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Nov 02 2016
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TV

TV Review – Haters Back Off (Miranda Sings)

“Hey, where my baes at? Wicky wicky!”

Slather on some extra lipstick and hike up your pants, 3.5 readers.

BQB here with a review of Miranda Sings’ TV debut with Haters Back Off, streamable now on Netflix.

As a pop culture nerd, I’ve been aware of Miranda Sings’ YouTube channel for awhile. I can’t quite put my finger on when I first learned of her. Rather, it seems like the sun or water, she’s just always been there.

The character is so larger than life that you might be surprised there’s a real person under those pants.

Colleen Ballinger (honestly, I never knew the name of the person behind Miranda until she got her own Netflix show) has explained the genesis of her alter ego and I’ll try to do it justice (with some of my own assumptions that may or may not be accurate.)

Years ago, Colleen was an aspiring singer and as such, she was surrounded by all kinds of egotistical “look at me girls” who performed song covers in their bed rooms in front of video cameras, posted the videos on YouTube and then immediately thought doing so would launch a music career.

The odds of getting discovered like that aren’t great, so rather join them, she invented Miranda and made fun of them.

It was 2008, the early days of YouTube and Colleen aka Miranda became a comic genius.  She not only lampooned the egotistical “I want to be a success overnight by posting dumb videos” phenomenon that so many millennials have become swept up in, but she also got the chance to make fun of a variety of music stars in the process.

Great plan if you ask me, because if you head on over to YouTube and do a search for your favorite modern pop hit, chances are, if you scroll down far enough, you’ll see Miranda with her poorly applied lipstick and Steve Urkel-esque pants singing a cover of the song terribly yet congratulating herself on a job well done in her nasal voice anyway.

To Colleen’s credit, she’s embraced Miranda to the hilt low these many years.  She’s gone on tour and appeared on TV shows as Miranda and only as Miranda i.e. similar to the way Sascha Baron Cohen would go on a TV show as Borat and everyone would treat him as Borat.

Like Lady Gaga, Colleen has kept her poker face. Go to Miranda Sings’ Twitter and you’ll find a bevy of misspelled yet egotistical tweets as Miranda compliments herself on her latest activities whilst being clueless as to her skills, talent, or rather, lack thereof.

And Miranda has even developed all sorts of catch phrases. With “Haters Back Off” she has essentially immunized herself from YouTube criticism.  YouTube commenters are notorious for savagely ripping into YouTubers, often being a little too harsh on people who are just trying to show the world their interest in song, dance, entertainment or what have you.

But since Miranda is already parodying the “Oh my God someone wrote a bad comment about me on the Internet and it has ruined my life” lifestyle, it is hard to bring her down with a negative comment.  (Well, its hard to bring Colleen down. Miranda, for humorous purposes as we see in the first episode of her show, gets emotionally ruined by the slightest online criticism.)

Her other catchphrase is, “No porn.”  Miranda fancies herself classy.  If you dress in a skimpy outfit, she’ll likely accuse you of “doing porn.”

Social Media has truly exploded over the last decade and not always for the better.  This election, with friends and neighbors squabbling over their preferred candidate, is proof of that.

But the best thing about social media is it has allowed people with talent to shine and be discovered in a way that is usually reserved for people with connections, contacts, agents, and/or just a tremendous amount of luck.

Therefore, I tip my hat to this YouTuber as she took an idea, produced it out of her bedroom, nurtured, grew it, kept it going and eight years later, has her own TV show.

Now with many pop culture sensations, a TV show or movie based on said sensation usually ends up being crap.  Hollywood suits get together, attempt to ride a popular name for as long as they can, but then don’t give a lot of thought to the plot.

That’s not the case here.

In this show, we see Miranda’s life, and not just the parts from YouTube.

A homeschooled nerd devoid of style, manners, common sense, and/or talent yet overflowing with (you might say undeserved) self-confidence, the show begins with Miranda recording a poorly performed song and loading it to YouTube.

Miranda’s Uncle Jim is an assistant fish store manager and is as clueless and egotistical as Miranda is, convinced that he’s going to manage his niece’s entertainment career all the way to the top.

FYI Jim is played by Steve Little who you might remember as Kenny Powers’ clueless weirdo friend from HBO’s Eastbound and Down. Steve did such a good job with that role he is apparently going to be playing clueless weirdos forever now.

Eh, there are worse jobs, right?

Angela Kinsey (Angela the accountant from The Office who was always judging Pam when she wasn’t busy being Dwight’s creepy love interest) plays Miranda’s mother Bethany.

Bethany is convinced she has undiagnosed fibromyalgia (but more likely has hypochondria) and has a dress and a casual wrist brace, neither of which are necessary.

She nurtures Miranda to a fault and encourages Miranda’s unlikely music career and caters to her every egotistical whim (Miranda bosses her mother around similar to how Zach Galifinakis bosses his mother around in The Hangover.)

Rounding out the family is Emily (Francesca Reale) who is Miranda’s sister and the only normal, level-headed member of the family.

As I saw Emily reading a book entitled, Living with Crazy, I caught the point of the show.

Yes, a bunch of people got together and figured out a way to make a buck off the Miranda Sings character, but this show is much more than that.

This show puts “the other half” on full display, in all their glory.

So many shows are filled with beautiful people with beautiful people problems.  “Oh no, which of my many suitors will I pick? Everyone loves me, whatever will I do?”

Or worse, there are so many sitcoms with perfect parents and perfect children.

In the real world, real families have real problems.  Sometimes families aren’t even traditional, as in the case of a hypochondriac mother and a creepy uncle raising an egotistical daughter who is convinced she should be a superstar and another daughter who just yearns to live a normal life.

There’s something for everyone to relate to in this show.  Maybe YOU are the one in your family with a crazy problem.  Or maybe you are like Emily and you just want to be normal but you’re forced to deal with your family’s craziness.

And ultimately, the show is a lampooning of the quest for Internet fame.

Yes, people, you do live in an age where it is possible to bypass agents, auditions, and entertainment industry decision makers and gain notoriety on your own.

BUT – just because the technology is there doesn’t automatically mean you have the talent to make it happen.

Because you can do it doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it…and you just might make an ass out of yourself along the way.

Ahh, but here’s the rub.  “Get some confidence” is the advice we’re always told when we pursue our dreams.

What happens if your confidence outweighs your talent?

Such is Miranda’s dilemma.

I hand it to Colleen/Miranda.  Had she opted to be just another girl singing covers in her bedroom and posting the videos to YouTube, the odds are she wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but by creating a character to poke fun at these girls, she created an empire with little more than a pair of hitched up Urkel pants, some caked on lipstick, and a nasal nerd voice.

I hope this TV success doesn’t mean that Miranda is going to leave us anytime soon.

However, after seeing Colleen as herself on Jimmy Fallon, I can tell that it won’t be long before Hollywood starts knocking on her door with parts that are reserved for starlets and not nerds.

She deserves it but as her star rises, I just hope she doesn’t throw those hiked up pants away.  She needs to keep them in the back of her closet to remember that so many of her fans are, in fact, more like Miranda than they are like a Hollywood star.

I’m in awe of people who got in on the ground floor of the social media craze.

My initial reaction then was, “Eh, this is interesting but why the shit do I want to be on a website where everyone talks about what they had for lunch and posts a photo of their lunch?”

But Colleen found her niche, made a bold decision to be funny and not take herself seriously by inventing a hilarious character and eight years later, people are taking her seriously now.

Impressive.  Where my baes at?

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Sep 11 2016
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TV Reviews

TV Review – Pushing Daisies (2007-2009)

This is the best show that you probably never saw.

Dead revival powers + lighthearted mysteries + awkward (and dangerous) romance = Pushing Daisies.

BQB here with yet another TV review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fliFS-BfGZ0

It often astounds me what the network suits decide should be cancelled and what should stay on.  It was truly a “grave” (ha, puns!) injustice that this show didn’t get more seasons.

How to explain it?

As a child, Ned learns he has a mysterious, supernatural power – he can bring the dead back to life with his touch.

Of course, nothing is that simple and there are some catches:

  • If he brings a dead someone or some thing back to life, a live someone or some thing in the surrounding area will die to balance things out.
  • If he touches the revived dead again, he/she/it will die again, this time permanently, and the touch will not work on that subject again.

As an adult, Ned (Lee Pace) has opened up his own pie show, “The Pie Hole” but it is failing financially.

So, he teams up with private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride).  Ned touches murdered people, he and Emerson ask them how they died and (hopefully if they know, who killed them).  They only have sixty seconds to make their inquiries and then Ned must touch the person before someone else in the area dies in the revived dead person’s place.

Emerson then passes it all off as though he solved the crime through his masterful detective skills and splits any ensuing reward money with Ned.

The situation becomes complicated when his childhood friend Charlotte aka “Chuck” (Anna Friel) returns to her hometown, but not as Ned would have hoped.

Chuck has been murdered, but when her body is shipped home for burial, Ned brings her back to life.

Chuck is grateful and joins in Ned and Emerson’s crime solving routine.  Alas, Ned and Chuck must figure out a way to keep their romance alive despite Ned not being able to touch Chuck ever again because if he does…she’ll die.

Without giving too much away, it involves a lot of plastic wrap.

I’m not sure where you’ll be able to watch it, 3.5 readers. At the time of this writing, I wasn’t able to find it on Netflix.  I’m sure it must be around somewhere and I suppose if you have the dough and love the show enough you could buy it but if you know where it can be streamed let my 3.5 readers and I know.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Sep 10 2016
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TV Reviews

TV Review – Weeds (2005-2012)

“Little houses, little houses, and they’re all made of ticky tacky…”

What the hell is ticky tacky?

Oh well.  Hot mom + marijuana = Showtime’s Weeds.

BQB here with another TV review.

This is another show I never watched when it was on for the first few years, then I got into it once streaming media came around in a big way.

Uber MILF Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise-Parker) has her life turned upside when her husband dies from a heart attack unexpectedly at age forty.

She’s been a suburban housewife forever, but with two kids to raise and bills to pay, she turns to a life of crime i.e. marijuana dealing.  Her product comes to be known as “MILF weed” due to her Milfyness as well as a chance encounter with Snoop Dogg (playing himself)

The first few seasons are the best of the series.  Here, the story isn’t so much about the marijuana as it is about hum drum suburban life, how Nancy is able to make tons of money selling to her neighbors who, on the surface, are stuck up yuppies but given the chance to spark a doob and party, they do – often in funny, sometimes in tragic ways.

Kevin Nealon as family friend Doug Wilson helps Nancy in her illegal endeavors.  His role in this show as a degenerate scumbag is his best work since SNL.

Meanwhile, Nancy ruins her chances at being nominated mother of the year by bringing her young sons into the business. (Hunter Parrish as Silas and Alexander Gould aka the voice of Nemo in 2003’s Finding Nemo as Shane.)

What really makes the show early on is the love/hate relationship between Nancy and her frenemy Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins).  Celia is that super perfect/judgmental mom who serves as Nancy’s foil, first by trying to ruin her and later as joining her in the drug game.

While the first few seasons in suburbia are the best, the show eventually moves on and the Botwins find themselves in crazy situations every season.  Often, it seems like series creator Jenji Kohan (now the creator of Orange is the New Black) was trying to outdo herself in each season with the wacky, borderline but not quite shark jumping predicaments the Botwins get into (Nancy marrying a Mexican drug kingpin, the Botwins going on the run being two big examples that stand out in my mind.)

Overall it is funny, and there are some interesting cliffhangers and plot twists.  Not to repeat myself, but IMO, the suburbia seasons were the best and then it gets a little goofy from thereon.

I credit this series with giving us more of Mary Louise Parker.  Though she’d been an actress for years (she had a role in 2002’s Red Dragon that springs to mind) this was the show that really put her over the top and now I get to see her in more stuff.

Works for me because she is fabulous.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Sep 09 2016
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TV Reviews

TV Review – It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

“Dayman!  Uh ahh ahh!  Fighter of the Nightman! Uh ahh ahh!  Champion of the Sun!  You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone…Dayman!”

I can’t believe this show has been on the air for ten going on eleven damn years.

BQB here with a review of FX’s long running comedy series, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

I can’t quite put my finger on the exact date but at some point in the early to mid 2000s, the traditional sitcom format died.

Don’t get me wrong.  Surf the channels enough and you can still find that sappy “the dad is so dumb and the kids are so smart and mom’s the best” show somewhere, but by and large, people started gravitating towards non-traditional sitcoms.

Always Sunny does involve a situation – four friends and their elderly friend/step-father (depending on the character) own and operate a dive bar in Philadelphia.

In their spare time, which they have oodles of because they avoid hard work and contributing to society at all costs, they undertake a series of schemes, scams, and cons in a never ending quest to get rich overnight without having to do anything for it.

Situation? Check. Comedy? Check. Traditional? No.

Our characters are:

  • Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day) – the bar’s janitor and rat killer, naive dummy, epically disgusting dumpster diver, eternally obsessed with a woman we are only introduced to as “the waitress.”
  • Ronald “Mac” McDonald (Rob McElhenney) – Obsessed with 1980s action films, physical fitness and martial arts.  Always wears sleeveless shirts to show off his guns.  He’s not really that cut but believes himself to be.  Constantly checking out other men’s physiques, claiming purely as an appreciator of muscles but the running joke is he is clearly gay and overcompensates to avoid admitting it.
  • Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton) – Narcissistic sociopath.  Obsessed with himself, literally no lie he isn’t willing to tell or bad act he isn’t willing to carry out to get himself ahead or to get into a woman’s pants.  Inventor of the D.E.N.N.I.S. system to pick up chicks.
  • Deandra “Sweet Dee” Reynolds – Dennis’ twin sister.  Good looking woman but suffers low self esteem due to constantly being called a “bird” but her brother and dumb friends.  Dreams of becoming an actress.  Has no talent and sadly, unable to recognize this fact.
  • Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito) – Dennis and Dee’s step-father.  Has amassed great wealth due to a variety of illegal activity over the years.  Could live in style but prefers to slum it as Charlie’s roommate. Big time scumbag who teaches the youngsters how to be scumbags.

I’ve watched this show since the beginning and wow has the time flew.

I’ll say this – there are times where I have laughed hysterically, times when I thought it was pretty creative and yes, even a few times where I thought, “well, they might being going a tad too far there.”

How they have remained friends so long, I don’t know. Its nothing but a sea of them calling each other names, backstabbing and trash talking one another and so on.

Every week, they try a new scheme or get themselves into a bind.

Here are some of the most memorable off the top of my head, in no particular order:

  • Dayman/Nightman Song aka “The Nightman Cometh” – Charlie writes a musical and is too stupid to realize that it is filled with sexually explicit innuendo.
  • Kitten Mittens – Just how it sounds. Charlie puts mittens on kittens.
  • “World Series Defense” – the gang explains to a judge a terrible ordeal they had while trying to attend the World Series. Charlie dawns his “green man costume” and a generation of drunk frat boys running around in face-less green suits is born.
  • “Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare” – and to convince the welfare office they’re destitute and hopeless, they acquire and smoke crack….and become hooked. You wouldn’t think crack is a funny subject but darned if they didn’t find a way.
  • “Who Pooped the Bed?” – a poop is found in a bad. The gang, in classic whodunnit mystery style, becomes determined to solve the crime.
  • “Storm of the Century” – a massive storm heads Philly’s way.  Dennis becomes obsessed a well endowed TV weather girl, so much so much so that whenever he spots her ample bosom, he hears the lyrics to the 1980s hit song “Alone” by Heart.  He spots the boobs, he hears and apparently thinks, “Till know…I always got by own my own…” Priceless.

I don’t know. I could go on forever with my favorite episodes. If I do, I’ll ruin them. You should just go on Netflix and watch them.

Above all else, what I love about this show is that it was created by a group of friends who were trying to make a go of it in Hollywood and after struggling for years, got together, made their show, sold it to FX and were even able to get a well-known star like Danny DeVito to not only sign on in the second season but to be willing to completely debase himself over and over again for a decade.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, 3.5 readers.  If things aren’t working out, take a page from the Always Sunny crew and make things happen (but uh, try to not be so alcoholic…or gross…or engage in any of their 9 million bad habits.)

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Sep 05 2016
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TV Reviews

TV Review – Archer (2009 – )

Bawk bawk.

I have no idea how this show was ever made or how it has lasted as long as it has.

Mind you, that’s not because it is bad, but because it defies any kind of usual TV show parameters, rules, guidelines or what have you and is therefore laugh out loud funny.

BQB here with a review of FX’s Archer, which has just wrapped up its seventh season with no end in sight.

In this adult cartoon (or should I say cartoon for adults?) H. Jon Benjamin voices Sterling Archer who is essentially a walking personification of the word “douche.” He is a world class spy so he has the skills and looks to back up his cocky demeanor, but he generally treats everyone like crap and gets away with it because his mother, Malory (Jessica Walter) owns the independent contractor spy agency (originally dubbed the International Secret Intelligence Service or I.S.I.S which obviously, due to current events, had to be changed a couple years ago.)

  • FYI Jessica Walter played Charlie Sheen’s snooty rich mother on Two and a Half Men as well as the snooty rich mother on Arrested Development and therefore she has a lock on all snooty rich mother roles in the comedy world.  She deserves it as she knocks the snooty rich mother role out of the park.

Archer has an on again/off again romance with fellow agent Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) who suffers the burden of being the only responsible adult in a crew full of dummies.

Those dummies include:

  • Cheryl Tunt  (Judy Greer) – the agency’s insane, oddball fetish having secretary.C
  • Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) – Total nerd who serves as the agency’s comptroller/bean counter who also has the hots for Lana.
  • Pam Poovey (Amber Nash) – Chubby potty mouthed HR rep with impulse control problems, known for her pearls and occasional dolphin hand puppet.
  • Doctor Krieger (Lucky Yates) – Mad scientist. Clone of Adolf Hitler though looks nothing like Hitler. In love with an anime hologram.
  • Ray Gillette (Adam Reed, who is the creator of the series) – Openly gay pilot/agent.  In fairness, Ray has it more together than the rest of the crew, though their incompetence regularly causes him to lose a limb or a body part as a running gag.

Speaking of running gags, the show is full of them. “Phrasing” is the best one that comes to mind. Say something that sounds remotely dirty and Archer will hit you with “phrasing” as in “you could have phrased that better.”

Archer loves 1970s action movies and is a devotee of Burt Reynolds.  Burt and many other stars have made cameos as either themselves or other characters. Being cartoonized as an Archer character has sort of become a sign than an actor/actress has made it in Hollywood (or at the very least, they have a good sense of humor.)

Animation has definitely allowed the show runners to get away with things that would never fly in live action. Somehow drawings of butts make it to TV but real butts are a no no. Oh well. I’m not a prude or anything I’m just wondering how the censors make this distinction.

Six seasons are available on Netflix.  They’re short, roughly twenty minutes long, so a good show to check out if you need a quick distraction.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy

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Sep 05 2016
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TV Reviews

TV Review – Mad Men (2007-2015)

Dun dun…dun dun…dun dun….dun dun…cartoon silhouette of a man falling out of a window combined with violin music.

Hard drinking, chain smoking 1960s advertising men and Christina Hendricks’s jumbotrons = a compelling historical drama.

BQB here with a review of Mad Men.

3.5 readers, I like to consider myself an educated person. I read books and shit after all.

But few shows brought to life for me the women’s rights struggles as this show did.

Ironically, that’s not what the show is about but it is what I’ll probably always remember it for.

The set-up – Don Draper (Jon Hamm) lives the life of a free wheeling, perpetually fornicating Madison Avenue advertising executive (aka he is a “Mad Man.”)

Because its the 1960s, he’s pretty much free to boink any babe he wants and just tell his wife he had to stay late at work if she asks any questions.

In fact, his comrades at the firm pretty much do the same thing.  His boss, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and his underling Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) rival Don in their hard drinking, smoking, and extramarital affairs.

We often look to the past as simpler, more innocent times yet this show does put on display things that were commonplace in the past that would turn a head today, the most glaring example that everyone at the firm has their own fully stocked bar in their office and walking around the office with a cocktail in one hand and a smoke in the other happened all the time.

Good luck trying that today.

The formula is pretty standard:

  • Don cheats on his wife because he was once a poor bum who never thought he’d amount to anything and now that he is on top and the world is his oyster he feels this driving need to drink, smoke and boink as much as possible before his life is over.
  • Extramarital boinking is fun for five minutes but then he realizes family is the real deal, that one night stands will never bring him the long lasting happiness that being a family man will.
  • Don decides to straighten up only to start boinking again. In his defense, women just throw themselves at him so it is hard to avoid the boinking. It is easy for me to say that I’m not an evil boinker since no one is offering to boink me.
  • Don’s colleagues at the firm all experience the “be faithful to your spouse vs. boink while you can” conundrum.
  • Along the way, we learn a lot about the history of commercial advertising, how some of the advertising campaigns that fool us into buying crap we don’t need got started and continue today.

There are times when the show seems tedious, like it is going nowhere.  I get the main premise, i.e. love the one that’s loyal to you because the side action will never be as loyal.

If I didn’t bear a striking resemblance to a gargoyle, I would take this to heart and tell the side action to take a hike. Alas, I am too hideous to attract side action.

But maybe I’m the lucky one. Maybe Don would have been better off if he weren’t so damn handsome and having so many women throwing themselves at him, demanding that he be unfaithful.

I mentioned the women’s rights movement earlier.  So, what I noticed is that Betty (January Jones) who is super hot and frankly, would be enough for me (I’d be racing home from the office to get all up in that) basically has to put up with Don’s bullshit.

She’s a housewife. No money. No career. No job prospects. If you’re a 1960s housewife and your husband cheats on you, your choices are a) put up with it and lose your dignity or b) leave and be poor because the best job you’ll be able to find is waitressing if you’re lucky and also you’ll lose the kids because your husband has the money to hire a lawyer and you don’t.

So thanks a lot, Don, you big time douche. Dudes like you who had no idea how good you had it created a world where women had to take charge and alas, I don’t have January Jones waiting for me when I come home now.

Aside from the man drama, you also have Joan (Hendricks) and her enormous sweater cannons, which are basically characters in and of themselves and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) paving the way for women in business, showing what working women had to go through.

Throughout the series, we see Peggy go from mousey secretary to female Don Draper while Joan must navigate her way through a sea of perverts who want access to her sweater cannons on her quest to be taken seriously as a businesswoman.

All seven seasons available on Netflix. Set your TV to widescreen mode so you can take in Joan’s chest rockets in their entirety.

Seriously, its like watching a movie when you the theater is packed and you have to sit in that damn row that’s right up against the screen.  You have to look to the left to see the left boob then crane your neck to the right just to see the right boob.

Very stressful.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Sep 05 2016
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TV Reviews

TV Review – Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

I am the one who reviews!

High school chemistry teacher with cancer + his former student who calls everyone “bitch” = show that most critics would agree is the best television show of the twenty first century thus far.

BQB here with a review of Breaking Bad.

When this show came out in 2008, someone close to me had just died from cancer, so I wasn’t interested at all.  I saw the previews for it and was like, “eh” then I saw the previews for Showtime’s The Big C, a show that came out around the same time about a woman trying to keep her life together while fighting cancer and I was just like, “Look Hollywood, cancer is not funny or glamorous and it is the last thing I want to see on TV when I’m looking for an escape, thank you very much.”

So the years passed and then somewhere in the early 2010s I heard people talking about this show so I gave it a chance on Netflix and was immediately hooked.  And from what I’ve heard, the invention of streaming media breathed life into this and a lot of other shows.

Because when you think about it, a show about a high school chemistry teacher dying from cancer doesn’t exactly sound like good time appointment viewing, but once it was available in a format for people to check out when they had a free moment, boy howdy did they get hooked.

And truth be told, the show isn’t so much about cancer as it is a study of a) the sadness people feel when they reach the end of their lives feeling like they never reached their full potential and b) how much the legal system keeps us all behaving like good doobies without us ever realizing it.

Remove a) the fear of dying because you are already dying and b) the fear/humiliation of ending up in prison (because you’re dying) and the nicest person you know might end up walking down an evil path.

The set-up – Walter White (Bryan Cranston) was, in his youth, a promising chemistry scholar who starts a business with friends Elliot (Adam Godley) and Gretchen (Jessica Hecht).

Walter sells his share of the company early, the company becomes huge, like Facebook huge.  Meanwhile, Walter grows old and bitter, having spent his life in mediocrity as a high school teacher with a part time job at a car wash just to make ends meet.

Somehow he manages to snag a hot wife, Sklyer (Anna Gunn) while his son, Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) oozes happiness and gets along as a typical teenager despite a handicap.

When Walt is diagnosed with terminal cancer, his despair over his untapped potential haunts him. He’ll die without using his genius brain to make it big.

Alas, his brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris), a DEA agent, takes Walt on a ride along.  Walt catches a glimpse of just how much cash a good drug dealer rakes in and the little hamster starts rolling around the wheel in his brain.

What begins as an idea to use his chemistry know how to cook crystal meth in order to leave some extra cash behind for his family turns into a long journey into the proverbial heart of darkness, as Walt uses his smarts and fearlessness (because, hey, he’s dying anyway) to rise to the highest ranks of the criminal underworld.

He takes on Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), his former student turned junkie as his partner in crime and together, they become expert meth cooks.  As Jesse becomes like a second son to Walter, their relationship is sometimes tragic and sometimes even hilarious.

Add to the mix criminal lawyer (the show stresses you are to read this as a “lawyer who is a criminal”) Saul Goodman (veteran comedian Bob Odenkirk) who steals the show with his obnoxious TV lawyer ads.  Saul teaches the boys how to launder their money, dodge law enforcement, get out of trouble, etc. etc.

Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) is the old ex-cop/problem fixer that Walt works with. The combination of the grizzled old man who has seen and done it all and the chemistry teacher who sees things through gentrified eyes is comical.

Meanwhile, Giancarlo Esposito as crime boss Gus Fring is one of the scarier bad guys on television.

Throughout the series, Walt struggles to keep his public and private lives separate.  He continues to pose as a good dad and husband while sneaking off to cook meth and deal with criminals with Jesse.

All the while, lovable Hank, and I do mean lovable, is chasing some criminal without realizing the man he wants is his beloved brother-in-law that he spends the weekends with grilling burgers and shooting the breeze.

If anything, the Hank/Walt dynamic is what really makes the show. The show runners could have made Hank the stereotypical tough guy cop but instead they made Hank an average joe.  He loves his wife, Skyler’s sister Marie (Betsy Brandt), loves his in-laws Walt and Skyler, loves his nephew Walt Jr. and brews beer in his garage as a hobby.  He is, one might say, a true mensch.

The star of the series is Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator and man behind the scenes.  Every detail, every little thing that happens means something.  Take notes as you watch because if someone so much as sneezes it will turn out to be important later. Not letting a single second of time go wasted has become Gilligan’s signature.

So many shows take off and then descend into chaos.  The actors get too big for their britches and want to leave for bigger, better things.  Ironically, prior to this show, Bryan Cranston wasn’t that well known, his other biggest acting gig having been as the father on Malcolm in the Middle.

Like Walt, Bryan found fame and fortune late in life (albeit legally) but he never forgot the viewers and juggled all the big movie roles that came his way with Breaking Bad, keeping it all together to keep the show going.

And sometimes writers run out of gas, but Vince and company keep viewers on the edge of their seats to the very end.

In fact, if you’re a wannabe writer, I highly suggest checking out this show. (At present, all five seasons are available on Netflix.)

And catch the prequel, Better Call Saul on AMC. It doesn’t have a lot to do with Breaking Bad but you get to learn how Saul and Mike worked together before Walt came along.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Sep 04 2016
3 Comments
TV Reviews

TV Review – Sons of Anarchy (2008-2014)

“Riding through this world…something something…a crow flies straight, look at us we’re all in leather…”

Guns. Bikes. Unlikely plots.

BQB here with a review of FX’s Sons of Anarchy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KngK8Kefv0Y

It has been off the air a couple years now, but surely you can find this show somewhere out there in the stream-a-verse.  In fact, at the time of this writing, Netflix has all seven seasons available.

Travel back with me to 2008, 3.5 readers. A show called The Sopranos had just wrapped up a year before and was groundbreaking in its ability to bring viewers to cable movie channels.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to copy the Sopranos by putting out a TV show featuring a crime family. “It’s the Sopranos on a boat! It’s the Sopranos in space!”

Who knew that a show that was “Sopranos on motorcycles” would last for seven seasons?

Ironically, “Hamlet with Bikers” would be a better alternate title as the conflict between Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), his mother, Gemma Teller (Katey Sagal) and his step-father, Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman) was the overall main plot point of the series.

The set-up?  Years prior to the start of the show, Jax’s after, John and Clay started the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club.  John died under mysterious circumstances, Clay marries Gemma and as a grown man, Jax reads his father’s letters (because if it is one thing bikers are known for it is their prolific writings) detailing his hopes that “SAMCRO” would one day become a legitimate organization for gear heads to bond together in the spirit of camaraderie and brotherhood, yadda yadda yadda.

Not happening under Clay’s watch.

And thus, the Sons of Anarchy formula is born:

  • The Sons agree to push drugs, run guns, or engage in some other illegal activity in league with another criminal organization.
  • Shit hits the fan and the Sons are shocked, absolutely SHOCKED to learn that pushing drugs, running guns, or conducting other illegal activities causes all manner of dangerous consequences.
  • The Sons want out of the aforementioned illegal activity, but to get out of it, they must somehow do some sort of illegal task for the criminal organization they aligned themselves with, or engage in more illegal activity on the behalf of a new criminal organization in order to get them to take on the job they signed up to do for the original criminal organization.
  • When all is said and done, the Sons expend massive amounts of time, energy, money, manpower, and yes, even life as members of their ranks are killed all the time and yet they never, ever turn a profit on any of the illegal activity they engage in. They are, by far, the worst criminals in the history of crime and one wonders why they don’t just take half the time, money and energy they use on crime and put it towards legitimate enterprise.

In fact, every week when this show was on the air, I yearned for the following scene that never happened:

:::Jax and the boys gather around the table.:::

JAX: OK. We need money. Any ideas?

TIG: Let’s sell drugs!

JUICE: Let’s run guns!

RANDOM MEMBER: Let’s take our profits from the Teller-Morrow Garage, utilize the assistance of a reputable asset management planner to invest in stocks and bonds that yield positive dividends and then use the proceeds to start more garages, gas stations, and tow truck companies, thereby taking our love of automobile repair and using it to become respectable members of society.

:::Gang looks at each other:::

JAX: Take a walk, Random Member. You’re out of the club! Surrender your cut!

FYI – “surrendering your cut” means taking away your spiffy Sons of Anarchy vest, by far the worst and most humiliating punishment one can suffer in the SAMCRO organization.

Every TV show requires you to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, this one more than others.

The fact that no one in the club ever thinks, “Gee whiz, I could make more money flipping burgers at McDonald’s than I do as Jax’s lackey” is something that you’re never supposed to think about, nor are you supposed to consider the fact that if the Sons would take all the planning skills they use to concoct their elaborate schemes, they could probably put those skills to work in legit fields.

I know whenever I see someone in the Fast and Furious hacking twenty computers at the same time I end up wondering why they just don’t get a job in Silicon Valley and the same logic applies here.

Above all else, you are also not supposed to ask yourself why Jax’s girlfriend, the beautiful Dr. Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff) gives Jax the time of day.

Jax and Tara had once been teenage sweethearts.  At the start of the show, Tara has become a doctor and returns to town to take a position as a surgeon (yes, she is a surgeon dating a motorcycle gang leader but you aren’t supposed to scratch your head over that one at all.)

Look I get it. Love makes people do strange things. The heart wants what it wants.

All I’m saying is that if I’m Jax and I’ve got a super hot doctor girlfriend, I’m going to be all like, “OK you shitheads have fun running those guns, I’m going to chill at home and change the kids’ diapers while my wife brings home the bacon. Shit, maybe I’ll get a part-time job at Auto Zone and get my two year associate’s degree to make the little woman proud.”

Sigh. Lady doctors, you’re all so unappreciated by your motorcycle gang leader boyfriends.

Funny thing about the show though is that as unlikely as the story arcs were, they got the fans talking about the show and if people are talking about your show, then you’ve struck gold.

And to show creator Kurt Sutter’s credit, that gold lasted seven seasons.

Charlie Hunnam is great as the morally conflicted Jax who yearns to go legit yet always has one more criminal misdeed to carry out to save his family and/or friends (again, put the “why doesn’t he just let his doctor girlfriend handle the money” question out of your mind).

Dayton Callie also provides an excellent performance as Wayne Unser, the equally morally conflicted police chief of Charming, California who begrudgingly works with the Sons out of a fear that they protect the town from worse evils.

Worth checking out but…suspend disbelief and uh…have a strong stomach as the bikers and various criminals aren’t exactly kind to each other throughout the show, as you might imagine.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWxyRG_tckY

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

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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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkt2fouOU0c

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.

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