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Ugh, I started watching this series, and only got a few episodes in before I cut it off. I should have listened to you the first time. I wasn't already depressed, but I could tell I was headed in that direction as I watched.

Captain Comics said:

Yeah, don't watch Chernobyl if you're already depressed. Especially the scene with the dogs.

I haven't heard much about AHS or Silicon Valley that wasn't corporate/entertainment journalism puffery. What can you guys tell me about them?

Apple+ dropped the first three episodes of For All Mankind the first night, and then went weekly (on Friday nights). The premise is that the Russians landed on the Moon two weeks before we did in 1969, so the Space Race didn't end -- we kept going to get a "win" and the Russians kept beating us, so we had to keep going. The most recent episode had us finally beating the Russians to finding ice on the Moon (which will allow for a permanent settlement) in 1971 or so. I have no idea what the next one will bring.

We. Are. Mesmerized.

They get the period stuff exactly right. For the most part our ensemble consists of white military/NASA types, who still had short hair in the late 1960s and a 1950s mindset. (I know, I was 11 years old in 1969, in a military family.) But the counter-culture is creeping in, with the dope-smoking, long-haired husband of an irreverent female astronaut a painter of acid rock album covers. And in the last episode we finally met the husband of the only black female astronaut* and he is a Vietnam combat veteran who is pretty pissed at having to go, and really pissed at privileged white people who didn't. 

Everyone smokes, all the time, everywhere. Men drink a lot and cheat on their wives. Women are reduced to stay-at-homes, which some embrace and some resent. Most action takes place in Houston and Cape Canaveral (mostly in bars and suburban homes).

It's a true ensemble. Some characters get a lot more air time than others, especially the Baldwins. The male is an astronaut, and played by Joel Kinnaman, who starred in the first season of Altered Carbon and was Rick Flagg in Suicide Squad. Mrs. Baldwin is played by the woman who was Patty Spivot on Flash. But mostly everyone gets some time, and nobody is all good or all bad. And there are no Mary Sues, male or female. It's dangerous stuff for real human characters, and the space scenes are edge-of-the-seat stuff, since success and survival aren't givens. And this NASA takes big chances, since we're behind in the race.

Also, Nixon is still a Dick, as he was back then. It's great, great stuff. 

* Yes, there is a black, female astronaut, and she didn't just appear like magic as happens so often in period pieces that try to pretend racism never happened. In fact, she is an astronaut because she is black, and is female, and this is all shown in the smoky-room conversations that place her in the program. It's actually very good writing.

Women have already joined the program, because the Russians have already put the first woman on the Moon, her picture has become a global sensation, and Nixon is livid that we got beat again. So a group of women are immediately recruited. In the smoky room, one woman after another is proposed and accepted or shot down (and some are historically accurate). A black woman with master's in both math and engineering (she was one of the "Hidden Figures" women, once again historically accurate) is proposed.

"I'm not putting someone in this program because they're black!" says the hard-bitten head of the astronaut program, the historically accurate Deke Slayton.

"You're putting her in the program precisely because she's black," responds the real power in the room, the president's rep. "Nixon wants us ahead of the curve on this one. Besides, I don't want Jesse Jackson crawling up my ass. Or, God help us, Ralph Abernathy."

Oh man, this is good stuff.

That sounds like a very good show. It occurs to me that if the Russians were continuing to compete with us regarding the Moon the space program wouldn't have been starved almost to death. We'd probably already have made it to Mars.

For the Christmas holiday, we binged The Moody's Christmas. As it was six half-hour episodes, it was pretty easy. 

The Moody's Christmas is another in the vein of "dysfunctional family members reunite for the holidays." Said members includes patriarch Sean (Denis Leary) and matriarch Ann (Elizabeth Perkins). The first episode opens with Mom in a rage firing a shotgun at various Christmas decorations -- including the star atop the household tree -- because the members of her brood have failed to come together for a "perfect"* Christmas. Each episode then covers a single day leading up to the finale on Christmas.

The dysfunctionality includes eldest son Sean Jr. (Jay Baruchel), a thirtysomething slacker who lives with his parents but refuses to join Dad in the family HVAC contracting business, because he has a dream of his own company -- launching people's ashes into the air with fireworks. Middle daughter Bridget (Chelsea Frei) arrives in frustration; she recently had a one-night stand with some guy and is grappling with what this means for her marriage and whether and how to tell her husband. Youngest son Dan (Francois Arnaud) is similarly discomfited, as he has just broken up with his latest girlfriend because he's iffy about moving in with her.

Over the course of the week, each one of them finds ways to make their problems worse. Dad's a recovering alcoholic, and some of his friends from AA are still repairing the bathroom, a job that should have been completed three months prior. Dan instantly becomes smitten with Cora, his cousin's girlfriend, and their flirtation consumes him over the week -- and wrecks his relationship with his own girlfriend. Bridget reconnects with a high-school friend, now the wrestling coach, who helps her get over her pain and confesses he had a crush on her back in the day. Dad helps Sean connect with a single mom who needs a quick furnace install. 

It's funny, and there are enough twists to keep things moving, with a happy yet true-to-the-dysfunction ending to cap it off. 

* A wise pastor once told me that striving for perfection is folly; it's impossible to achieve and the effort will only drive you crazy because you inevitably will fail. Strive for excellence, she said; that's possible.

We saved up The Mandalorian until the in-laws were in town, since they wanted to watch it and don't have Disney+. We watched the first seven (of 8) episodes over a few days.

It's pretty good. I like the spaghetti Western vibe. It's still Star Wars, though, so some things don't make a lick of sense. For example, the Mandalorian is asked by a guy with a grudge against him to do something, and he'll get something he wants in return. Obviously, it's a trap. The character knows it's a trap, so he brings back-up. When the bad guys make the expected heel turn, I'm waiting to see what his plan is ...

... and he doesn't have one. 

Well, there's one more episode to go (tomorrow), so maybe I'll be surprised. But it's hard to imagine, since one of his three-man team is dead, the bad guys have the MacGuffin, and he and his back-up (a woman played by an MMA fighter, who is appropriately impressive in fight scenes) are captured. Any plan that involves a third of his team getting killed isn't a very good plan.

But it's Star Wars, so I have a low bar for good writing. I'm sure it will all work out fine. The important thing is to enjoy the ride.

Your in-laws wanted to watch The Mandelorian?

Way to bury the lead there, man! You have the coolest in-laws around. I cannot even fathom trying to get my parents to take an interest at all.

My in-laws aren't like yours, Jeff -- they're not parents, they're peers. All of our parents, both sides, are dead. Today my in-laws consist of my wife's sister and her college-age daughter. In a get-together, I'm the oldest person in the room. And even given all that, there are some things the sister-in-law won't watch, as she's very religious. Whenever I pick something out for us to watch, I have to do a mental inventory in advance for possible sex scenes or dirty words. But she likes sci-fi, and The Mandalorian is clean-cut Disney, so it was right up her alley. By contrast, she was extremely offended by Sabrina last year, and we had to stop after one episode.

Watched The Mandalorian to the end, and it was a lot of fun. My wife said it was the best Star Wars movie she'd seen since Return of the Jedi, and I agree. It was essentially a Western, of course, but so was the original 1977 movie, only with hi-tech six-guns and horses. (Some war movie tropes were thrown in as well.) Pretty good TV.

If nothing else, it's worthwhile for the scene where two landspeeder Storm Troopers are stuck at the edge of town, waiting for the boss to order them back to base. Meanwhile, the boss is busy monologuing to The Mandalorian and his friends, who are trapped in what amounts to a Western saloon. "Has he said we can come in yet?" says one on his communicator. "Look," is the response, "he just shot an officer for interrupting him, so I'm not going to ask, OK?" They chit-chat, and it's pretty funny, because they are pretty clearly not the best and brightest. They also engage in a little target practice, and neither one of them could hit the broad side of a barn -- a metatextual wink to the audience, which was hilarious.

We also binged His Dark Materials over the course of three days. Also good TV, with A-list actors and production values. I never watched The Golden Compass -- the reviews were pretty bad -- so this is my introduction to this world. It's a good one, internally consistent with great imaginative leaps, that are explored through action and argument, rather than exposition. And the armored bears are terrific.

Dafne Keen (X-23 in Logan) carries the narrative burden, and she handles it superbly, like a much older pro. She's buttressed by some excellent British actors, including James McAvoy (Professor Xavier), Ruta Gedmintas (Dutch Velders in The Strain) and Will Keen (Dafne's father). The top two bad guys are just flat-out terrific, scary even when they're not moving or talking, played by actors unknown to me, Ruth Wilson (The Affair)  and Ariyon Bakare. Lin-Manuel Miranda (Broadway's "Hamilton") has a big role, but I liked him less than I thought I would -- too theatrical, which doesn't work very well in TV, where he's right in your lap and not 50 yards away on stage. Then again, he's playing a character described as "difficult to like," so maybe I'm not supposed to like him. Thankfully he only sings a little bit -- if they gave in to the temptation to let him go full musical I'd have turned it off.

One of the things I like about the show is the playful use of language. I think we can credit J.R.R. Tolkien and his linguistic prowess for that influence on today's fantasy books and shows (like Game of Thrones), where words are vaguely familiar because they're derived from various real languages. For example, the armored bears in HDM are a species called panserbjorn, which is the German word for tiger (panser) and the Old Norse word for bear (bjorn) mashed together. They are tiger-bears, which is an apt description.

The original books really slammed the Catholic Church hard, and while that's been lightened, the bad guys all work for the Magisterium. That's basically the Catholic Church, and it's a world-governing body. Anyway, all the titles of the church/government leaders are linguistically adjacent to what they'd be on Earth. ("Fra" baffled me for a second, because it sounded like "Frau," German for married woman/housewife. But then I realized it was meant to suggest "friar".)

Other such words proliferate. One of the bad guys is named MacPhail, which is basically "Son of Fail." That made me laugh.

I strongly recommend both shows. Up next: The Witcher. Reviews are "mixed," as they say, so I'm a little leery. Will report back.

We don't have DisneyPlus so my wife and I watched The Mandalorian over two weekends at my daughters place. We all enjoyed it - in fact my daughter was watching it for a second time. I think it is successful because it takes place in the Star Wars universe while avoiding the primary elements of the Star Wars/Skywalker saga. The production itself hearkens back to the original trilogy in the handling of characters, settings, right down to the wipes between scenes.

The prequels and sequels took themselves much too seriously and turned off much of their audience. The Mandalorian maintains the more light handed touch of the originals.

I'm waiting for the DVD.

doc photo said:


By golly, Doc, I think you've articulated my formerly hard-to-articulate feelings about Star Wars. I like them, but I don't take them seriously. But, as you say, they've taken themselves really seriously since The Phantom Menace. The more they take themselves seriously, the less I enjoy them.

Because Star Wars is utter, total, complete nonsense. It's a raft of cliche characters running around in a cliche setting (the Western, with some war movie tropes thrown in). It is not ambiguous. It is not mature. It's a Western, from the time when Westerns were aimed at children, and those Westerns were black and white stories with white hats and black hats, uncomplicated plots, and uncomplicated resolutions.

Further, it lifts the pacing, vibe and approach of the 1930s Saturday afternoon movie serial, complete with the scene-changing wipes. Which was deliberate.

Because not only does that ape the Western serial, it also apes Flash Gordon, which was what George Lucas originally set out to film. But nobody was interested. Then some young genius on staff suggested "Young Flash Gordon," an origin of sorts, which morphed into Star Wars.

And did George Lucas sit down, like George R.R. Martin and James S.A. Corey, and build out a world in his head or on paper, and a story with a beginning, middle and end, and then commit to filming it? No, he did not. He played it by ear, and George Lucas has a tin ear. That's why spaceships make noise in airless space and X-wings bank against non-existent atmosphere. That's why Luke and Leia kissed in the first movie, and then turned out to be siblings in the third. That's why the third movie was basically a remake of the first. That's why Anakin Skywalker's babysitter somehow found him attractive, despite, you know, changing his diapers or whatever.

The original trilogy had a lot of problems, especially in internal consistency, which I ignore because I didn't take them seriously. When I am forced to take them seriously ... well, to paraphrase CK, it takes all the fun out of it.

As a secondary note, that's why I don't really care about the so-called fans who got made at The Last Jedi for not doing whatever it is they wanted it do, and the other group of so-called fans who are mad at Rise of Skywalker for some reason. I don't even understand those reasons, because, again, I refuse to take all this nonsense seriously. I just let Star Wars movies wash over me with my brain turned off, and walk out of the theater with a happy grin.

I have never, for a single second, thought about Star Wars continuity and the broader history and geography of the Star Wars universe. George Lucas never did, so why should I?

So far I haven't seen a reason to subscribe to Disney+. Like Jeff, I can wait for the DVD to see The Mandalorian. I get a lot out of CBS All Access because I watch many CBS shows and prefer this to recording them (ditto Hulu).

The original Star Wars trilogy is worth multiple viewings. I've watched all of the later Star Wars movies but have never wanted to watch any of the others more than once.

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