Peace 47

I loved the way Bowen grandly pronounced the name, too, saying he was a “vessel for the eponymous rodent.” That sketch had so many good lines: “existing in the liminal space between the mall and the highway” and “a soundscape of pizza, games and soulful longing.” Also “To the Indian Ridge Little League team, your coach says pizza is for winners, so tonight you starve.” Lol. The cold open, Chuck E. Cheese and The Understudy were all sketches I went back and rewatched tonight because I enjoyed them that much the first time.

“The Lightning” (a song in two parts: so it’s called “The Lightning I” and “The Lightning II,” I guess). I have a true love/ hate relationship with their catalogue, but that one may be a new favorite. I was a massive “Sherlock” fan in the first part of the 2010s, so I thought I was generally acquainted with the range of Benedict’s talents, but I had no idea he could sing: that Chuck E. Cheese sketch was so weirdly hilarious to start with, but it was undoubtedly elevated by Benedict’s singing talents. I have to say that I had kind of soured a little bit on Cumberbatch a few years ago, just because he seemed so thirsty for an Oscar and always weirdly “on” in an off-putting way in interviews, but he won me over again last night. Being in the cold open was very impressive. Can you believe how fast his quick change was? @PeteMartell posted the backstage footage of Cumberbatch dancing before going out for his monologue, and he was there and ready to go through almost all of the opening credits! It was personally hilarious to me that they did another toilet sketch with Benedict. I was just posting in the media thread about my journey to acceptance of the toilet sketch from his first appearance, and they did another one to truly test me. :-) It was fine.

Well, to be Debbie Downer, I think the word on the street was that Rhea got fed up with Danny’s relentless cheating and insisted on the split, so they probably do get along better with the complete removal of the expectation that he be faithful to her. But it is probably nice for their kids (and grandkids?) that they seemed to be able to move on in friendship.

Ugh, I don’t know if I have it in me to finish this show. If there were only 1 episode left, maybe. But two just seems like more a slog than I have in me to endure. I guess I have to see what the verdict will be. I’m half-tempted just to look at spoilers and call it a day. I didn’t at all catch on to Kate being Holly until she went out on her balcony and that screechy/ blurry effect started, and then I kind of saw where it was about to go. As an aside, how does a prosecutor afford such a nice flat in London? Are prosecutors in the UK paid substantially more than in the US? What happened to Kate is tragic, but it’s very hard to have sympathy for her when she is engaging in a massive conflict of interest in the case. I also found it strained credulity that Holly would apparently just up and change her name after being raped. (Unless Kate is her middle name that she elected to go by, her new last name is a married name and she is now divorced?) That seemed like a narrative convenience to make this story work.

I don’t watch Picard, either (saw a tiny bit of S1 but it just didn’t grab me enough to subscribe). However, I looked up your question, and a Star Trek fan site says that the Seven/ Chakotay ship is not ever acknowledged or addressed in the show. The showrunner has apparently said that it is safe to assume the relationship was over at least by the time of a few years prior to when the Picard timeline picks up. I will be watching Picard season 3 whenever that comes out, though, because they have announced that the entire core TNG cast (except Wesley) are returning as S3 cast members and since I will go down with the Picard/ Crusher ship, I guess I am ready to be disappointed by the arc of their story one last time!

I did a whole-series watch of Cheers when it was on Netflix a few years ago (as an aside, it’s one of very few shows that, for me, didn’t have a noticeable quality dip in later seasons). Contrary to what the writer/ producers themselves have said, I could at least see a world with Diane and Sam lasting for the long haul. Something kept pulling them back together that I don’t think was purely based only on sexual attraction. Sam made efforts to take interests in things Diane cared about, in efforts to connect with her. It’s not like he hated everything about her world (like how he got really interested in reading that rare edition book of hers, but ended up accidentally ruining the book.) I don’t remember Diane as much doing the same (but it’s been a few years since I’ve watched), but she tried to be supportive, like when he went for his GED (trying to celebrate him bettering himself). They seemed to like spending time together domestically (like when Coach was third wheeling their relationship). Now, the show is definitely of a time and place, and there are elements of their relationship played for laughs that are abusive. But I did like them together overall. Re: the talk about Voyager: that show is not my jam, but I’m a The Next Generation fan, so as long as we’re talking Trek, I really liked Picard and Crusher and was disappointed that they only teased their relationship, like, once a season. The final season episode “Attached,” where Beverly discovers how far back and how deeply in love Picard was with her, was just crackling with chemistry.

What first came to my mind was the backwards toilet sketch. I actually went back and found it on YouTube because I remember being actively angry at the inanity of that sketch, but on rewatching it now, I just see a middle of the road sketch that wasn’t good, but wasn’t the worst thing. So I’m on board for him coming back after rethinking my entire approach to backwards toilet humor. 😉 Arcade Fire will always be “New Cast Member or Arcade Fire?” to me when they show up on SNL. Now that was a good sketch.

I think the long gap between seasons is my personal biggest problem with prestige streaming TV, but I think that problem is independent of whether the show was available to binge or was only available week-to-week. We’re talking about shows that have 6-10 episode seasons, and then are gone for years. I do get that limited work commitments are the way to attract talent, and some of these high-concept sci-fi shows need extensive time and money to insert SFX because they’re not, say, using cardboard to portray a rocky cave anymore, but when I have to wait more than one year for a new season, it definitely tempers my enthusiasm for the return of all but my most beloved of shows. I remember the buzzy TV shows of the early Aughts, like my personal favorite, Alias, or one that more can probably relate to, Lost, and there was chatter and discussion and dissection and speculation all through the hiatus that kept going continuously through to the next premiere. Now, you’ve got a show like Loki that did air week-to-week and had some juicy possibilities to speculate on (that will almost certainly disappoint, lol), but what can drive a conversation for the 1.5+ years between seasons that it is likely to be? (Season 1 ended Summer 2021 and Season 2 isn’t even in production, possibly not even in pre-production.) Re: the subscriber drop at Netflix, the only thing I know for sure is that no one with very young children dropped it because “Cocomelon” is like catnip to little kids. My nephews will go into an absolute trance broken only by a laugh at something funny onscreen whenever that is on the TV. 😆

Going back to the Netflix discussion for a minute, now that they are in hot water with investors, I guess Netflix is very serious about “no password sharing anymore” and per this CNBC article, is going to implement on a wide scale their previously discussed plan of charging more for “password sharing.” I still don’t know exactly how this is going to work, and the end of the article alludes to the fact that it may be difficult to parse a family member “temporarily” living away from home from a password-sharer but they can easily crack down on people with “15 profiles” as suspected password sharers. Is it going to be like my Spectrum app, where if you are not on your home WiFi, they can tell? And would they charge you for using a profile away from your home base? But what if you have a VPN? Is it just going to be a flat charge on everyone who has more than one (or two) profile? (But then couldn’t password sharers just decide to collapse viewing onto one profile if they really didn’t want to pay more? And isn’t the bulk of password sharing just people with 2-3 profiles on their account?) I don’t know why they missed their subscriber projection so badly last quarter, and it’s obviously not good to see subscriber base shrinkage, but it surprises me a bit how apocalyptic the market treated the event. I would have thought that Netflix would be in a more mature phase of its business cycle versus other streaming services (having been around longer) and so would not be expected to have the same growth rate, but I guess their massive investments in content require that kind of exuberant growth on a continuous basis.

I haven’t watched anything on Netflix in ages, but I guess with it being in the news so much this week in connection with the stock price drop, it was top of mind tonight. I saw this in the top 10 so I clicked without knowing a thing about it, which I rarely ever do. The whole time I was watching this episode, it was gnawing at me that this had an “artistic signature” in terms of style, writing, editing, something that I couldn’t place. Of course when I saw the end credits and “David E. Kelley” as the EP, I was like, aha! This definitely seems like it fits within his oeuvre. James is such a piece of shit. I was going to say “crap,” but he deserves the uncensored version. It was an affair that went on for 5 months but meant nothing? Please. Since they didn’t show the woman with whom he had the affair at all, I assumed that she was going to turn up dead and there would be a mystery about whether he directly or indirectly caused it. I am a little nonplussed with the rape allegation because I’m worried that this will turn into a story of “she seduced him and falsely cried rape,” which is an exhausting narrative that I’m not stoked to see dramatized. I found the timeline toggle to be confusing, too. I guess it was to leave a thread of uncertainty throughout the episode to make you wonder how this was going to end up in court, but it felt more like, “Michelle Dockery is in this, really, just hang in there!” Minus 1 million points to the show for depicting vomit. I hate it. Shows, find another way to depict revulsion, trauma and shock. Sienna Miller was good. I couldn’t help but think about how she had to portray the publicly wronged woman here when she had to do that in real life after Jude Law cheated on her with his kids’ nanny. Bet she had some stuff to draw on for this performance.

Those were my favorites, too. I enjoyed the first TikTok sketch from the Billie Eilish episode so much, I actually have gone back and watched it a couple of times on YouTube in the weeks (months? time has no meaning) it aired, so I was really happy to see a sequel here. I still think the first is the best, no contest, but the “studying for the LSATs” running joke was solid. Like @vb68, Please Don’t Destroy is becoming a major highlight for me, as well. I was really scratching my head about the Six Flags dancing guy because I thought I remembered reading in the news that Six Flags had retired the mascot, and I just looked it up, and they did: in 2010?! Why they did a sketch on him, so early in the show, was so bizarre. I enjoyed the Black Eyed Peas sketch, though. If I were to bet money, I’d wager that was borne from a writer having old iTunes purchases on shuffle while working late and having an existential crisis over how nonsensical the lyrics can be. But really, perhaps none of us can truly appreciate the sublime poetry of “I'm so 3008 // You so 2000 and late.”

When he was starting out in his career, he performed with the Great Lakes Theater, based in Cleveland. He’s stayed connected to the company over the years and helped them raise funds for a theater renovation. Great Lakes does a lot of educational outreach and is a very worthy organization, just by the by, so it’s nice that Hanks has stayed connected. I actually saw a matinee performance of The Glass Menagerie that they staged for school kids when my class took a long-ass field trip to see it. (Seriously, we barely left town for any field trip that I can ever recall and we drove almost 2 hours for this one!)

I agree that I don’t know exactly how he could prove her op ed specifically cost him work. Contemporaneous articles (like this one from the Hollywood Reporter) that were published at the time of his removal from the new Fantastic Beasts movie noted that Warner Brothers didn’t make a decision about getting Depp off the picture until after the UK court decision (which was well after the op ed was published) and that Warner Brothers didn’t want to take any action against him until there was a court determination involved (even though it wasn’t a criminal case). (In addition, he got paid his full salary for that film due to his pay-or-play contract.) And apparently Heard’s lawyers are indicating that while Disney was considering ditching Depp from the Pirates franchise by collecting negative news about him, they never collected the op ed as part of their efforts, so the op ed didn’t register in the public consciousness as a hit job on Depp. But Depp has some unsettling diehard stans, and if some of them are on the jury, who knows?

I guess that I was just trying to single out one highlight of that sketch while also not holding the sketch up as one of my favs of the season or anything like that, since it wasn’t a laugh a minute. If I were to dissect it (and to paraphrase EB White, kill the joke in the process), I would say they tried to diffuse the “domestic gun violence” angle by Ego showing up with a Super Soaker, but she did also say in the sketch at one point that she was going to go get her “real gun,” so that angle was always there in the background. I know the point of the sketch was to contrast what these calm, rational therapists tell their patients in session with the messy relationship drama they could probably encounter in real life, but it did put me off-balance, not knowing where this gun violence angle was going. I’m not offended; I just didn’t think it was hilarious.

I know it’s a joke for a 10-year-old, but I really liked during Update when Michael was reporting how numerous people allegedly got sick from a bad batch of Lucky Charms cereal and sang “That’s tragically suspicious!” to the tune of the Lucky Charms jingle. The therapist sketch had some issues that held it back, but I did like when Ego was accusing Punkie of texting “Clarissa”; Punkie denied it, and Jake was on the floor, still with Punkie’s phone in hand and pipes up, “Actually you did text Clarissa.” That type of joke when someone just doesn’t know when to stop talking is pretty funny to me.

Bill Simmons alluded to tensions between Arians and Brady on his podcast a few weeks (a month?) back. Allegedly, Arians getting out of the head coaching job was a condition to Brady coming back to play. It’s been a few weeks, so I don’t remember exactly what their issues were, but I think Brady had game plan suggestions last season that Arians disregarded. Such a terrible shame about Dwayne Haskins. I didn’t know all that much about his serious on- and off-field issues, but I just feel very sad that he’ll never get a chance to turn things around.

“Scrub” can mean to get rid of something (like scrubbing a space launch), but Nolan also used it correctly with this alternate meaning. He meant to (metaphorically) clean all the detritus from the video content (i.e., pour through the content and cast off the meaningless conversations) to ultimately get to an underlying piece of evidence that is useful (like cleaning dirt off a floor so you can see the tile). I’ve heard it used that way. But it’s the same disclaimer they’ve used since the beginning of time on this show, even back when the promos used to advertise that the case was “ripped from the headlines.” That same disclaimer was used to say the case actually really wasn’t. That is CYA language to avoid the show being sued for slander or for any kind of intellectual property claim by the inspiration(s) for the story. L&O always takes a sharp detour from the original inspiration for the story, so they wanted to be clear that they are not trying to impugn the character of the real-life people or impinge on IP that the subjects may be shopping to other outlets. I never watched Hannibal because, while I know it received rapturous professional reviews and had a hardcore fanbase, the content of that show could not have been less appealing to me. So I have no frame of reference for appreciating Hugh Dancy. But I really do not like him as the EADA in this role, and I can’t pinpoint exactly why. I watched a couple of Linus Roach-as-ADA L&O eps on Sundance last night after watching this one on NBC, and I enjoyed watching Cutter 10,000 times more. Maybe it is that Cutter was a shockingly flawed guy in unexpected ways, so it was interesting to see how things played out as he worked his way through a problem. With Price, I’m getting nothing. I thought he was supposed to be Mr. Ethical in episode 1, but then last night, Maroun had to be the one to persuade Price that the interview evidence was exculpatory. It’s fine if he does not retain his pilot-episode characteristics (we all know that L&O goes over the top introducing at least one extreme element in a character, then typically dials it down to a “1” within 5 episodes), but start giving me something with this guy. Is he a family man? I don’t know if that is an interesting angle since they did it with Jamie Ross, but maybe it’s something? I know people love the actor, so maybe I just need to give it more of a chance. They definitely seem to be giving him more lines and screen time than everyone else, so he needs to be the lynchpin of the enterprise.

For some reason, I really enjoyed how this Angelo sketch ended. He and his drummer knew the song, and everyone ended up happy. It was strangely sweet.

It’s a sad situation that Ezra has spiraled so severely, and I hope they have some people in their life that can stage an effective intervention or coordinate psychological support or whatever it is that Ezra needs. But aside from the personal mess of all this, how are they going to do any press for the Flash movie? I heard that they hid Ezra in the press and trailers for the new “Fantastic Beasts” movie, and studios have hidden Ansel Elgort and Armie Hammer in recent press for movies where they were co-leads. But here, Ezra is the titular lead. Maybe they market it as a Michael Keaton film? I guess now that the movie has been delayed yet again, there would theoretically be time for Ezra to rehab and do a tour of contrition, but yikes, what a mess.

Another North Carolinian here. The schadenfraude I’m feeling tonight over Duke’s loss is going to power me for the next 4 weeks. Sorry, not sorry. 😁 It was a genuinely great game. I can’t believe what an all-time classic it was.

I agree that there was some hesitancy(?) within the slap sketch, and Update was much more focused in its POV. Since Chris is one of their own, I was ready for them to go for the jugular on Will in the sketch itself, dishing out all the jokes on Will in his capacity as a heckler that I’m sure Chris Rock held back on. They instead took a more “this dude be crazy” approach, which might be fair, considering that it seems like Will needs some serious help. The sketch did have its moments. But it might have been funnier to do it from the perspective of someone else in power, though, as opposed to nameless seat-fillers. Like Will Packer feeling pretty good that he’s going to get better reviews than Steven Soderbergh last year, or the show running on time, and then bam. Or get the “Summer of Love” producers in there. Questlove said that he was doing transcendental meditation taught to him by Jerry Seinfeld(!) during the slap and missed it. There’s some humor there. I also agree on the Cold Open comment. I like Mikey and Alex a lot, but they will never beat Taran and Bobby as the Fox & Friends hosts.

John Campea made an astute comment on his YouTube channel this week: every single joke told is going to offend someone. Now, that may not literally be true (prop/ physical comedy or self-owns are two exceptions that come to mind), but I actually don’t think his point is that far off. E.g., Someone makes a joke about the indignities of the cancer treatment they or a loved one endured; someone else says it’s a horrible ordeal that shouldn’t be joked about at all. Comedy has many different flavors, of course, but parody, satire, incisive social observations and “roasts” of the powerful are all specific types that are always going to rub at least one person the wrong way. We all have our different trigger points. Part of what provokes the laugh in general is often the “shock” of pushing boundaries, tweaking social mores, etc. And those boundaries change over time, too. Rather than separating comedians into categories of offensive or inoffensive, I think it’s more that certain comedians don’t take the hint when they push up against a boundary, receive negative feedback and just continue to plow ahead, leading them to double down on racist, socially insensitive or bigoted humor. Maybe it is a function of age, for some of them (Leno comes to mind as someone who just never updated his outlook and got left behind, comedy-wise, as a result), or taking obvious pleasure in angering people (Dave Chappelle being the most obvious, but Michael Che to a lesser extent). I really enjoy comedy; I try to choose to support comedians who try to be sensitive and learn. Marc Maron, while not exactly my cup of tea in terms of stand-up, at least expressly acknowledges that he tries to grow and learn with the times. And I think Patton Oswalt and Sarah Silverman have said the same. I’m okay with finding comedians that occasionally step in it funny, as long as their less glowing moments are not glorified. Leno is an interesting case where he finally issued an apology last year for his most recent Asian jokes, but perhaps only because that was a condition laid out for him in order to proceed with his new game show.

I agree that I think this was his motivation for resigning. In my opinion, each action that he has taken since the moment of the slap has made the situation incrementally worse. Maybe the slap is a moment of madness: truly terrible, but perhaps not entirely unfixable with immediate damage control. But then the president of the Academy asks him (or asks Will’s representative to ask him) to leave, and Will just plain refuses. He instead stays and gives an entirely self-serving acceptance speech without apologizing to Chris, the “Summer of Love” team or the Williams family. He goes out and parties all night instead of exhibiting a modicum of shame. He issued statements only through written PR, which, while well-crafted, come across as disingenuous when he is not seen speaking the actual words. He resigns in an apparent attempt to preempt harsher consequences. It just gets a little bit worse with each step.

I think that’s true. Jimmy Kimmel even mentioned that the joke was not really funny when he was on Bill Simmons’ podcast on Sunday night right after it happened. He was definitely on Chris’s side but just gently noting that it wasn’t much of a “joke.” That reminds me of my favorite exchange from Seinfeld, when Jerry becomes offended by the religious jokes that former Catholic-turned-Jewish convert Tim Whatley is telling. He suspects that Tim converted only to be able to tell both Catholic and Jewish jokes without repercussions. Jerry goes to a priest (I think Tim’s former priest) to complain and mentions that they’re old, unfunny jokes to boot. The priest says, “And this offends you as a Jewish person?” Jerry responds, “No! It offends me as a comedian!”

Oh no. “Glad You Came” (2012) was such a bop. The Wanted’s music was so energetic and catchy. God, cancer sucks. His poor wife and two very, very young children.