Category Archives: TV

Sep 02 2016
3 Comments
TV

TV Review – Stranger Things

Nerds!  Monsters! Mysterious doings!

BQB here with a review of Netflix’s latest hit, Stranger Things.

NOTE: I’m only up to episode three.  I’ll be spoiling what I know so far so don’t read ahead if you want to avoid spoilers. Meanwhile, don’t tell me what happens after episode three. Thanks 3.5 readers.

So for the past month everyone in my Facebook feed has been all like, “OMG I love Stranger Things! It reminds me of my childhood because I’m a friend of BQB and therefore I’m a dried up old Generation Xer that no one gives a shit about!”

Yup. That’s what they actually said. My 3.5 friends are very hard on themselves.

But those are the grass is greener people.  Me? The tale brings me so far back into my childhood that I ended up thinking, “Oh joy. All the things I enjoyed as a child are now ancient history and the grim specter of death is looking over my shoulder.”

I tend to be a glass half empty type of person.  Glass half full people are like, “What? I had a toy Millennium Falcon too!”

How to describe this show?

Take one part Goonies and one part X-Files.  Throw in a dash of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., just a pinch of Poltergeist and you’re there.

From the electronically synthesized theme music to the kids saving the day on their bikes, this show is a heaping helping of nostalgia for the thirty to forty something crowd to relive their youth and enjoy a distraction from the twenty-two year old millennials who somehow leap frogged the hell over us and became our bosses/safe space dwelling, trigger warning demanding overlords in the blink of an eye.

The plot surrounds a group of boys whose friend Will has gone missing.  Will’s mother, Joyce, played by Winona Ryder, herself a staple of 1980s teen movies, freaks out while the town’s depressed chief of police Jim Hopper (David Harbour) turns the town upside down looking for the lad.

But to hell with those adults, for it is up to nerd boy trio Mike, Lucas and Dustin (Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Gaten Matarazzo, respectively) to ride around town aimlessly on their bikes to save the day.

Oh, and they’re joined by a mysterious girl with eerie super powers (Millie Bobby Brown.)

Was she named after singer Bobby Brown? That kind of would be awesome.

And seriously? “Finn Wolfhard?”  Holy shit. That kid should thank his parents because with a name like that Hollywood had no choice but to put him on the fast track to fame.

I have enjoyed the first three episodes and now that I think about it, it has been quite some time since there was a serious movie or TV show where a group of kids are the main characters yet adults are able to find the story enjoyable.

There were a lot of movies like this in the 1980s, then they sort of trailed of in the 1990s.

Why? I don’t know.  Maybe because today’s kids would learn that their friend is missing and be all like, “Oh noes! I must totes run to my safe space and raise awareness on Twitter! Hashtag #PrayersforWill”

Then again, the adults have gotten worse too.  Kids used to be able to ride around on their bikes and seek assistance from trustworthy adults.  Today, I wouldn’t advise a kid to trust an adult if the adult shows two forms of ID and a reference letter signed by the president and the pope.

Some 1980s things I noticed:

  • Star Wars toys (which are still popular today)
  • Rotary phones with cords.  You pretty much needed to keep your conversations short and sweet, although I do kind of remember just lying down on the kitchen linoleum floor as a whippersnapper in order to have longer conversations whilst being tethered to the phone attached to the wall. Oh and those rotary dials meant you’d stick your finger in the number hole, then crank it all the way around, then do it again for the next number…and the next one….
  • Libraries with micro fiche readers and card catalogs.  Card catalogs were like a computer database on paper! Fun stuff.
  • Mom jeans and window pane glasses.  Not to goof on Barb.  Sigh, people used to care more about function over fashion.  Today, glasses are small and stylish, but those window pane bad boys gave a nerd way more peripheral vision.  Its way easier to sneak up on a nerd now. Thanks a lot small glasses.

So, that’s it. That’s my review. Despite all my gripes about getting older, Stranger Things is actually a fun filled romp back in time.

Oh and if you’re a Gen Xer, its fun to watch this show with a millennial.  Obviously, don’t steal one off the street, but if you have one in your family like I do.  We watched it and the conversation was thus:

MILLENIAL: They had pools back then?

ME: Ugh. Yes.

MILLENIAL: They had cars back then?

ME: And even before then.

MILLENIAL: Wait, when did Star Wars come out?

ME: In the 1970s.  Kids were way into it.

MILLENIAL: And they had plastic toys?

ME: Kids in the 1980s couldn’t buy plastic toys fast enough.

MILLENIAL: People had nice houses for that time.

ME: I know. You assumed we all lived in mud huts.

MILLENIAL: What a wonderful commitment to diversity that the boys have a black friend  despite the racial divisions at the time.

ME: Nope. We had black friends. Wasn’t a big deal. White kids liked toys. Black kids liked toys. We’d get together and play with our toys. Didn’t matter. No one asked for a medal for being friends with a black kid.

See? These whippersnappers don’t know about anything before 1990.

Enjoy it while it lasts, millennials. In twenty years, the next generation will have a show where everyone’s all like, “OMG. I can’t believe that people used to post pictures of their lunch on Facebook. Now that everyone’s a precog we all already know what everyone ate for lunch.”

STATUS: Shelf-worthy

Tagged , , , , , ,
Sep 01 2016
2 Comments
TV

TV Review – Ray Donovan

Is this a show about a Hollywood fixer or a family whose mobster father’s crimes keep coming back to haunt them?

I don’t know….I’m not sure the people behind the show know either, but either way, I like it.

BQB here with a review of the Showtime series Ray Donovan.

About to close its fourth season, this show stars Liev Schreiber as the titular character Ray Donovan, the man that Hollywood celebrities go to with problems that can’t be handled through regular channels (i.e. the police, lawsuits, etc.)

I have to admit it, when I first started watching the show in 2013, I thought this sounded like a great premise.  Surely there must be a seedy underbelly to Hollywood that we mere mortals never see.

The series began strong.  Ray beats up a pop star’s stalker with a baseball bat.  As the show moves on, he blackmails celebs, hides their dead bodies, etc.

Problem – the show, pretty much from the start, made the Hollywood stuff a side dish and the family drama the entree.

Ray’s father is Mickey (Jon Voight) , an ex-convict recently released after serving a long stretch.  Despite being in his seventies, Mickey is constantly plotting a heist, a hustle, any number of get rich quick schemes that threaten to tear the Donovan clan asunder.

It goes without saying that looking out for his brothers is Ray’s second full-time job.

Here, the actors who play Ray’s brothers shine.  British actor Eddie Marsan is boxing club owner/trainer Terry.  Marsan’s performance captures the essence of a man who is single, getting older, clearly depressed over not having a family of his own and wishing he could have done more in life.  His brain was willing but his past boxing career left his body weak.

Meanwhile Dash Mihok stars as slow yet loyal Bunchy, sort of like the family puppy dog who from time to time declares that he too can put on his big boy pants only to end up causing trouble.  Still, you can’t help but hope that Bunch puts on those big boy pants one day.

Pooch Hall, a boxer in his own right, is the Donovan family’s black half-brother, Daryll aka ‘Black Irish’ a young, wannabe boxer and the product of Mickey’s affair behind the late Mrs. Donovan’s back.

The show follows a basic formula:

  • Ray tells Mickey to go F himself and never talk to anyone in the family ever again because he is tired of cleaning up after him.
  • Mickey ignores Ray and concocts an illegal scheme.
  • Mickey is so charming that he tricks one, two, or sometimes all three of the Donovan brothers into helping him.
  • Mickey’s plan is botched, resulting in potential criminal charges, arrests, and/or other criminals coming after the Donovans.
  • Ray, not wanting to see one, two, or all three of his brothers go to jail or worse, uses his fixer skills to bail them out.

I’ll say this for the show – it is schizophrenic.  A third of the time it is about scummy Hollywood life and the other two-thirds are devoted to the family drama.

Is it a Hollywood fixer show or is it The Departed with palm trees?  (Oh, I forget to mention the Donovans are all Bostonites transplanted to California, so expect a lot of wicked bad Bah-stahn accents, kid.)

Other cast members:

  • Ray’s henchman Avi, an ex-Israeli agent played by Steven Bauer who often tells Ray the hard truths he doesn’t want to hear.
  • Ray’s hench-woman, Lena – messy haired lesbian played by Katherine Moennig.  I thought it was interesting that this show has a hench-woman.  And she doesn’t do the stereotypical “oh let me put on a pretty dress and fool the men” schtick.  She is a pretty serious member of Ray’s fixing operation.
  • The other Donovans – Paula Malcolmson as Ray’s wife Abby, who puts up with Ray’s constant cheating and Kerris Dorsey and Devon Bagby as Conor and Bridget.)  Viewers, you may not be able to relate to a bat wielding leg breaker like Ray (and that’s no doubt a good thing) but if you’re a parent, you can probably relate to the spoiled brat hi jinx that Ray and Abby have to deal with on a regular basis.

At times, I have thought that the show would be better if it would pick one angle and stick with it.

If it is going to be a show about a Hollywood fixer, then focus on Ray doing illegal shit to get celebrities out of trouble…OR…

…if it is going to be about a man who constantly has to bail his dumb father and brothers out of trouble, then focus on that.

But somehow, this cast and the folks behind the show make it work, tie it altogether, and provide a good story.

Thus I can’t fault them for having two angles.

I keep coming back to find out what will happen next and that is always a sign of a good TV show in my book.

And while Jon Voight has had a long career starring in many acclaimed movies, in my mind, his role as Mickey “I do horrible things that ruin my family’s lives but I’m so charming they forgive me in five seconds” Donovan is what I will remember him for years from now.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Aug 16 2016
1 Comment
TV

RIP Fyvush Finkel

Hey 3.5 readers.

Just a quick note to remember Fyvush Finkel who has passed away at age 93.

In the 1990s, there was a really out there, perhaps before its time show called Picket Fences.

Basically, every week this small town would face some sort of wacky legal case, usually investigated by town sheriff Tom Skerritt.

Many of the cases escape me but the one that sticks in my mind was there was a doctor who had figured out how to grow human babies inside cows (i.e. a human baby gestates inside and is given birth by a cow.)

The show gave a lot of actors their start, Lauren Holly and Don Cheadle come to mind.  Holly Marie Combs played the sheriff’s daughter. She then went on to become one of the witches on Charmed.

Finkel played the town’s unabashed ambulance chaser, Douglas Wambaugh.

To the chagrin of grizzled, super serious Judge Henry Bone (Ray Walston), Wambaugh would enter the court every week and introduce himself and his client in less than politically correct terms.

“Douglas Wambaugh for the vegetable!” and “Douglas Wambaugh for the body snatcher!” are two off the top of my head.

Funny show that was very cutting edge for the 1990s.  I enjoyed it as a kid.

And it was cool that Finkel, who’d been a star of Yiddish theater his whole life, broke into television in his 70s.

Its never too late, 3.5.

Tagged , , , ,
Aug 10 2016
4 Comments
TV

Could the Olympic Games be spread out all over the world?

Hey 3.5 readers.

I’ve read a lot of articles on how sometimes hosting the Olympics ends up a bad deal for a city.

Cities often take up the challenge of hosting duties in the hopes that doing so will cause big stadiums, condo buildings etc to be constructed, thus revitalizing these cities.

Yet, often what happens is that after the big show, these big expensive buildings go unused.

I wonder, given this age of live streaming and technology – could the Olympic events be held at the same time all over the world?

It would probably make little difference to the viewer.  Go to a reporter covering swimming in, I don’t know, Australia, then cut to the track and field events in LA or somewhere they have tracks and fields.

The only downside would be maybe you wouldn’t get that nice opening ceremony.  Although surely some TV wiz could fix that and maybe have multiple little ceremonies all over the world.  A dance number in Tokyo, a fireworks display in London, etc.

The athletes might miss out on the camaraderie.  Perhaps the Olympics folks running the event would have reasons why it all has to be in the same place.

I don’t know. Just a thought.  I’m not sure it would matter to the viewer or if the viewer would even notice if one competition is here and the other there.

What say you, 3.5 readers?

 

 

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Aug 09 2016
2 Comments
TV

Game of Thrones will End in Season 8

Are we disappointed about this or has the show done all it can?

I will be sad when this show isn’t around anymore. I’ve really come to look forward to it every year and when it is on I glue myself to my TV religiously.

But with the Khaleesi sailing for Westeros at the end of this season, I suppose the story has to wrap up soon.

What say you, 3.5 readers?

Tagged , ,
Aug 03 2016
5 Comments
TV

Bob, Louis and Gordon Canned from Sesame Street

Have you heard this one, 3.5 readers?

Honestly, I’m surprised those dudes are still alive. They seemed like they were 100 years old when I watched the show 100 years ago.

But it seems so lame they got fired.  Reeks of Hollywood suits deciding they were too old.

I’ve read some articles that they might come back occasionally (in light of people being mad they were canned) but still, totally lame.

What say you 3.5 readers?

Tagged , ,
Jul 28 2016
14 Comments
TV

What are you watching on TV this Summer?

Sorry. I guess I’m all about the books now. I just lack the energy to help my esteemed BQB columnists get their work out.  Hopefully I’ll find the time soon.

Till then, what are you watching on TV? I miss when True Blood used to be on HBO during the summers. That was fun.

Tagged , ,
Jun 27 2016
2 Comments
TV

Game of Thrones Recap – Season 6, Episode 10 – “The Winds of Winter” – Season Finale

Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it 3.5 readers?

Season 6 of GOT is over. Done. Finito. In the books.

Let’s talk but beware for like Melisandre’s mystical vagina, this post is dark and full of terrors…AND SPOILERS.

Mostly spoilers.

cropped-img_1757

From a writing standpoint, so many things happened this season that we’ve all been waiting for a long time:

  • Arya got her revenge.
  • Jon Snow is King of the North.
  • Sansa escaped a life of having to go from being tortured by one douche to being tortured by another douche.
  • One of Cersie’s schemes actually worked.
  • The Imp is finally recognized by someone who appreciates his brain.
  • The Khaleesi is on her way to Westeros.
  • Overall, the kids have grown up and everyone’s either doing or on their way to doing what they’ve been meant to do all along.

So about last night –

CERSEI 

She’s long lamented that her lack of a dong has held her back. She has argued many a time that she’s wise and brilliant and if only she were a man she’d be taken seriously.

Well, people be taking her ass seriously now because…holy shit…she done went and exploded the Sept of Baelor.

Took out the High Sparrow, all his little sparrows, probably even the Tyrells though technically we didn’t get full confirmation as to whether or not Margery and Loras made it out or not.

The running joke about Cersei is that her schemes always fail. Not only do they fail but they usually make her problems worse. (i.e. she gives the High Sparrow extra powers to go after her enemies only to have him turn on her.)

Did Cersie know that Tommen would kill himself?

You could argue yes because she did put on her Queenly garment before it all went down.

You could argue no because she had Frankenmountain keep him from getting blown up and historically, though she has been douchey to everyone else, she has been fiercely loyal to her children.

At any rate, her butt is on the Iron Throne.

KHALEESI

I know her name isn’t Khaleesi but I like it better and it is easier to spell.

Didn’t you get goosebumps seeing all those ships and dragons crossing the Narrow Sea?

The long awaited invasion of Westeros is on the way.

Though  I have to wonder, when that happens, could the end of the show be far behind? Putting the Khaleesi on the Iron Throne and defeating the White Walkers seems like the final plot points that need to be wrapped up.

THE IRON BORN

Bunch of smelly pirate vikings.

If you ask me, GRRM is way too obsessed with turning his male characters into eunuchs.  Spare the balls, George. Spare the balls.

But despite being a eunuch, Theon seems to be on the way toward redeeming himself for his douchebaggery. He’s lost his claim to the Iron Islands, but may do something super heroic, die in battle, or end up as his sister’s chief advisor.

Speaking of…

WOMEN TAKING OVER

Hey. Look. I’m all for women’s rights and shit but Westeros is becoming a total vag-ocracy here.

You’ve got Cersei on the Iron Throne and the Khaleesi about to take the Iron Throne (does anyone think anyone in Westeros is willing to be chomped by a dragon to protect Cersei? Doubtful.)

You’ve got Ellaria Sand ruling Dorne after killing her brother-in-law in a coup.

You’ve got Lady Olena in charge of Highgarden even though she’s like a million years old.

Sure, Jon Snow is King of the North but he’s one of those perpetually depressed hipster emo losers who will probably walk away from it all and turn it over to Sansa.

I’m not saying never have a woman ruler but you know, let’s mix it up and have some peen-ocracies and some vag-ocracies.

ARYA

Checked a big name off her list. Got her revenge.

WHAT’S BEYOND WESTEROS?

There was a brief mention this season that there is land beyond Westeros but no one has ever sailed that far.

I wonder if that will become some kind of allegory to Europeans sailing and colonizing the Americas.

WHAT SAY YOU, 3.5 READERS?

What did you like about this season? What did you not like? What did you want to see and or not see?

What’s next?

Discuss.

 

 

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Jun 26 2016
3 Comments
TV

Daily Discussion with BQB – What do you want to see happen on tonight’s Season 6 Finale of Game of Thrones?

And discuss.

Tagged , , ,
Jun 23 2016
17 Comments
TV

Daily Discussion with BQB – What TV shows are you watching?

Game of Thrones and Orange is the New Black presently for this nerd.

What shows are you watching?

Tagged , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →