TV Round Up - Thoughts on Succession, The Mandalorian, White Lotus, JK Rowling and more!

I was going through my notes and thought I’d share some thoughts on various tv shows that have come and gone that I failed to properly review. If you are looking for something to watch maybe these mini-reviews will be useful.

I also had some not-so-brief thoughts on some current shows…The Mandalorian and Succession, as well as some observations regarding JK Rowling and a potential HBO Max Harry Potter series. Enjoy!!

White Lotus –

HBO Max

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT. Over-rated garbage.

Season Two of White Lotus was all the rage this past fall. It became that show that critics and fans fawn over and that generates all sorts of cultural buzz. I watched season two when it originally aired but didn’t write a review of it for a variety of reasons…one of which is that I greatly disliked it and the thought of writing about it depressed me.

The first season of White Lotus – set in Hawaii, grew on me as it went along but the second season got worse as it went along. I watched season two – set in Sicily, beginning to end in hopes of it improving…but it never did and ended up being nothing but a grating chore.

The things that irritated about this show are too numerous to list in full but here’s a select few of them.  

Jennifer Coolidge, aka Stifler’s mom, seems like a nice person and I suppose it is all well and good that she’s having a career renaissance, but her clueless Tanya character which returns for season two is no longer quirky and amusing but aggressively annoying. Coolidge’s act, which may not be much of an act, wears incredibly thin the more time you spend with her. We all would’ve been better off if she was left behind in Hawaii.

Also annoying is that apparently every hotel manager in the entire world is gay…and in the case of Valentina in Sicily, gay and incredibly boring.

The elaborate plot of season two is so beyond ridiculous as to be absurd. None of the characters are relatable or even remotely likable. I spent the entire series loathing everyone and praying for everyone, especially Audrey Plaza’s Harper, Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia, Michael Imperioli’s Dominic (Imperioli is exposed as an awful actor in this show to a shocking degree) and Adam DiMarco’s repulsive Albie, to all die heinous deaths.

On the bright side…Meghann Fahy delivers the best moment of the entire series in her scene on the beach with her husband’s supposed best friend. Fahy was the lone bright spot in this massively over-hyped and over-rated show.

I’ll never understand why this show became a thing.

Slow Horses –

Apple TV+

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT. Series has some charm but never figures out what it wants to be.

Season one of Slow Horses wasn’t much to write home about…Gary Oldman’s hysterical flatulence aside. It was too slow and too fast all at the same time.

Season two starts off with more promise than season one, but it ends up being just as underwhelming.

The show should be a rather small-scale story of bureaucratic intrigue, but it constantly goes for these over-expansive, James Bond-ian scale storylines that just seem rushed, cheap and totally unbelievable.

Oldman is, as usual, great, and the rest of the cast give solid performances, but the writing never lives up to their stellar work.

This is just one of those shows that just can’t figure out what it wants and needs to be…and thus ends up being nothing.

Black Bird –

Apple TV+

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT. A mess of a mini-series. Incredibly poorly written. Paul Walter Hauser is great as the bad guy and deserved better.

This mini-series, developed by Dennis Lehane based on an alleged true story, is so amateurish as to be astonishing. The writing and casting of this series is so bad it made my stomach hurt.  

Taran Egerton plays a bad guy who agrees to go into prison to get a serial killer to confess. There’s not a single moment where Egerton is believable. Not one.

Sepidah Moafi plays an FBI agent and she is so miscast, and so terrible in the role, I’m surprised my tv didn’t spontaneously explode while watching it.

My old friend Greg Kinnear, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, is saddled with an abysmal role as a small-town cop that is never fleshed out or given any logical narrative.

The best thing about the show is Paul Walter Hauser, who is truly great as the twisted serial killer. Hauser is unquestionably one of the very best actors working on the planet right now. I hope he is given opportunities in much better projects going forward.

Bottom line is that this script is atrocious and this show is beyond ridiculous, as it’s a pyramid of inanities upon inanities.

The Mandalorian –

Disney Plus

No rating yet

Thoughts on the first 5…no wait…6 episodes of the 8-episode third season.

Season one and two of The Mandalorian grew on me as they went along and as the series became the flagship of Disney +. But season three has been a very, very bumpy ride over the first five episodes of the eight-episode season.

The drop off from season two to season three has been considerable. Mando now seems to have gone from searching to wandering…and that has sucked much of the drama out of the show. The season three story feels very scattered and unfocused and the execution of that story feels alarmingly cheap and decidedly second-rate. The writing is, unfortunately, just egregiously bad.

Maybe the series can get its mojo back in the three final episodes of this season…but that seems highly unlikely…and The Mandalorian mojo may very well be lost forever.

****Ok…so I wrote the previous paragraphs BEFORE I watched episode six of The Mandalorian. And now I’ve watched episode 6 and…holy fuck…things have changed…and not for the better.

Season 3 episode 6 of The Mandalorian is arguably the very worst Star Wars related event to have occurred in the history of the franchise…which is saying quite a bit. This is the Jar Jar Binks of episodes. This episode is so bad it makes the absolute shit shows that were Obi Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett seem like passable Star Wars entertainment.

Episode 3 is the most amateurish and cheap piece of garbage imaginable. The script, written by Jon Favreau, is abysmal and embarrassing. The directing, by famed actress Bryce Dallas Howard, is shameful and humiliating. The ignominious cameos in the episode by the rotund non-actress Lizzo, Jack Black and a decrepit Christopher Lloyd, are undeniably mortifying and resolutely cringe.

You’d be hard pressed to find anything anywhere as awful as the diarrhea of cutesy-ness that was Baby Yoda doing a front flip to be by Lizzo’s side…or watching him use the force to help her cheat and win at some stupid space game. Watching Lizzo knight Baby Yoda may have been the lowest point in American pop culture history.

Equally idiotic and incoherent was the story about Christopher Lloyd’s character who is maybe a bad guy or maybe a good guy. The conclusion of that narrative is so trite and throwaway as to be absurd. It’s like a kid playing with Star Wars figurines got called to dinner so they just gave their play session a generic ending and walked away.

The Mandalorian is apparently not about Din Djarin (Mando) and Grogu (Baby Yoda) anymore and instead has turned its flaccid dramatic focus to Bo-Katan Kryze, played by a gaunt and ghastly Katee Sackhoff. Sackhoff, who once upon a time was so good in Battlestar Galactica, is a dullard on The Mandalorian, and the nonsensical narrative turn of her not wearing her Mandalorian helmet has only made things worse as we are forced to see her lifeless eyes.

The bottom line is that Episode 6 was so bad it wasn’t a jumping of the shark, it was a Kessel Run over a trillion space sharks. This show is done. It simply cannot recover from such an egregious episode.

It’s a shame…at one point it seemed like The Mandalorian was going to save Star Wars. Now it seems that The Mandalorian is the final nail in its coffin.

Succession –

HBO Max

No rating yet

Thoughts on the first 2 episodes of the 10-episode fourth and final season

The final season of Succession is here and as enjoyable as it is to marinate in this capitalism porn, the truth is that the producers were very wise to make this the last season. The show, which is two episodes into its ten-episode finale, is well shot, well written and well-acted, but season four does feel like the series narratively repeating itself.

As glorious as it is to watch a dramatization of the palace intrigue amongst the villainous Murdoch/Redstone/Cox clans who run America’s media empires, the show thus far in season four seems to be rehashing the same battles from previous seasons just with characters taking on different roles in the melo-drama.

That said, watching Succession is a pure joy because the writing is so crisp and the performances so committed that it feels like a modern-day version of Shakespeare.  

Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Matthew MacFayden, Allen Ruck, Sarah Snook, Jeremy Strong and Nicholas Braun are fantastic as the Roy extended family, and the supporting actors are equally outstanding.

As sad as it will be to see Succession go, season four is showing signs that the story has run its course, so best to enjoy it while it’s here and be glad it’s not going to sully its reputation by dragging on uselessly for another three seasons.

FUTURE HARRY POTTER SERIES

HBO MAX

So, I saw in the news that HBO is maybe going to make a tv series remake of the Harry Potter books, with each of the seven original books getting its own season.

I don’t really care one way or the other about the Harry Potter franchise, be it the books, movies or anything else. But what struck me as I read the stories about this potential series is something that has struck for many years but which I never took the time to write about (that I remember)….namely that every article about the potential new series mentioned that “transphobic” creator JK Rowling would be involved in the show.

What bothers me about this is that JK Rowling being “transphobic” is an opinion, not a fact, and yet it showed up in every news article I read about this series…and in every article I’ve read about JK Rowling in recent years.

Coincidentally, I was helping my young son with his school work the other day and one of the assignments was to place a series of statements into one of two categories, ”fact” or “opinion”.

The statements were things like “there are 8 planets”, which would be considered a fact, and “apples are better than oranges”, which is an opinion. My son being the precocious lad that he is even pushed back against the 8 planets thing saying “that’s only if you don’t count dwarf planets”. Which is true…but in the spirit of the assignment we labelled it a fact since it said “there are 8 planets” not “there are ONLY 8 planets”.

The most intriguing statement in the assignment was “you shouldn’t eat too much candy”. My son’s instinct was to say it was a fact, because it is true that you shouldn’t eat too much candy. But…as we kicked the idea around, we got very philosophical…pondering how much is “too much” and who is the one to decide what is “too much”? “Too much” for me might be “not enough” for you.

We even got Clintonian as we parsed what is “candy”? We can all agree a chocolate bar is candy…but is a caramel apple candy? Are chocolate covered almonds candy? Is bubblegum candy?

The conclusion we came to was that “you shouldn’t eat too much candy” was not a fact but rather an opinion because it lacked specificity and detail and relied upon the subjective and not the objective.

Which brings us to JK Rowling’s alleged transphobia. What bothers me about these articles stating as fact that JK Rowling is transphobic is that opinions greatly differ in regards to Ms. Rowling’s transphobe status.

A journalist writing about Rowling may believe she is transphobic, but that doesn’t make it a fact. There are many people, myself included, who don’t think Rowling is transphobic at all. And just because trans activists label Rowling a transphobe doesn’t make her one.

Any journalist worth a damn should write of Rowling that “some claim she is transphobic” or “trans activists claim Rowling is transphobic” or that “Rowling has made statements some deem transphobic”. This really isn’t that hard.

Hell, when I was working for RT I wrote the term “dementia-addled” while joking about Joe Biden in an opinion piece and the editors very quickly informed me that I wasn’t a doctor and hadn’t examined Biden so I couldn’t diagnose him as having dementia. It was a valid point, so I took the phrase out of the piece despite my believing Joe Biden has dementia and, worst of all, that removing that statement ruined a good joke.

Anyway…I don’t care about the Harry Potter tv series, but I do care that our culture has completely gone off the rails and that journalists at the most prestigious of media outlets lack the critical thinking skills and basic journalistic integrity of a 7-year-old. I have no doubt that the Ivy League educated know-it-all, know-nothings at The New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe would not hesitate for a moment to declare that “you shouldn’t eat too much candy” is a fact because “the science is settled”. Sigh.

It should also be obvious that the news media plays the same word games with other topics as well…and treats opinions as fact on a daily basis turning journalism into nothing more than insidious, subtle and not-so-subtle activism which only misinforms its audience and diminishes journalism’s credibility.

Alright, thus concludes both my rant about shitty journalism and JK Rowling as well as my not-so-brief TV Round Up.

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©2023

The New Movie Mr. Jones is a Timely Reminder of the Cowardice of our Current Press

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

In 1933, British journalist Gareth Jones risked life and limb in service to the truth, while in comparison, the journalists of today only care about access to power and towing the elite’s ideological line.

Mr. Jones, a new film by esteemed director Agnieszka Holland, tells the true story of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who travels to the Soviet Union in 1933 and uncovers the Holomodor, Stalin’s genocidal famine of Ukrainians.

Sadly, Mr. Jones, which boasts a fantastic cast of James Norton, Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard, is a terrific story wrapped in a bad, dramatically unfocused and meandering film.

But thankfully, despite its cinematic unworthiness, the movie still contains important insights very relevant to our current time.

What makes Mr. Jones noteworthy is that the film’s noble protagonist is, unlike our current corrupt press corps, a dogged journalist more loyal to truth than to ideology, and more interested in maintaining his integrity than gaining access to power and wealth.

The film opens with Jones fresh off his 1933 interview with Hitler that leaves him convinced that war is ultimately inevitable. This belief gets him ridiculed for being naïve and hysterical by the stodgy and comfortable old guard of the British press.

Jones then sets his sights on the Soviet Union and tries to figure out how Stalin has been able to pull off his economic boom while the rest of the world is mired in depression, so he goes to Moscow in search of answers.

Upon arrival he finds not the worker’s paradise that fellow journalists, like the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning reporter in Moscow, Walter Duranty, have been deceptively portraying to the world, but instead discovers firsthand the repressive and totalitarian nature of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Jones then follows a lead and risks his life by sneaking off a train and going to Ukraine, where he is thrust into the horrors of the Holomodor, which are brutally and effectively depicted in the film.

When Jones exposes this calamity to the western world, political expediency causes it to be met with either skepticism or indifference. Unlike other journalists of his, or our, age, Jones refuses to tell people in power what they want to hear, instead telling them the truth, and is essentially blackballed and exiled because of it.

No doubt the same would happen today to any reporter brave enough to go against the officially approved narrative.

Our current press corps is inhabited by truth-disdaining, sycophantic stenographers more akin to the villainous Walter Duranty, a propagandist for the cause who sold his journalistic soul in exchange for a decadent and depraved lifestyle, than the truth-seeking Gareth Jones.

It is ironic that journalists of yesteryear, like Duranty, were complicit in positive falsehoods about Stalin’s Soviet Union, while journalists of today are complicit in negative falsehoods about Russia.

The cavalcade of journalistic failures and fiascos directly or tangentially related to Russia in recent years include, but are not limited to, the distortion of truth about the Maidan uprising, the supposed Syrian chemical weapons attacks, the ridiculous Cuba microwave weapons story, and of course, Russiagate, the biggest journalistic fraud perpetrated upon the American public since the Iraq War. And just this week we have added to this cornucopia of corporate media crap the ‘Russians pay bounty to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan’ nonsense. All of these stories are vapid, thin, propagandistic gruel, devoid of any depth, insight or actual reporting.

One glimpse at the ever-growing list of recurring journalistic farces involving Russia and it becomes glaringly obvious that Operation Mockingbird, the Cold War CIA program that planted stories and journalists in newsrooms across the media, is alive and well in practice, if not in name.

It is readily apparent that just as Walter Duranty was getting his marching orders from Moscow, reporters of today get their marching orders from Langely.

Of course, the truth-averse, ideologically driven journalism of the corporate media isn’t restricted to just Russia stories, as evidenced by the slavish and slanted coverage of Black Lives Matter and other woke endeavors.

The thing that I find most grating about the reliably deceptive establishment media is their incessant complaining about Trump’s alleged war on the press.

These same news outlets were conspicuously silent when Obama prosecuted whistleblowers nine times, which is three times more than all of his predecessors combined.

There was also nary a word of dissension from the intrepid souls in the media when Obama’s Department of Justice and FBI spied on reporters and tried to coerce them to expose their sources.

The most glaring example of the ideological cancer in journalism is the cheering by the establishment media of the prosecution and persecution of Julian Assange, who has done more to inform the public of the truth than any corporate-controlled reporter at any news outlet in the world, and may very well die in prison for it. 

The current crop of subservient sycophants play-acting as journalists in the corporate media are an utter disgrace to their profession, and they dishonor the staggering sacrifice that people like Gareth Jones made in service to truth.

Mr. Jones is not a great movie, but it does chronicle the great struggles of a noble man. If only we had many, many more like him today, maybe truth would be revered and the powerful held accountable. 

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020