should’ve said that Will hit his cheek almost as hard as August Alsina hit Jada’s ass…or something along those lines. You have to respond, and if Will gets up again, good…then you know he’s coming and you defend yourself. Chris Rock grew up in Brooklyn, I’m sure he has a lot of experience in defending himself.

Rock was once the best comedian on the planet, but for two decades now he’s been a shadow of his former self. And it is difficult to imagine him bouncing back from this incident without a massive verbal counter attack in public.

Rock’s already shaken confidence must be shattered, but if he wants to make lemonade out of these lemons, he needs to put a scathing set together where he skewers himself for his cowardice, but then lambastes Will, Jada and the rest of the Smith’s for their heinousness. Call Will a cuck, Jada a whore, Jaden a dandy and Willow a tramp…do whatever you can to stick the knife in and twist it. It’s the only way he can ever hope to get his mojo…and his balls…back.

And if it works, then you get a $20 million deal with Netflix for the comedy special and you get your balls and street credibility back.

‘A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE’

As for Will Smith’s impact on the Oscars, it's uncomfortable to mention this but after years of complaints about #OscarsSoWhite, this year it was a very diverse show with a black producer, two of three hosts being black women, three of four acting winners being minorities, a female Best Director winner for the third time ever, and yet Will Smith committed black-on-black crime on national television and reduced the once prestigious Oscars to little more than the Source awards with higher production value. Not good a look for anyone involved.

On the bright side, I did win my Oscar pool getting a respectable 19 out of 23 categories correct. On the down side, I had to watch the Oscars, which was a truly dreadful experience.

The big takeaway from this year’s Academy Awards is that the Oscars are over, not just for this year, but really forever. They are now utterly meaningless. And as much as it breaks my heart to say it, I fear cinema is fast becoming irrelevant as well.

JUMPING SHARKS

In conclusion, I saw today that someone on Twitter wrote, “Will Smith committed a violent crime, took no responsibility, and then blamed it on his feelings. Perfect encapsulation of our times.”

Someone else said to me this morning, “it doesn’t just feel like the Oscars jumped the shark last night, it feels like civilization and the species itself jumped the shark last night too.”

I wholly concur with both assessments.

©2022

Pam and Tommy: A TV Review

HULU’S PAM AND TOMMY STARTS STRONG BUT ENDS UP BEING A RATHER FLACCID FABLE.

Pam and Tommy, the Hulu miniseries that dramatizes the events around the creation, theft and distribution of the infamous 1990’s Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sex tape, could have been great.

For instance, the eight-episode series boasted remarkable performances from its two leads, Lily James and Sebastian Stan, who transformed into Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee respectively, and turned those walking cartoon characters into multi-dimensional human beings.

The series also performed the miracle of making Seth Rogan (also a producer on the series), who plays Rand Gauthier – the guy who stole the sex tape from Lee’s safe, less repulsive than usual. No small feat.

In addition, Craig Gillespie, the director of the terrific 2017 film I, Tonya, directed the first three episodes of the series, which were immensely entertaining and intriguing.

Yet, despite having all of these things going for it, Pam and Tommy in its final five episodes managed to, like a drunken Tommy Lee, stumble over its giant dick and fall flat on its face.

The series opening Gillespie directed Pam and Tommy episodes were imaginative, visually interesting, taut and well-paced. But the wheels came off the wagon after Gillespie left the directing chair and the series went from a hearty jaunt to a grueling death march.

A major issue in episodes four – eight was that the series lost its deft touch and became egregiously heavy-handed in its cultural politics. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using cultural politics as the sub-text for a story, and Gillespie does that masterfully in the first three episodes, but the other directors, most notably Lake Bell in episodes four and seven, get bogged down in the mire of heavy-handed misogyny moaning and man-hating to the point of absurdity.

For example, in episode seven, Pamela Anderson is not only portrayed as an exploited victim of a ruthless and misogynist patriarchy, but also as some undiscovered cinematic genius for how she shot the sex tape in question. The women waxing poetic about the subtle intricacies of the sex tape want you to think Pam was Kurosawa with fake tits because she had the camera aimed at Tommy’s face as opposed to his genitals while they had sex. Maybe, just maybe, that shot wasn’t an artistic or creative choice, but was just a function of Pam being unable to think straight under orgasmic duress or her not being able to get a wide enough shot to capture the infamous anaconda in Tommy’s trousers.  

Regardless, Lake Bell’s direction in episode seven, in particular, is laughable for its ham-handedness and amateurish lack of subtlety and nuance.

What makes the final five episodes so disappointing is that the first three were so good. For example, the sequences where working class Rand has to interact with detached-from-reality-rich-guy Tommy, and the ones where the emotionally walking wounded Pam and Tommy meet and fall in love, are fantastic. And the sequences where Tommy and his personality-plus pecker have a tete-a-tete are the height of director Gillespie’s absurdist glory.

But once the players and the basics of the story are established in the first three episodes, the final five fail to close the deal as the story loses momentum and wanders aimlessly and repetitively through a melo-dramatic desert.

As disappointing as the series is overall, there is no denying the extraordinary work of Lily James and Sebastian Stan. James gives an amazing performance as she perfectly captures the persona of Pamela Anderson, and imbues it with a genuine humanity that is captivating and often quite moving.

Stan too is astonishing as the aggressively adolescent Lee. Stan gives the cartoonish drummer a vivid inner life and fills all of his endless mugging and posing with a profundity and poignance that is startling to behold.

The rest of the cast though do mostly mediocre work mostly because they’re not asked to do much more. As previously stated, Seth Rogan at first is interesting as the religiously and spiritually conflicted Rand, but then as his story becomes less compelling, so does Rogan.

Taylor Shilling, Andrew Dice Clay and Nick Offerman all have supporting roles of various sizes, but none of them do any notable work at all.

The story of the sex tape of Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee, and how it came to be and saw the light of day and spread via the internet, is a truly interesting and relevant story, as it says a great deal about the decadent and decaying state of our culture and country.

Watching Pam and Tommy, who are so desperate to be famous, become victims of the celebrity culture they cultivate and the fame to which they’re addicted, should have been insightful if not profound, but unfortunately, Pam and Tommy fails to elevate this modern-day myth and fable into anything more than a tedious tabloid tantrum.

 ©2022

James Gunn's Shockingly Unwoke 'Peacemaker' Finale

After demeaning and berating white men for the first seven episodes, in the season one conclusion, James Gunn flips the script.

This article contains spoilers for the season one finale of ‘Peacemaker’!!

The first season of James Gunn’s ‘Peacemaker’, the HBO Max series which follows the travails of the flag-waving, meat-headed DC superhero Peacemaker, played by John Cena, came to a somewhat surprising conclusion.

After the series spent the first seven, and the majority of the eighth and final episode, painting all white-men as, at best, adolescent buffoons, and at worst, unrepentantly racist and psychopathic Nazis, and all minorities and women as smart, savvy and tough, the show’s climax was downright shocking.

In the final episode, Peacemaker and his band of misfit special agents head to a farm to try and stop a giant alien caterpillar, which is the lone food source for a large population of alien butterflies that are embedding themselves in powerful people on earth, from being teleported to a safe location, thus ensuring that these butterflies take over the planet.

After a long battle scene, Peacemaker and the lead butterfly named Goff, which has embedded itself in an Asian-American female police officer Sophie (Annie Chang), stop fighting and talk.

Goff pleads with Peacemaker to help the aliens because they left their planet due to global warming, and have come to earth not seeking conquest but to save the planet from the same environmental calamity.

In Goff’s passionate monologue she rails against climate change deniers and those who “ignore science”, as well as the plethora of Neanderthals that see “minor inconveniences as assaults on their freedom” instead of as a way to save the planet. In our current age of Covid, this harangue by Goff sounds very familiar.

Peacemaker ponders Goff’s appeal, and it certainly seems like he’s going to be won over. As a viewer, I was rolling my eyes as I fully expected Peacemaker to follow the Hollywood blueprint and be fully redeemed through embracing the fight against climate change, a staple in storytelling in recent years.

But then, much to my surprise, Peacemaker shoots and kills Goff and uses a voice-controlled Peacemaker helmet being worn by Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), a black lesbian woman on his team, to use her as a missile that he launches into the giant caterpillar, killing it and ending the alien butterfly threat.

In the aftermath, Peacemaker helps Adebayo out of the caterpillar corpse, then picks up and carries his wounded, hard-nosed feminist compatriot Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and carries her to the hospital, but not before cursing out the Justice League.

At the hospital, as Peacemaker awaits word on Harcourt’s condition, he second-guesses himself and asks Adebayo, “Did I just kill the world?”

Adebayo responds, “Maybe you just gave us a chance to make our own choices instead of our bug overlords.”

She then asks him, “Why did you choose not to help? Because of your proto-fascist, libertarian idea of freedom?”

Peacemaker replies, “Because I knew they’d hurt you and the others if I did (help them).”

In the context of the show, which I often found amusing despite its incessant woke preening regarding the evils of white men and the glories of everybody else, Peacemaker’s ultimate heroism was a stunner.

Equally stunning was the inherent admission from creator James Gunn that all the woke preaching in the previous seven episodes was a pose. Peacemaker may have a “proto-fascist, libertarian idea of freedom”, but he wasn’t a bad guy or a racist or misogynist, it was the bevy of snarky minorities and women around him that projected racism and misogyny onto his buffoonish and brutish personality.

The bottom line was that it was Peacemaker, the questionable white guy, who not only saved the day, but revealed himself to be considerably stronger mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically, than all of the women and minorities who berated him for his barbarity throughout. And these women, like Adebayo and Harcourt, grew to love Peacemaker for who he is, and no longer hated him for what he wasn’t, and for the reflexive wokeness that he lacked.

In a way, this conclusion paints Peacemaker as the embodiment of the famous Jack Nicholson speech from the film ‘A Few Good Men’, where his Colonel Jessup declares, “You can’t handle the truth!...we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You?...You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know…and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall -- you need me on that wall.”

Peacemaker may be an idiot and a jackass, but the woke brigade on the show need him on that wall, as he is not only able, but willing, to do what needs to be done, and those that ridicule him for his prehistoric cultural politics are ultimately grateful for him because only he can keep them safe.

The irony of it all is that it’s uncouth, brutal men like Peacemaker, with their “libertarian ideas of freedom”, who do the nasty, dirty work that create the protected, safe spaces where the decadence of racial and feminist wokeness can be born and thrive.

‘Peacemaker’ isn’t a perfect series, and James Gunn’s writing and directing style can be grating at times, but to his and the show’s credit, Gunn cleverly turned the usual woke politics of entertainment on its head with ‘Peacemaker’s’ conclusion, which was a refreshing change in the suffocatingly uniform cultural politics of Hollywood.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

'The Book of Boba Fett' and the Future of Star Wars

‘The Book of Boba Fett’ may be a warning sign of Star Wars’ creative bankruptcy.

The Disney Plus series was a miserable misfire, as it relied on nostalgia to cover up its incompetent storytelling.

‘The Book of Boba Fett’, the once highly anticipated spin-off series to the stellar Disney Plus show ‘The Mandalorian’, limped to its first season finale on January 9. To say the show went out with a whimper would be a massive understatement.

When the series premiered back in December, I wrote that the show was bursting with potential but got off to a very slow start. Unfortunately, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ never morphed into a page turner as it got bogged down by atrocious writing, anemic acting, derivative direction, lethargic action sequences and second-rate sets, costumes and special effects.

Boba Fett has long been one of the most mysterious and beloved of Star Wars characters. Despite not appearing in the original film and only having four lines of dialogue in the entire original trilogy, Boba Fett became a fan favorite because he was such a mysterious and intriguing presence.

Boba sparked the imagination of Star Wars fans like few other characters could, but the series dedicated to telling his story has disappointed fans because their imaginations are no doubt more vibrant than the suits at Disney who saw Boba Fett as little more than a vehicle for flaccid fan service and a nostalgia delivery system.

It's an act of creative malpractice that ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ turned the bounty hunter Boba Fett from badass into boring, and considering that the character was the franchise’s most iconic and interesting untapped resource, wasting this storytelling opportunity is an egregious sin.  

The failure of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, and make no mistake the series is an abysmal failure, could be seen as merely a bump in the road, especially considering the dramatic success of its immediate predecessor ‘The Mandalorian’. But it could also be an ominous sign for the road ahead for the Star Wars franchise as a whole.

Despite hitting some major bumps in the road, like the cringe-worthy prequels and the woke-ified and feminized sequel trilogy, Star Wars has been a consistent cash cow for the 45 years it has been in existence. But you can only hit so many bumps before the wheels fall off the wagon, and in the wake of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ one wonders if the franchise has an especially bumpy ride ahead.

As of right now Star Wars has no movies lined up to hit the big screens until December of 2023, a full four years after ‘The Rise of Skywalker’, and even that date might be optimistic.

So, the only thing for the Star Wars faithful to watch for the next two years are a bevy of Star Wars tv series which could be awesome or they could be awful.

‘The Mandalorian’ season 3 is set to premier in the second half of 2022, and if it’s anything like the previous two seasons, it should be terrific. Although, one of the most dynamic characters from the series was Cara Dune, who was played by Gina Carano. Carano was fantastic in the role but after she was labelled a heretic by the woke inquisition, Disney kicked her to the curb, and it remains to be seen if the show can adequately replace her and keep its creative momentum.

Also expected to arrive on Disney Plus this year is ‘Andor’, a prequel to the Star Wars film ‘Rogue One’ which tells the backstory of Rebel spy Cassian Andor. The series stars Diego Luna, and the biggest question is if, like Pedro Pascal in ‘The Mandalorian’, Luna can carry a series, or if like Tamuera Morrison in ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, he lacks the required gravitas to captivate audiences for a full series.

After ‘Andor’, the series ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ is scheduled to premiere in the latter half of 2022. The show is set ten years after ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and features Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi Wan from the sequel films.

With McGregor starring, ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ has no concerns about whether its lead is compelling, but there are still some concerning red flags. For instance, the series was scheduled to shoot in July of 2020 but Disney put it on hold because the scripts were so bad. Considering the abysmal writing for ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ passed muster at Disney, one can only imagine how god-awful the ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ scripts must have been.

And when you consider that the paper-thin story of Boba Fett could only be stretched out into seven episodes, two of which ignored the lead character, and that ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ is set to be only six episodes, it’s easy to think that this series might be, like ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, nothing more than empty nostalgia.

Other series without set release dates which may or may not hit Disney Plus before December of 2023 are ‘The Acolyte’, ‘Ahsoka’, ‘Lando’, and ‘A Droid Story’.  

Star Wars has always attracted viewers and always made money, but with Disney exploiting the fans desire for all things Star Wars by expanding the franchise, the very real possibility of overexposure, market saturation, and creative bankruptcy, which will lead to either fan disinterest or outright rebellion, exists.

If Disney goes for quantity over quality with its Star Wars tv shows and movies, eventually the brand will lose its luster and, like an imploded death star, be left a useless, hulking shell of its former self, as well as a stark reminder of the consequences of bad decisions by leadership.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

HBO series The Gilded Age: A Review

The HBO series ‘The Gilded Age’ is fool’s gold for ‘Downton Abbey’ fans

The series eschews historical realism and undermines its 19th century drama by embracing 21st century wokeness.

The first episode of ‘The Gilded Age’, the long-awaited, highly anticipated new HBO series from ‘Downton Abbey’ creator Julian Fellowes, which dramatizes the ruling class clash between old money and the nouveau riche in New York in 1882, premiered on January 24.

‘The Gilded Age’ once again tries to follow Fellowes’ well-worn formula of mining the opulent lifestyles of the exorbitantly rich for some drawing room drama.

To be clear, ‘Downton Abbey’, which ran from 2010 to 2015, wasn’t some dramatic masterpiece, but it was a charmingly benign, escapist soap opera that hit at the right time with the right tone to capture the imagination of audiences.

Unfortunately, ‘The Gilded Age’ is a pale imitation of both ‘Downton Abbey’ and the literary works of Edith Wharton and Henry James, as the show lacks both Downton’s charm and Wharton and James’ dramatic specificity and dynamism, resulting in an exceedingly joyless and painfully pedestrian program.

The first episode of ‘The Gilded Age’ introduces the less-than-compelling protagonists in this New York based, 1880’s cultured clash.

From the old money van Rhijn house are high-priestess of the old guard hierarchy, matriarch Agnes (Christine Baranski), her spinster sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon), their niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson), and Agnes’ son Oscar (Blake Ritson).

Across the street, in a pretentiously large mansion, are the nouveau riche Russell’s. The patriarch, George (Morgan Specter), is an amoral railroad robber baron. His wife Bertha (Carrie Coon), is determined to climb the highly provincial and restrictive hierarchy of New York’s elite. Their adult son Larry (Harry Richardson) and teenage daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), are less ambitious and more open-hearted if not naïve.

You’d think the ‘The Gilded Age’ would focus fiercely on the clash between the van Rhijn and Roberts clans and everything they represent, but you’d be wrong.

Instead, a main thrust of the show is about Marian and a young black woman, Peggy Scott (Denee Benton), who serendipitously become friends on a railroad journey to New York from Pennsylvania.

 Downton Abbey’ received criticism for not being “diverse” enough, and Fellowes obviously wanted to pay his woke tax in full on ‘The Gilded Age’, so he scuttles the realism of the show by conjuring up this dramatically self-defeating, racially harmonious storyline to appease the diversity police.

Despite the fact that all Agnes talks or cares about is appearances and what other people think, when the black Peggy Scott comes into the van Rhijn house on 61st and Fifth Avenue, she is warmly welcomed by the family with soft-smiles and a job offer and not the historically accurate, racist and classist shrieks of outrage one would expect.

In one disjointed scene, Agnes scolds Marian for what people will say after she walked alone in the streets of New York with a suitcase, but then turns and smiles broadly at Peggy asking her to live with them and be her personal secretary.

This sort of preening progressivism and historical revisionism reared its head on ‘Downton Abbey’ too. On that show, which took place between 1912 and 1926, one of the butlers is discovered to be gay, and everyone responded in the most 21st century way by embracing him with open hearts and gentle smiles.  

In contrast, on the series ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, the terrific original British period parlor piece which ran from 1971 to 1975, a butler was discovered to be gay and after being aggressively shunned he ended up being hanged.

It should come as no surprise that there is, of course, a gay character on ‘The Gilded Age’ too, and I doubt he meets such a grisly end.

Julian Fellowes is not interested in any such uncouth ugliness, he just wants to show off his, and his character’s, woke world view as well as the lavish lifestyle of the aristocracy.

Besides the self-defeating woke nonsense, what is most striking about ‘The Gilded Age’ is the abysmal writing and acting.

Christine Baranski is a great actress, but as Agnes she is tasked with being like Maggie Smith from ‘Downton Abbey’, a matriarch who unleashes incisive, witty barbs with a knowing smirk and a gleam in her eye. But Baranski is no Maggie Smith, and her dialogue is delivered with a dead eyed dullness that is shocking to behold.

The problem with Louisa Jacobson, who happens to be Meryl Streep’s daughter, isn’t that she’s no Meryl Streep (who is?), but that she gives a thoroughly lifeless and utterly anemic performance as Marian. She is so lacking in magnetism she’s nearly translucent if not transparent.

Denee Benton as Peggy is just as listless, and when Peggy and Marian are on-screen together it feels like the universe may collapse into a black hole of anti-charisma.

Most alarming of all is Carrie Coon, an actress of great skill and talent, giving a miserable misfire of a performance as Bertha. Coon furiously flails, and ultimately falls into the abyss of nothingness that is non-specifics and bland generalities.

The entirety of the cast seems adrift in the same endless ocean of lifelessness.

Maybe the problem is that the actors all have to recite the most cliched and trite of dialogue imaginable. Fellowes’ script is so devoid of any original spark that it’s no wonder the cast seem to be sleep-walking through the festivities.

‘The Gilded Age’ runs for eight more episodes with new shows premiering every Monday to March 21. But the bottom line is, if you’re looking for another ‘Downton Abbey’ or even just a decent tv show, the cheap knock-off that is ‘The Gilded Age’ sure as hell isn’t it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Ozark: Season 4 (Part One) - A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

‘Ozark’ is back in all its brooding, blood-soaked, brilliant glory.

The dark Netflix series kicks off its final season with a binge-worthy cavalcade of crime and corruption.

The first part of the fourth and final season of ‘Ozark’, the hit Netflix show about a middle-American family that launders money for a murderous drug cartel, is finally here.

‘Ozark’, much like ‘The Sopranos’ before it, has split its final season into two parts, and premiered the first 7 episodes of its final season on January 21, with the last 7 coming out later this year.

When ‘Ozark’ first appeared back in 2017, I had little faith it would be a worthwhile watch. The premise, a regular guy getting caught up in the drug trade, seemed derivative, and its star, Jason Bateman, while being a terrific comedic actor, didn’t strike me as having the chops to carry a dark drama.

After watching the first episode of season one, it quickly became apparent that I was fantastically wrong. Yes, ‘Ozark’ certainly owes a debt to ‘Breaking Bad’, as it borrows the “regular guy gets into the drug business” blueprint, but it’s no cheap ‘Breaking Bad’ knock-off. It’s an original, captivating, stylish series that boasts scintillating performances and searing social commentary.

Just to remind you, the show follows the trials and tribulations of accountant Marty Byrde (Bateman), a middle-aged, middle-American accountant who happens to be a money launderer extraordinaire.

When Marty gets in too deep with the Navarro drug cartel, he and his wife Wendy, teenage daughter Charlotte and son Jonah, leave Chicago for the backwaters of the Ozarks, where the whole family must navigate their internecine conflicts while also dealing with the perils of drug lords and law enforcement.  

The show’s cast is tremendous, but it’s Jason Bateman as Marty Byrde that is the straw that stirs the drink. Bateman’s Marty is a masterwork of skilled, subtle and intricate acting.

Marty is a problem-solver, and while it’s his original sin that sets the story in motion, he’s now blessed/cursed to be surrounded by a coterie of combustible women who seem to cause all his problems.

For example, there’s Marty’s wife, Wendy, gloriously played by Laura Linney in full Lady Macbeth mode, who is a ferociously ambitious sort who hides her ruthless nature behind her smiling mom exterior. Wendy’s reach often exceeds her grasp and leaves the whole family in danger, but it’s Marty who must be the calm and cool voice of reason that has to clean up her mess.

Then there’s spitfire Ruth Langmore, Marty’s protégé, phenomenally portrayed by two-time Emmy winner Julia Garner. Ruth is a firebrand, vicious, volcanic yet vulnerable. When Ruth’s deep-seated wound is sufficiently agitated and she unleashes her existential fury, she’s a diabolical dervish that can destroy everything and everyone in her orbit, including Ruth herself.

And then there’s the queen of the Redneck Riviera, Darlene Snell, the local drug boss and all-around low-rent lunatic. Darlene (fiercely portrayed by Lisa Emery) seems like she could be the in-bred sister of the backwater rapists in ‘Deliverance’, and her shotgun-toting, mama bear energy, is as unnerving as she is relentless.

It’s a stroke of cultural/political sub-textural genius that the women of ‘Ozark’ are, almost universally, the catalysts of the story and are also consistently irrational, incorrigible and violently narcissistic. They are equally as diabolical and depraved as any of the men, if not more so. And it always falls on Marty, flaws and all, to put the pieces back together after one of these witches casts a wayward spell.

Too often nowadays movies and tv shows want to empower women without having them grapple with the insidious shadow that comes with power. ‘Ozark’ though, empowers women, but also lets them wallow, flail and drown in the same deep, dark waters that engulf men when they venture too far from shore, and it’s utterly delicious to watch.

Another great thing about the show is that it’s persistently a brooding, blood-soaked meta-commentary on life among the ruins of an American empire in steep decline.

For example, the stench of desperation and the rot of corruption, both personal and institutional, is absolutely everywhere.

The Byrdes start out trying to do the right thing, but their moral and ethical corruption spreads like a virus, and contaminates everyone with which they come into contact, leaving a trail of broken bodies and spirits in their wake.

Also corrupt are every law enforcement agency, both local and federal, every politician, and every corporation that shows their ugly head and bare their teeth in the Byrdes direction.

Another stroke of creative genius was having the Byrdes get into the riverboat casino business, as ‘Ozark’ is a running commentary on the absurdity of our casino capitalist system, where the little people are cannon-fodder, the rigged shell game is never ending, the money is made up out of thin air, and nothing is built on solid ground.

As an artistic endeavor, ‘Ozark’ is fantastically well-crafted. Creators Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams, as well as season four directors Andrew Bernstein (one of the very best directors in television), Alik Sakharov, and Robin Wright (the famed actress), consistently set the menacing mood with ominous atmospherics using a stellar score and masterfully-executed cinematography.

Ultimately, despite some minor plot missteps I felt didn’t work, the first part of season four proves ‘Ozark’ is as good as it gets on television. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s remarkably compelling and thoroughly satisfying. I’ll be sad to see the series go, but I’m glad it’s here for a little while longer.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

Peacemaker: Review of First Three Episodes

***THIS IS A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***

James Gunn’s HBO superhero series ‘Peacemaker’ isn’t great, but it’s good enough.

DC Comic’s show is a mixed bag, but it’s elevated by the relentless effort of star John Cena.

Peacemaker is the new DC Comics superhero series for HBO Max which premiered its first three episodes on January 13, with new episodes being released every Thursday until February 17.  

The show, which stars John Cena and is written and directed by the controversial James Gunn, is a spin-off from Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie from last summer.  

Peacemaker is DC’s first foray into prestige tv, and it’s in direct contrast to Marvel’s bevy of family-friendly Disney Plus tv shows in that it is decidedly raunchy, racy, irreverent and R-rated.

You see, Peacemaker the superhero isn’t the pretty poster boy for perfect patriotism like Marvel’s Captain America, no, he’s more like Captain America’s unbridled shadow. At best, Peacemaker is a morally ambiguous, sociopathic, white trash, trailer park superhero who demands the Dove of Peace be branded on all his weapons and who “loves peace so much he doesn’t care how many men, women, and children he has to kill to get it”…which sounds like something that should be chiseled in stone above the entrance to the Pentagon.

Of course, that’s what makes Peacemaker an interesting character is that while he is a lovable lunkhead, he’s also a walking, talking monument to America’s unadulterated adolescence and unabashed addiction to militarism, colonialism and fascism.

When the series opens, Peacemaker is given a clean bill of health after recovering from the grievous wounds that he received in The Suicide Squad. Upon his release from the hospital, he’s supposed to go back to prison to serve his life sentence, but instead gets co-opted by a “black ops” squad to assassinate some bad people under the moniker of “Project Butterfly”.

The very best thing about Peacemaker is unquestionably John Cena. I remember the first time I saw John Cena act it was in the 2015 Amy Schumer comedy Trainwreck. Cena had a small role in the film but stole every scene in which he appeared. The movie was awful but he was the best thing in it. He did the same thing in last summer’s The Suicide Squad, nearly stealing the whole movie.

What makes Cena so compelling is that he obviously isn’t a natural comedian, but he is absolutely fearless if not shameless, and works relentlessly hard to get a laugh, which is why he wins over audiences.

Admittedly, at times Cena’s act can wear a bit thin, but overall, it does work well on Peacemaker. Cena, with his cartoonish, comic book, pro wrestler’s body, comes across as a charismatic, magnetic and endearingly goofy on-screen presence.

The other driving force on Peacemaker is writer/director James Gunn. Gunn has grown a cult following for his work on the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and the signature bawdy banter he writes for his projects.

A few years ago, Gunn got into hot water when old tweets surfaced where he made some offensive rape and pedophilia jokes on Twitter. Not surprisingly considering our hyper-sensitive era which only grows more sensitive with every passing day, Disney fired him from future Guardians of the Galaxy movies because of his bad jokes. Incredibly, after actors and media outlets pushed back against Disney’s Gunn cancellation, the studio relented and brought him back into the Guardians of the Galaxy fold.

But while he was in Disney/Marvel purgatory he signed on with DC and Warner Bros. to make The Suicide Squad and now the spin-off Peacemaker.

Gunn’s work is an acquired taste and to be frank, I’m not exactly sure I’ve acquired it just yet. I liked his The Suicide Squad (2021) considerably more than the dreadful original Suicide Squad (2016), but that isn’t saying much.

I think what sort of grates me in regard to Gunn is that while he may pose as a rebellious edge lord, at his core he’s a kiss-ass sycophant who lacks the testicular fortitude to speak truth in the House of the Woke.

For instance, in typical flaccid fashion, on Peacemaker every white, male character is either an imbecile, a cuckold or an outright Nazi. How original.

According to Gunn, the second lead on the show is the character Leota (a poorly cast Danielle Brooks), who is, of course, a black lesbian, for no apparent reason other than blatant woke tokenism. How edgy.

To be fair, Gunn does at least occasionally get a bit clever with the woke stuff, like when he has hard-nosed beauty Emilia Harcourt (an excellent Jennifer Holland) give a passionate monologue to Peacemaker about how sick and tired she is of the oppressive and aggressive sexism of men in the world, and then cuts to a naked woman as Peacemaker has aggressive sex with her. But even that bit of self-awareness only results in highlighting Gunn’s overall weak-kneed woke acquiescence on the show.

Other issues are much more obvious, such as the action sequences being less than stellar and the production value being painfully thin.

But with that said, and even though the show is more amusing than laugh out loud funny, thanks to John Cena I still found Peacemaker compelling and entertaining enough that I will watch the rest of the series over the next month as the final five episodes become available.

Thus far the show isn’t anywhere near as good as say, The Boys, the more profound and less pubescently profane, brilliant superhero series on Amazon, but it is good enough.

The bottom line is that if you’re looking for some rather mindless, mildly amusing, bawdy and base, family unfriendly superhero fun featuring John Cena, then Peacemaker is definitely for you.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

A Very British Scandal: A Review

BBC’s ‘A Very British Scandal’ is a frigid, flaccid and frustrating affair

The mini-series about the scandalous divorce between the Duke and Duchess of Argyll doesn’t trust its audience to learn the proper lessons from its tale of aristocratic lust gone wrong.

The new BBC mini-series, A Very British Scandal, recounts the tumultuous marriage of the Duke of Argyll, Ian Campbell, and his third wife, Margaret Whigham, and their very public and seedy divorce in 1963.

The scandalous part of this very British story is that during the divorce proceedings, Ian accused Margaret of adultery and had the pictures to prove it. Most notable of these saucy photos showed Margaret performing oral sex on a mysterious ‘headless man’, so dubbed because his head was not visible in the picture.

Margaret ‘The Dirty Duchess’ giving a blow job to a “headless-man” sounds like either the strangest horror movie porn imaginable or the wet dream of a tabloid headline writer, but this very British scandal is all too true.

A Very British Scandal is an often frustrating, uneven, mixed bag of a drama. It stars Claire Foy, best known for her role as Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown, as Margaret, the rich and beautiful socialite who claims to “love sex” and be “very good at it”. Margaret is sort of like a 1950’s Kardashian as she is a socialite celebrity with a bevy of paparazzi trailing her every move.

After Margaret divorces her first husband, she meets the caddish Captain Ian Campbell (Paul Bettany), the newly anointed Duke of Argyll, who is married to his second wife and apparently actively looking for his third.

Foy is an appealing actress, but as beautiful as she is, she seems somewhat miscast as the “highly sexed woman” Margaret. Foy is a rather rigid and frigid on-screen presence, and therefore is not a comfortable fit as the libidinous Margaret.

Like Foy, Bettany too is a skilled actor, but doesn’t quite work as Ian. While Bettany certainly looks like an often crazy and lazy lord, he does not strike one as much of a lothario.

Despite its flaws, what is appealing about A Very British Scandal is that, at first anyway, it appears to be more interested in telling a semblance of the truth rather than pandering to its lesser cultural political instincts.

For example, neither Margaret nor Ian come across as the good guy in this tale of woe. In fact, the show most often seems like a case of two horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

Margaret is a shameless, near-compulsive liar and her non-sexual sins are substantially more egregious than her alleged sexual ones. For instance, she forges love letters to Ian’s ex-wife and sends them to Ian, forcing him to doubt the paternity of his children. She also tries to run a scam where she would buy a baby (she’s incapable of carrying a child after an accident) and claim it’s her and Ian’s and thus an heir to the Duke of Argyll title. And then there’s the time she publicly accused her step-mother of having an affair with Ian…thus basically stressing her already ill father to death.

Ian is a real piece of work too. At best he’s a lazy aristocratic womanizer suffering from WWII prison camp related PTSD. At worst, he’s an erratic, volatile, violent, abusive, alcoholic, amphetamine-addicted sociopath. Ian is like a vampire who sinks his teeth into women and drains them of their life force and their bank accounts of any money.  

Like I said, these are two horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

There is no hero here and no noble victim, just two entitled upper-class twits trying to entertain themselves while their worthless lives slowly pass.

Unfortunately, after spending its three-hour run time allowing its audience to see the ugly and unvarnished truth about its subjects, A Very British Scandal makes the most curious of decisions when concluding.

After the action ended a post-script popped up on-screen that set out to remove all agency from the audience by informing them what they were supposed to think about the preceding drama.

The ham-handed post-script tells viewers that what they just witnessed was the “first time a woman was publicly shamed by the UK mass media”. Oh, is that what it was?

It also informs the viewer that the dastardly Duke of Argyll married an American heiress five months after the divorce, and just to prove in contrast how noble Margaret truly was, it also tells the audience that she never revealed the name of the “headless” man she sexually serviced.

It’s utterly pathetic that the producers of this show felt they needed to hammer the audience over the head with the “proper” conclusions they were supposed to reach. God forbid anyone walk away from this series without understanding that what it’s really all about is feminist victimhood and the suffocating power of the patriarchy.

If you thought this was maybe a story about two hurt and wounded people hurting and wounding each other because they were raised in a vapid and corrupted aristocracy devoid of any substance, purpose, meaning, or moral and ethical grounding, then the producers want you to know that you’re not only wrong but bad.

By so shamelessly not trusting their audience and their own storytelling ability, the producers of A Very British Scandal not only undermined the power of their drama but also neutered their own credibility.

A Very British Scandal is at best a forgettable mediocrity, and the people who made it would be wise to worry more about putting out a quality product than about insulting their viewers by trying to control the conclusions they reach.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Book of Boba Fett -Episode One Initial Reaction

‘The Book of Boba Fett’ series is bursting with potential but is off to a very slow start.

The new Disney Plus show can go either way after its uneven first episode is a mixed-bag of flashbacks and mediocre fight sequences.

This article contains minor spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett.

In the wake of the critically and commercially successful Star Wars series The Mandalorian, streaming service Disney Plus has gone back to the well with the new spin-off series, The Book of Boba Fett.

Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who famously bagged Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, is a character that has long been adored by Star Wars fans, and when he made his surprising return in The Mandalorian (surprising because he had seemingly died in Return of the Jedi), it was met with raucous applause from the Star Wars faithful.

Now Boba is no longer a background or supporting player, his name is on the marquee, but after watching the somewhat uneven first episode of The Book of Boba Fett, it’s too soon to tell if the infamous bounty hunter has the star power to hold audience’s attention over the course of a seven-episode series.

The Book of Boba Fett, which stars Temuera Morrison as Fett and Ming-Na Wen as Fennec Shand, a mercenary and assassin, premiered its first episode on Wednesday December 28, and will release a new episode for the next six Wednesdays, for a total of seven in all.  

The opening episode, written by Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man and creator of The Mandalorian) and directed by Robert Rodriguez, is titled ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, and it uses flashbacks to show some of Boba Fett’s strange journey after he went into the Sarlacc’s mouth on Tattooine in Return of the Jedi, up to the present day where he is a crime boss sitting on Jabba the Hutt’s old throne.

Fett’s history deeply informs his present, and so the flashbacks make complete narrative sense, but that said, they also slow down the pace of the program, leaving it at times on the precipice of tedium.

Also hampering the show, at least thus far, are some pretty sub-par action sequences. One fight with Boba Fett and Fennec Shand against a group of anonymous ninja assassins on the streets of Mos Espa, is very poorly choreographed and shot, so much so that it looks amateurish.

Although in contrast, there is a solid sand battle between Boba Fett and a very cool looking sand beast in one of the many flashbacks. Hopefully this sequence, and not the predictable and dull fight in Mos Espa, is a preview of the type of action we can expect in the coming episodes.

The visuals of the show also leave something to be desired, as the cinematography of the first episode is painfully rudimentary, and lacks imagination or cinematic flair.

As for the cast, again, thus far it could go either way. Morrison is not a particularly compelling screen presence, and neither is Ming-Na Wen, but there’s always the possibility that they find their sea legs and grow into their characters as the series continues.

As the show moves forward, there are some potentially intriguing storylines. For example, the mayor of Mos Espa refuses to pay tribute to Boba, and his representative even delivers an ominous threat to the crime boss, something which should lead to some fireworks down the road.

Another somewhat intriguing angle in the story is that while Boba Fett is obviously no shrinking violet as a crime lord, he also doesn’t want to be an arrogant and brutal tyrant like Jabba the Hutt.

For instance, Boba demands he walk around “on his own two feet” as he patrols the city of Mos Espa, because unlike Jabba he won’t be “carried around like a useless noble”. He follows that up with, “Jabba ruled with fear. I intend to rule with respect.”

Fett is no Jabba, he’s a working man’s crime boss. And he isn’t the cold-blooded bounty hunter of the past either, he is more forgiving. For example, he pardons two of Jabba’s bodyguards because they were loyal, and by sparing their lives they become loyal to him.

That said, Boba Fett still has the killer instinct when he needs to, like when he gloriously obliterates one of the ninja assassins who ambush him on the streets of Mos Espa in the best shot of the show so far.

This conflict within Boba Fett, and between Boba Fett and the world, has a great deal of dramatic and narrative promise, but the first episode leaves me uncertain as to whether this promise can ever be fulfilled.

I have to say, I felt the same way about The Mandalorian at first too. And the reason I am so cautious in my criticism of The Book of Boba Fett is because The Mandalorian got better and better with each episode, and I ended up absolutely loving the series even though I’m not much of a Star Wars aficionado.

Ultimately, after just one episode The Book of Boba Fett is too much of a mixed-bag and too uneven to make any judgements on whether the overall series will be worthwhile or not. Hopefully, this flawed series opener is the bottom and everything goes up from here.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Being the Ricardos: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

Being the Ricardos, the Aaron Sorkin written and directed bio-pic that attempts to tell the tale of a very tumultuous week in the life of iconic comedienne Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz Jr., has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The film itself, which made its streaming premiere on Amazon on Tuesday December 21st, is a rather pedestrian affair that suffers from an unsound narrative structure, tonal inconsistencies and a painfully poor script.

Sorkin’s writing style, which can best be describes as ‘walking, talking and exposition’, is an acquired taste, one which I have yet to acquire. I find his dialogue to be insufferable and his storytelling ability flaccid.

Making matters worse is that Sorkin’s quirky writing desperately needs a master craftsman director to make it work, like David Fincher on The Social Network, but Sorkin is a hack behind the camera and thus Being the Ricardos falls flat on its phony face.

The movie feels like a very special episode of a bad sitcom about a good sitcom. Adding to the lack of genuine drama is the fact that every sentient being with half a brain in their heads with a minimal relationship to the history of television knows exactly how the story ends. All of the drama is therefore devoid of any power.

But the reason Being the Ricardos is making headlines is not because it’s a mindless and middling affair. No, the film is getting attention because it’s mired in the most manufactured of controversies.  

Apparently the film committed the most unforgivable of sins by casting Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem as Arnaz opposite Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman as Lucy. Why is Bardem playing Desi Arnaz a problem? Well, Bardem is a Spaniard and Arnaz a Cuban, which somehow violates some sacred woke law of diversity, inclusion and representation. To quote Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, “The Horror. The Horror.”

One know-nothing guardian of the grievance culture complained that Bardem was, like his Spanish ancestors, being a “colonizer” by playing the Cuban Arnaz.

“They (the Spanish) came in and erased who we (Latinos) were, and I can’t help but feel the same way when Bardem gets roles meant to share the Latinx experience.”

That bit of hysterical hyperbole overlooks the fact that many Hispanic and Latino families proudly identify not just with their national origins but with their distant Spanish roots out of class-consciousness, and that Desi’s wealthy, upper-class Cuban family most likely did too.

Director Sorkin tried to defend his casting of Bardem, saying, “it’s heartbreaking and a little chilling to see members of the artistic community resegregating ourselves.”

Considering Sorkin’s long-time, mealy-mouthed complicity with Hollywood’s diversity-obsessed woke warriors more interested in ‘representation’ than in artistry or quality, that statement is the equivalent of someone who made it rain outside complaining about the weather.

Another amusing thing about this contrived controversy is that no one is making a stink about Nicole Kidman, an Aussie non-comedienne, playing the most iconic American comedienne of all time, Lucille Ball. OK, Kidman may have technically been born in Hawaii, but to Australian parents only there on student visas. I’ve heard her ‘g’day mate’ accent and I bet she likes cricket, wombats, and ‘Men at Work’ too. She’s not a real American.

No one ever cares when British or Australian actors play Americans, and do so with their tone deaf, nasally attempts at an American accent. For instance, why isn’t there an uproar over Brit Tom Holland playing all-American hero Spider-Man, whose friendly neighborhood is Queens, New York? Are there no actors from Queens available?

These woke fools bitching about Bardem’s Spanish ancestry also rarely care when British actors of color, like Daniel Kaluuya, play African-Americans, like he did in Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.

The truth is, American actors of all colors and ethnicities miss out when British, Irish, Canadian and Australian actors play American roles. This injustice must be stopped!

Obviously, I’m joking. When casting, focusing on the specificity of an actor’s national background rather than their talent and skill is irrational and imbecilic and runs completely counter to the art and craft of acting.

As the ever-eloquent Bardem astutely pointed out in a Hollywood Reporter article,

“I’m an actor, and that’s what I do for a living: try to be people that I’m not. What do we do with Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone? What do we do with Margaret Thatcher played by Meryl Streep? Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln?...if we want to open that can of worms, let’s open it for everyone…we should all start not allowing anybody to play Hamlet unless they were born in Denmark.”

Bardem is a great actor, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nominated performance as, ironically enough, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in the Julian Schnabel’s As Night Falls (2000).

His being attacked for his improper ethnic or national background is, unfortunately, something that is becoming common place in Hollywood when it comes to casting Latino roles.

For example, In the Heights shamelessly marketed itself as a celebration of diversity as its Asian director (John Chu), Latino writer (Lin Manuel-Miranda) and mostly Latino cast told the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. But the movie came under fire from the woke brigade for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was sold as the righting of a historical wrong as, unlike the 1961 original movie, it cast only Latinos in Latino roles. Some still complained though that the lead role, Maria, was played by a woman of Columbian descent instead of a Puerto Rican.

The funny thing about this Being the Ricardos casting controversy is that Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, despite not being Cuban or American respectively, and despite the vacuous script and dreadful direction guiding them, are the two best things in this awful movie.

Thankfully, neither actor tries to do an impersonation of their famous character. Instead they attempt to create actual human beings and not caricatures. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s script does not support them in this endeavor, but Kidman and Bardem should at least be recognized for their honest attempt, no matter how far they fall short.

The lessons that needs to be learned from Being the Ricardos and the surrounding casting contrvoersy are that, one - Aaron Sorkin is a truly terrible director. And two, within reason, we just need to let actors actually, you know, act…and we should leave the social justice preening for the college campus and the New York Times. Hollywood, its movies, its audiences, and the art of acting, would be much better served if we did.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 54 - Dopesick

On this combustible episode, Barry and I talk about the Barry Levinson produced Hulu mini-series Dopesick, which examines the opioid epidemic sparked by Purdue Pharma's alleged wonder drug Oxycontin. Topics discussed include Michael Keaton's brilliance, Purdue Pharma's villainy, the scourge of government and corporate corruption and the hell that is addiction. Love me or loathe me, if you’ve ever wanted the briefest of glimpses into the heart of darkness beating within me...listen to this episode, particularly the last ten minutes.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 54 - Dopesick

Thanks for listening!

©2021

'And Just Like That...' - I Threw Up in My Mouth.

Old HBO warhorse Sex in the City is back with the new show ‘And Just Like That…’, which is devoutly committed to “inclusivity” and also apparently to being dreadful.  

The new show claims it eschews tokenism as it tries to make amends for its original sin of whiteness, ‘And Just Like That…’ I threw up in my mouth.

The comedy/drama Sex and the City, which told the tale of Carrie Bradshaw and her three friends Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte as they navigated life, love and lust in New York City, was one of HBO’s most iconic shows when it ran from 1998 to 2004.

Now, seventeen years after the original went off the air, and after two abysmal feature films, Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), the sassy strumpets are back with a new series on HBO titled, And Just Like That…

Sex and the City was wildly popular with a very particular brand of oblivious, feminist, upper-middle class aspiring white women.

The four whores of the apocalypse, the bright and allegedly beautiful Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), the over-sexed Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the feminist firebrand Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and the uptight Charlotte (Kristen Davis), became the archetypes that these clueless white women latched on to and desperately tried to emulate.

I disliked Sex and the City first and foremost because of its egregious writing, decrepit direction and deplorable acting. But what made the show truly insidious as a pop culture phenomenon was that it inspired a whole generation of Karens-in-waiting to embrace narcissistic feminism and vapid consumerism. It was unadulterated capitalism porn meant to deceive gullible women into craving clothes they didn’t need at prices they couldn’t afford in order to purchase a false feeling of fulfillment and freedom. It was the feminist tv version of “slavery is freedom”.

And despite ostensibly being a comedy, it was never even remotely funny. It was basically an absurd and philosophically obscene soap opera about four homely, horny harlots who had more money than sense, and when the show faded from the spotlight the world was better for it.

Although Sex and the City was never funny, a funny thing happened to it after it finished its run, namely that the woke court of political correctness deemed it to be “problematic” for its relentless whiteness and lack of diversity.

The stars of the show don’t even contest this charge, as Cynthia Nixon said that the lack of diversity on Sex and the City was “the Achilles heel of the show…”

It was in this spirit of self-flagellating that And Just Like That…was born. The show’s sole purpose being to wash away Sex and the City’s sin of whiteness by embracing “inclusivity”…and also to make everybody involved lots of money.

Star and producer Sarah Jessica Parker said she is committed to And Just Like That… being ‘inclusive’, but without resorting to “tokenism”. Yeah, sure.

After watching the first two episodes which premiered on HBO Max on Thursday, I can report that And Just Like That… is such a brazen testament to tokenism, and strains so hard to be vacuously diverse, it nearly soils its lacy undergarments.

And Just Like That… returns all of the Sex and the City regulars…all except for Samantha, as Kim Cattrall basically declared there’s no amount of money that would make her work with Sarah Jessica Parker ever again. Respect.

But in order to appease the woke gods of inclusivity, tokens are dispersed throughout to check boxes and darken the show’s color palette.

The tokens thus far are, Lisa Todd Wexley, a fabulous black mom and friend to Charlotte. Dr. Nya Wallace, a black college professor who Miranda befriends. And finally, Che Diaz, who is a non-binary, queer, Latinx comedian who hosts a podcast with Carrie.

These one-dimensional minorities are such obvious tokens you could use them to pay for a ride on the 4 train to Union Square to take part in a Black Lives Matter protest or to buy a custom-made pussy hat.

And Just Like That… is also a monument to the ravages of age. Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are no longer sexy and sassy, but are now a trio of taut-faced, time-worn tarts. As they say down on the farm, these botoxed brauds look ‘rode hard and put up wet’.

Father Time is undefeated and proof of that is that Carrie now looks like one of the high-priced leather hand bags that she hoards, Miranda looks like she wandered in from the set of The Night of the Living Dead and Charlotte’s face is so medically altered she bears a striking resemblance to the Joker.

There’s also not a single laugh to be found in this shameless money grab, as the writing is as stale as a month-old bagel and the performances as wooden as a cigar store Indian.

The one thing I did find amusing though is how these allegedly strong female characters have become such spineless, eager to please, groveling cowards.

In the 90’s they all strutted their stuff and didn’t care what people thought. Now, these supposedly free-thinking, free-spirited feminist characters (and the actors who play them) are so fearful they might offend, they reflexively comply and conform, instinctively never challenging but rather genuflecting to the suffocating and irrational restrictions placed upon them by woke culture.

In this way, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte perfectly reflect their now middle-aged, Hillary and Kamala loving, upper-middle class female fans who are just as compliant, just as conformist and just as cowardly, and who, no doubt, are waiting to be told if And Just Like That… is woke enough and if they’re allowed to like it.

I don’t know if the show is woke-approved, but I do know it’s devoid of anything even mildly interesting or entertaining and has absolutely no redeeming qualities to it. Same as it ever was.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

Hawkeye: A Review - of the First Two Episodes

Marvel’s new series Hawkeye, at least so far, not only avoids virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s actually pretty funny.

The show has its flaws, but it’s a breath of fresh air from Marvel, which has in recent years been more interested in preaching than entertaining.

In the wake of Marvel’s miraculous run of movies which began with Iron Man in 2008 and culminated with Endgame in 2019, Disney’s money-making superhero division has been searching for a creative way forward with their storytelling in both film and television.

That search has usually resulted in pathetic woke pandering and virtue signaling on social issues, or mind-time-world bending extravagancies, or an unwieldy combination of both.

For example, Black Widow boasted a shamelessly shallow girl power, patriarchy-busting narrative and Falcon and the Winter Soldier pathetically pandered on racism, both with lackluster results.

WandaVision and Loki, on the other hand, toyed with audience’s minds as they bent time and storylines, thankfully they were at least interesting.

And finally, What if? and Eternals both went all in on virtue signaling and off-world in terms of time bending, and ended up being excruciatingly laborious.   

Now with the new six-episode mini-series Hawkeye – the first two episodes of which began streaming on Disney Plus on Wednesday with new episodes released every week for the next month, Marvel is trying a somewhat different approach.

After watching the first two episodes of Hawkeye I can report that thus far, thankfully, wokeness has not overtly reared its ugly head and no gods or time - bending wizards have showed up to mess with reality either.

In fact, Hawkeye is the most-grounded, most “realistic” and most authentic piece of storytelling in recent Marvel history, which isn’t a high bar to reach but at least they reached it.

Hawkeye tells the story of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye – the family man and badass superhero archer from the Avenger’s movies, and Kate Bishop, a Hawkeye wannabe who stumbles into trouble. They both end up working together after the costume of the vigilante Ronin turns up and falls into the wrong hands.

The series, or at least the first two episodes of the series, is certainly flawed, but it’s also unique and interesting because at its core it’s really a droll comedy wrapped in the superhero cloak of an action-mystery.

Marvel has always had an undercurrent of comedy in their films, but that was always more a function of the impeccable comedic timing of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and the glorious obliviousness of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, than anything else.

Hawkeye though is legitimately and genuinely funny in the most subtle, self-ware, un-Marvel way.  

For instance, the series opens with Clint/Hawkeye in New York City for the Christmas season. As a treat, one that he quickly regrets, Clint brings his kids to see the big Broadway musical hit Rogers – which is based on Captain America Steve Rogers and the Avenger’s defense of New York, of which Hawkeye was a vital part.

The scenes of the musical are hysterical, like something out of The Simpsons’ (another Disney property) famous Planet of the Apes Musical starring Troy McClure, not just because they’re so dreadful, but also because they’re so horrifyingly believable.

This heinously egregious Captain America musical is a gloriously savage but subtle dig at the vapid and vacuous culture that made the insidious and insipid awfulness of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton a landmark achievement and rabid sensation.

Watching the theater muffin versions of the Avengers sing “Hulk…SMASH!” and “I could do this all day” literally made me laugh out loud, most especially because the corporate pimps at Disney are bound to produce either that exact same show or one frighteningly similar to it. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the painful image of say U2, who once actually wrote the score for a disastrous Broadway superhero musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, teaming with establishment darling and abysmal, talentless shill Lin Manuel-Miranda to make some corporate-friendly musical like Rogers: The Musical.

Other scenes, like the one where Clint and Kate see people dressed as superheroes and Kate opines on the superhero Hawkeye’s failure to resonate with the broader culture being a function of branding issues and poor marketing, or when Hawkeye himself goes to a LARP (live action role play) event, are Marvel making fun of Marvel to the most Marvel-ous degree.

The main reason for Hawkeye’s success though is that its stars, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Hailee Stanfield as Kate Bishop, are terrific in their roles.

Renner’s gruff, dead-pan delivery is deliriously good, and the luminous Stanfield is absolutely masterful with her comedic timing as well, like when she says the name of the Track Suit Mafia is “a little too on the nose.”

In Hawkeye, Renner and Stanfield are like some bizarro-world, asexual, Marvel version of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn…if Grant and Hepburn had to fight and shoot arrows at bad guys.

To be sure, Hawkeye has flaws. For instance, it can be a little slow at times and the few action sequences featured so far are not very noteworthy.

But with that said, I found myself pleased to see Marvel trying something new that didn’t involve overt woke preening and aggressive virtue signaling.

It would appear from the first two episodes that Marvel has given us a little early Christmas present this year, as the subtle, self-aware comedy on display in Hawkeye won’t work in too many other projects going forward for Marvel, but fortunately it does work well here.

We will see where the series goes from here, but thus far, I’m grateful that Hawkeye appears to be a little piece of harmless holiday fun. Let’s hope it stays that way.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Succession is Glorious Fun, but the Oligarchical Media Empire it Dramatizes is a Harsh Reality

HBO’s ‘Succession’ is a glorious guilty pleasure but the oligarchical family run media empire it dramatizes is actually a horrifying and harsh reality.

Four families control the majority of American media, and the Roy family of ‘Succession’ is an entertaining and clever amalgam of the dysfunction of them all.

Succession, HBO’s deliriously addictive and seductive soap opera that follows the travails of the Roy family dynasty and their media and business empire, is back in full swing for its highly anticipated third season.

The show is obviously a work of fiction, but the blueprint of the story is frighteningly familiar to anyone paying attention to our ever-consolidating media landscape lorded over by an oligarchy of just four families.

If you’ve not seen it, Succession is a sort of Shakespearean stew of palace intrigue set in the uber-wealthy and powerful world of monopolized media’s master class. It’s kind of what you’d get if you tossed King Lear, Richard III, Macbeth and Hamlet into a witch’s brew with the Murdoch, Redstone, Cox and Roberts families that control most of America’s media market.

The Roy family of Succession, with patriarch Logan and sons Kendall, Roman and Connor and daughter Siobhan, is most often likened to the media mogul Murdoch family.

The 80-year-old Logan, played with scowling ferocity by the inimitable Bryan Cox, is reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch’s combative and domineering leadership of NewsCorp. Logan’s sprawling media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo and its conservative cable news channels certainly bear a resemblance to the star-spangled simp-fest of Fox News.

Logan’s dueling sons Kendall, exquisitely portrayed by Jeremy Strong, and Roman, a fantastic Kieran Culkin, also bear some similarities to Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, as does their internecine warfare to find favor with, or advantage over, their powerful father.

The scandal that befalls Waystar RoyCo, with accusations of sexual misconduct and the like, is also eerily familiar to the tawdry accusations that knee-capped Fox News and its leader Roger Ailes and star Bill O’Reilly.

But the Murdochs aren’t the only family dynasty running a media empire for Succession to emulate. Another is the Redstone family, long led by Sumner Redstone, who died in 2020.

Sumner’s media empire of Viacom/CBS/Paramount certainly resembled Waystar, and his personal life is akin to Logan Roy’s too, as it’s littered with adultery, charges of cruelty and failed relationships with women.

The most striking resemblance though between Logan Roy and Sumner Redstone is that they both have/had ambitious daughters. Logan’s daughter, Siobhan, gloriously portrayed by the beguiling Sarah Snook, is making a calculated bid for the family throne, similar to Sumner’s daughter Shari, who battled with her father over control of the family business and ultimately took over his vast empire after his death.

Sumner’s son, Brent, who in Roy-esque fashion sued his father and sister Shari, and was eventually bought out after he was removed from the board of Viacom’s parent company National Amusements.

Besides the Murdochs and the Redstones, the Cox and Roberts families are also Succession-like dynasties whose family business is media empire.

Cox Enterprises, with its major subsidiaries Cox Communications and Cox Media Group, is run by James Cox Kennedy, grandson of the company’s founder, James M. Cox, a two-time Governor of Ohio.

Kennedy’s earthy mother, Barbara Cox Anthony, and his cosmopolitan aunt, Anna Cox Chambers, long had controlling intertest of the family empire in spite of their love/hate, very distant relationship, which seems eerily similar to Logan Roy’s relationship with his estranged brother Ewan Roy.

Kennedy eventually took over the massive company from his aunt at the age of 41, and while the aristocratic Cox family isn’t as prone to paparazzi or media prying as the Redstones and Murdochs, they’re just as powerful.

The same is true of the Roberts family, which founded and runs mammoth telecommunications conglomerate Comcast. Billionaire Brian L. Roberts took over Comcast at the tender young age of 31 from his father Ralph and now runs the media monster that includes NBC/Universal.

Brian’s ascent to corporate power was swift, but despite siblings having no interest in the family business, he still solidified his powerful position as CEO and Chairman by pulling up the drawbridge and literally having his leadership written into Comcast’s articles of incorporation. There will be no sibling coup d’etat at Comcast.

The same is certainly not true on Succession which is why it’s such a fun show to watch. But despite being an eminently compelling and entertaining piece of capitalism porn, the reality it dramatizes is both horrifying and dispiriting.

Having just four families be the movers, shakers and opinion makers controlling so much of America’s media, controlling discourse, manufacturing consent and silencing dissent, is detrimental to democracy if not terminal to the republic.

These aristocrats and oligarchs, despite their pretentious and vacuous displays of philanthropy, are populated by spoiled and sadistic monsters who only care about preserving the status quo in order to secure and ensure their egregious wealth and power.

These monopolist corporate tyrants use their wealth and propaganda power to influence politicians tasked with regulating them to get further expansion of their family businesses, so that they can then use their expanded wealth and propaganda power to further pressure politicians to allow further expansion of their wealth and propaganda power. This endless cycle of corruption is corroding the core foundations of American democracy as it allows these family run media misinformation manufacturers to keep the public perpetually disinformed and deceived.

Ultimately, we can turn off Succession and walk away from its spectacle of egregious privilege and dramatic display of family intrigue, but unfortunately reality is just a less entertaining but more depressing version of the same insidious disease.

I love Succession, I just wish it was total fantasy and not a terrifyingly real glimpse of the four oligarchical families manipulating our minds through their mendacious media machines.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021