And still more television reviews...
Oct. 4th, 2018 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatTaking tomorrow off - and get Columbus Day off (yes, I know), so four day weekend. I may go shopping on Columbus Day -- there's apparently great sales. According to cubical mate -- it's the biggest shopping day of the year. So, hmmm, maybe not? Also depends on how my back feels. Going to a play at the Irish Arts Theater with DS tomorrow night. It's entitled "A Man Walks in a Woman's Shoes" - a one man show put on by a guy who went and interviewed a lot of people and then wrote a play about it. She'd seen his first play and it was hilarious and moving, so invited me along to try out the second. Off-Off-Broadway, so only $43 each.
Will let you know how it goes.
Eh, television reviews...
1. Lethal Weapon Reboot Take 2 -- they had to fire the first guy, because he basically pissed off everyone on the show, and is now banned from the set. (They killed off his character. Shame, the actor playing him had screen chemistry to spare, and well, was the only reason I was tuning in on occasion. But he directed a few episodes, and a few people got injured, he got blamed, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, bang, out.)
So they replaced him with another actor (which looks really familiar) and is sort of a less crazy but highly efficient version of Riggs. He's CIA and rarely uses a gun. Riggs always used guns and explosives.
I watched the first two episodes. Got bored. Surfed the net. So...not a keeper. Sorry.
2. The Cool Kids
Tried the pilot on Hulu...it's actually on network television. No idea what night. Stars Vickie Laurence, Leslie Jordan, David Alan Grier, and Harvey Gorman. Takes place in an old folks home. I found it silly and boring and cliche. "Cocoon" it's not. Actually made me want to watch that flick again, nor is it Mamma's Family.
I couldn't get past the first fifteen minutes. Not funny. More cringe inducing. In comedy? Dialogue matters and so does witty banter. If you don't have it -- you don't have it. And I'm picky. Note, I'm not looking for warm meaningful scenes in a situational comedy. Drama or Dramedy, yes. Comedy, no.
Nor do I need rapid fire jokes. And well, the reason comedy is so much harder than tearjerker, is it's so subjective. What might make one person laugh, might turn off someone else.
So, sorry, not a keeper.
3. A Million Little Things
Saw the pilot on Hulu, because I forgot to tape it. It's on Wednesdays or Tuesdays at 10pm after This is Us. But on ABC. I think.
Eh.
It's not bad. It's not good either. I'm on the fence about it.
Sort of Thirty-something meets This is Us by way of ONCE (that failed series by the writers of Thirty Something...). With a lot of platitudes. I think some of the writers formerly worked for Hallmark.
The set-up? A man (John), the heart of a bunch of friends, commits suicide by jumping off the balcony of his twenty story building before his personal assistant can stop him. Prior to that he appears to be having a business conversation that is a deal-breaker to buy a building. Also he makes one additional phone call to his friend -- but doesn't reach him, so leaves a voice mail message. He's in his thirties. And he's found of spouting lots of platitudes.
* Friendship is really just a Million Little Things...
* Everything Happens for a Reason..
* Sooner or later something Good will happen if you just give it a chance
Apparently John is a frustrated Hallmark Greeting Card writer or self-help motivational speaker, one or the other. It was most likely his true calling and since he was unable to do it and got sucked into real estate development instead...he committed suicide? (I don't know, just speculating). Happens.
One friend (Gary) who is in remission from breast cancer (male friend, not gay), is tasked with informing everyone. I've no clue why he finds out first -- that's never explained. Then we're launched into the funeral...and various long talking sessions about why "John" killed himself.
During these talking sessions we find out the following:
1. One of the friends, Ed, is a former alcoholic and hiding a big secret. He's been having an affair with John's wife, Deliah. His wife is a successful attorney with no time for him or their kid. While he's a former indie rocker, who teaches guitar. And I'm guessing John was a bit of a stick in the mud?
2. Another, Leo (?) was about to commit suicide when he got the call that John did it first. So, he decided not too...possibly because one suicide was enough? And this would be overkill?
Which sets up some ironic scenes with his wife, who keeps wondering why John never reached out to his own family. She's a frustrated restauranteur. I've no idea what he does.
3. The third (who is either Gary or Leo, I'm thinking this one might be Gary) is in remission from breast cancer and dating a woman he met at the breat cancer survivors support group. She's a clinical psychiatrist specializing in depression.
These guys met John while trapped in an elevator for six hours several years back. They discovered that they were all Brewers fans (hockey team) and agreed to get season tickets and watch all the games together. They have deep navel gazing discussions during Brewer's games. In fact after the funeral, they get an alarm that there is a game that night and they all rush to John's office to get the tickets so they can go to the game, which is where we learn that one of the friends considered suicide and finding out about John's suicide stopped him. (See? He tells the others. "There is a reason for everything that happens." Hearing about John's suicide saved his life. Ironic that.)
Meanwhile Deliah, Leo's wife and Maggie (the gal that Gary is dating) hang out and Deliah wonders if she could have done more or if it's her fault. (Well you were having an affair with one of his friends...so possible.) And she shows Leo's wife the new building with the restaurant space in the bottom that was slated for her to develop.
Poor Katherine, who is Ed's wife, portrayed by Grace Park is sort of left in the lurch, due to her busy work-schedule.
No one knows why John committed suicide, except his personnel assistant, Ashley, who took a folder he had with his wife's name on it and hid it. Then deleted a bunch of files from his computer. (Honey, they are probably on the cloud. Unless you delete the files from the cloud -- they aren't deleted. Although that's not true of all files I suppose. If they aren't saved to the cloud, you're fine. But my computer automatically saves stuff to the cloud.) The files seem to be connected to a real estate deal - "Rutledge". So perhaps that's why he killed himself?
This series has a sort of edge to it, that could easily fall into melodrama. But there's some bright spots here and there...the characters are somewhat interesting and the dialogue is not bad. I'll give it about five episodes before I decide what to do with it.
So...about a C+/B- at the moment.
As an aside to the above, yes, there are good television series on. There are over 1000 television shows, movies, documentaries, etc on various distribution channels. The only way you can prove there's nothing good out there or it's not expansive, is to watch all of them, which is humanly impossible. So don't bore me with the whine that there's nothing good on television. My mother does this to me on a weekly basis, it's getting old.
Will let you know how it goes.
Eh, television reviews...
1. Lethal Weapon Reboot Take 2 -- they had to fire the first guy, because he basically pissed off everyone on the show, and is now banned from the set. (They killed off his character. Shame, the actor playing him had screen chemistry to spare, and well, was the only reason I was tuning in on occasion. But he directed a few episodes, and a few people got injured, he got blamed, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, bang, out.)
So they replaced him with another actor (which looks really familiar) and is sort of a less crazy but highly efficient version of Riggs. He's CIA and rarely uses a gun. Riggs always used guns and explosives.
I watched the first two episodes. Got bored. Surfed the net. So...not a keeper. Sorry.
2. The Cool Kids
Tried the pilot on Hulu...it's actually on network television. No idea what night. Stars Vickie Laurence, Leslie Jordan, David Alan Grier, and Harvey Gorman. Takes place in an old folks home. I found it silly and boring and cliche. "Cocoon" it's not. Actually made me want to watch that flick again, nor is it Mamma's Family.
I couldn't get past the first fifteen minutes. Not funny. More cringe inducing. In comedy? Dialogue matters and so does witty banter. If you don't have it -- you don't have it. And I'm picky. Note, I'm not looking for warm meaningful scenes in a situational comedy. Drama or Dramedy, yes. Comedy, no.
Nor do I need rapid fire jokes. And well, the reason comedy is so much harder than tearjerker, is it's so subjective. What might make one person laugh, might turn off someone else.
So, sorry, not a keeper.
3. A Million Little Things
Saw the pilot on Hulu, because I forgot to tape it. It's on Wednesdays or Tuesdays at 10pm after This is Us. But on ABC. I think.
Eh.
It's not bad. It's not good either. I'm on the fence about it.
Sort of Thirty-something meets This is Us by way of ONCE (that failed series by the writers of Thirty Something...). With a lot of platitudes. I think some of the writers formerly worked for Hallmark.
The set-up? A man (John), the heart of a bunch of friends, commits suicide by jumping off the balcony of his twenty story building before his personal assistant can stop him. Prior to that he appears to be having a business conversation that is a deal-breaker to buy a building. Also he makes one additional phone call to his friend -- but doesn't reach him, so leaves a voice mail message. He's in his thirties. And he's found of spouting lots of platitudes.
* Friendship is really just a Million Little Things...
* Everything Happens for a Reason..
* Sooner or later something Good will happen if you just give it a chance
Apparently John is a frustrated Hallmark Greeting Card writer or self-help motivational speaker, one or the other. It was most likely his true calling and since he was unable to do it and got sucked into real estate development instead...he committed suicide? (I don't know, just speculating). Happens.
One friend (Gary) who is in remission from breast cancer (male friend, not gay), is tasked with informing everyone. I've no clue why he finds out first -- that's never explained. Then we're launched into the funeral...and various long talking sessions about why "John" killed himself.
During these talking sessions we find out the following:
1. One of the friends, Ed, is a former alcoholic and hiding a big secret. He's been having an affair with John's wife, Deliah. His wife is a successful attorney with no time for him or their kid. While he's a former indie rocker, who teaches guitar. And I'm guessing John was a bit of a stick in the mud?
2. Another, Leo (?) was about to commit suicide when he got the call that John did it first. So, he decided not too...possibly because one suicide was enough? And this would be overkill?
Which sets up some ironic scenes with his wife, who keeps wondering why John never reached out to his own family. She's a frustrated restauranteur. I've no idea what he does.
3. The third (who is either Gary or Leo, I'm thinking this one might be Gary) is in remission from breast cancer and dating a woman he met at the breat cancer survivors support group. She's a clinical psychiatrist specializing in depression.
These guys met John while trapped in an elevator for six hours several years back. They discovered that they were all Brewers fans (hockey team) and agreed to get season tickets and watch all the games together. They have deep navel gazing discussions during Brewer's games. In fact after the funeral, they get an alarm that there is a game that night and they all rush to John's office to get the tickets so they can go to the game, which is where we learn that one of the friends considered suicide and finding out about John's suicide stopped him. (See? He tells the others. "There is a reason for everything that happens." Hearing about John's suicide saved his life. Ironic that.)
Meanwhile Deliah, Leo's wife and Maggie (the gal that Gary is dating) hang out and Deliah wonders if she could have done more or if it's her fault. (Well you were having an affair with one of his friends...so possible.) And she shows Leo's wife the new building with the restaurant space in the bottom that was slated for her to develop.
Poor Katherine, who is Ed's wife, portrayed by Grace Park is sort of left in the lurch, due to her busy work-schedule.
No one knows why John committed suicide, except his personnel assistant, Ashley, who took a folder he had with his wife's name on it and hid it. Then deleted a bunch of files from his computer. (Honey, they are probably on the cloud. Unless you delete the files from the cloud -- they aren't deleted. Although that's not true of all files I suppose. If they aren't saved to the cloud, you're fine. But my computer automatically saves stuff to the cloud.) The files seem to be connected to a real estate deal - "Rutledge". So perhaps that's why he killed himself?
This series has a sort of edge to it, that could easily fall into melodrama. But there's some bright spots here and there...the characters are somewhat interesting and the dialogue is not bad. I'll give it about five episodes before I decide what to do with it.
So...about a C+/B- at the moment.
As an aside to the above, yes, there are good television series on. There are over 1000 television shows, movies, documentaries, etc on various distribution channels. The only way you can prove there's nothing good out there or it's not expansive, is to watch all of them, which is humanly impossible. So don't bore me with the whine that there's nothing good on television. My mother does this to me on a weekly basis, it's getting old.