The Deuce 2.4: The Ad Lib

Well, The Deuce 2.4 began tonight with full-frontal nudity for Larry Brown, in a series of stills on his way to becoming a porn actor.  And the best scenes in the episode continued to be with Larry.

The set-up, like most of the threads in The Deuce, is trite in terms of overall movies and television. But it achieves a surprising power in The Deuce.   Candy is having trouble getting a good script.   She can't do it herself.  She hires a young, hippy-like guy.  He doesn't know what he's talking about.  Larry can't remember his lines.  Candy comes up with the brilliant solution: ad lib it.   And it's great.  Larry's no Brando, but he ad libs an effective scene.

Otherwise, the killing of one of Bobby Dwyer's working girls in a fire set by the opposition is a worse assault on decency than usual, because she is, literally, a girl, just 15 years old.   The pimp and prostitute and related stories are a lot more brutal and ugly than the porn movie stories, where Candy played by  Maggie Gyllenhaal adds a real spark.   Similarly, Larry Brown played by Gbenga Akinnagbe is much more compelling and unusual as porn star than pimp.

The Deuce with its short eight seasons is now half over with 2.4.   It's a dead certainty that the mob war over the bars and parlors will result in the death of at least a few characters.   The question is not only who, but how major?

Here's my prediction, based on nothing but hunch:  Frankie.   The truth is, after the first episode in this season, he's had a minor role.  His death would transform Vincent into someone very different.  We saw tonight how Vincent was affected by the sight of someone being shot dead in plain sight.

We'll see what happens in the weeks ahead.

See also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

Yesterday's Victory for Justice, Democracy, and Reason Depicted on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word

What I saw last night on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word on MSNBC was one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen on television.   Republican Senator Jeff Flake being talked to in the elevator by Maria Gallagher and Ana Maria Archila.  Flake later listening intently as his Democratic colleague Chris Coons made the eminently rational case for an FBI investigation of the Kavanaugh sexual assault charges.  Flake standing up, walking by Coons, and signaling his colleague that he wanted to talk.  All leading to the result:  the FBI, ordered by Trump who had no choice - because Kavanaugh needs Flake's as well as Sen. Sue Collins' or Lisa Murkowski's votes to be confirmed - is now conducting this investigation.

Lawrence aplty called this historic moment in American and U. S. Senatorial history "a victory for decency".  Maria Teresa Kumar said "that's what democracy looks like".   Both true.   And as media historian, I would also add this was a wonderful moment for television.  Lawrence and his producers put the segment together perfectly.  Lawrence's narration was perceptive and sage, like everything else he says.  Only television, only with us in American homes since the late 1940s, could have done this.

And it also is a vindication of John Milton's view that if truth and falsity are allowed to fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, our human rationality will award the victory to truth.  Not for everyone all the time.  But for enough people enough times to make democracy work.  Were Milton able to be a guest on Lawrence's show last night, he would have no doubt said that Jeff Flake's decision was evidence of this power of our rational minds.   It's not easy being reasonable when emotions run high.  But Gallagher and Archila provided the wake-up call, making Flake realize that something had to be done, and Coons the path forward, with his focus on the FBI investigation.  Flake's mind was open enough to hear it all, and rational enough to be persuaded by it.

Democracy has been called, with due cause, the least worst form of government.  Yesterday demonstrated that in a way I've never seen before.  For those like me who view Kavanaugh on the Supreme Courts as an affront to everything we hold in high esteem in our democracy, his fate is still undecided.   But we pulled back from the cliff yesterday, and a way that all champions of justice, democracy, and reason should applaud.

Mayans M. C. 1.4: Finger and Face

Mayans M. C. keeps getting better and better, with an altogether excellent episode 1.4 in all sorts of ways.

First, it has my favorite line in the series so far, a line which perfectly typifies the mix of brutality and cool that is the essence of the narrative.  It comes from Angel, who tells E. Z. to cut off a dead guy's finger, so they can have continuing access to his phone.   E.Z. objects with "seriously?" And Angel replies "you're lucky it's a not a new phone, you'd be cutting off his face".  What can I say?  Brutal and ugly, yes, but thoroughly hip to the latest tech.

Meanwhile, the big continuing reveal in the plot is that there is a lot more to Felipe than even was revealed last week, when we saw how handy he was with an old-fashioned gun.   Tonight we learn that Reyes was an identity he assumed in 1985.  So, who was he before?  My guess is some kind of very powerful drug cartel leader, but we'll just have to see.   The Reyes are one complex and compelling family.

Also significant is Coco's sister really being his daughter.   The Reyes may be the most complex, but it's looking like no one in the M. C.  has a straightforward family life.   The advice that Marcus gives E. Z. to be loyal to club above family may make sense, but it will be difficult if not impossible to follow for just about everyone.  Just as it always is.

And last but not least, there's the tunnel that Angel's company literally falls into.  Tunnels are always good conduits of storylines - in reality like El Chapo as well as in fiction - and it will be fun to see what this tunnel brings to the Mayans M. C.

See also: Mayans, M. C. 1.1: Pulling Us In ... Mayans M. C. 1.2: The Plot Thickens ... Mayans M. C. 1.3: Two Presidents

 

Manifest 1.1: Canterbury Voices

I reviewed the 9 and 1/2 minute sneak peek of Manifest in August, and said it had some outstanding possibilities as a time-travel drama.  I therefore watched the full first-hour debut tonight with great expectation.  And it was good.  But ...

It had very little to do with time travel.  There were some nice time-travel touches, like twins before the airplane which took the passengers five+ years into the future, now separated by those same 5+ years, since one was on the plane and the other on the ground.  Or the almost-fiancee who married someone else, because, well, he thought his girlfriend had died on that plane.

But the real story is that all the people on the plane - captain as well as passengers - hear voices which tell them important things, like the need to free two girls who had been locked in a metal shop.  That was the main story of tonight's episode, which ended with a promise of who knows how many other stories from the other passengers.

So Manifest may well be a Canterbury Tales of time-travel.  Or, this may be a Canterbury Tales of astounding stories in which the vehicle - not of the tales but the people who deliver them - is a plane that skips ahead 5+ years.   This episode also ends with the question of who or what is responsible for this?

Possibilities are people from a future far from ours, aliens, beings from another dimension, the Deity, take your pick.  There's powerful material here - including a boy (one of the twins) who otherwise would have succumbed to leukemia, but now can receive a life-saving treatment not yet available when he boarded the plane in 2013.  So I'll keep watching Manifest, even if, at this point, it may well have little more about time travel.

See also Manifest Sneak Peek 9 and 1/2 Mins:  Could Be Outstanding

The Deuce 2.3: The Price

I've been saying how glad I am that The Deuce is focusing much more on the porn business this season, and commensurately less on the prostitution and pimp business - what can I say, I'm a media historian - and episode 2.3 seemed to be doing the same tonight, until it turned it all around.

Lori and Harvey won awards in California - I cheered - and Candy gets an appointment with a money-man who can finance her "Little Red Riding Hood" movies - actually, two movies, one X-rated, one not, to maximize its appeal.  And the guy seems interested.  He offers to write a $10, 000 check.  Good news!  But ... only if she performs fellatio on him, as he's writing the check, to use the courteous term for that.  Candy considers, and agrees.  We can see that she's disgusted.  The price she has to pay for leaving her life of prostitution in the past is to be a prostitute, albeit briefly, again.  In her final scene of the evening, we see her thinking, unhappily, about what she had to do.  But she takes out the check and props it up on her table.  She's determined to make it as a director, whatever it takes.  She thinks, ultimately, that she made the right decision.

Lori has a different crash with reality.  She comes home to New York, elated about her win, and tells CC that she's finished "tricking".  He throws her trophy against the wall, and partially breaks it.   CC has no intention of letting her go.  Lori is not likely to put up with that, in the long run.  But, for now, her award has no impact on her status as prostitute.

So the story of the emergence of the porn profession from the prostitute profession, at this point in The Deuce, is that the emergence is no easy path.   The advance from prostitute to porn director or star either requires more prostitution, or can be blocked by the prostitute's pimp.

I'll see you back here next week with another report on how this story progresses.

See also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

Joan Baez at the Beacon Theater

There are so many ways I could begin my review of Joan Baez's superb concert at the Beacon Theater tonight -

• This is the second time in less than a week that Tina and I attended a farewell concert - Paul Simon's at the Prudential Center in Newark last week and Joan Baez's tonight.  In both cases, the concerts were so good that it's hard to believe these masters of music, voice, and lyrics are retiring from touring.  
• Joan Baez, always current and trenchant, sang a powerful Woody Guthrie song about immigrants.   We couldn't help thinking about Joy Reed's interview of Jose Antonio Vargas at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn Wednesday night.
• One of Joan's last songs was Paul Simon's "The Boxer" - also one of the last encores that Paul Simon sang last week.  "I am leaving but the fighter still remains" was never more apt.

And all of those openers are valid.   And there is much more to be said about Joan Baez's concert tonight.  She said, after one song - a song her sister Mimi sang all the time - that it's hard to sing and cry at the same time.  At several times in the concert, I felt the same way about applauding and crying.  Especially after she sang Zoe Mulford's "The President Sang Amazing Grace".  (Yes, that's exactly what the song's about.)

Baez sang one of her masterpieces early on - "Diamonds and Rust," her parting reflection about Bob Dylan.  This was after opening the concert with a Dylan song.  She followed with a wonderful rendition of Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune" - a lyricist who never received the recognition he deserved as someone right up there with Dylan.  And she sang several more Dylan songs, including the incomparable "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," which Baez linked to the state of the nation and world today.   After all these years, Joan Baez remains the best voice Dylan ever had.

And we do live in a world "where souls are forgotten," certainly by the White House and its minions.  Which means we need Joan Baez's voice more than ever.  I remain ever hopeful we can hear it again.

Mayans M. C. 1.3: Two Presidents

An excellent Mayans M. C. 1.3 this week, in which what struck me as the most potentially provocative thing in this explosively provocative series was the two Presidents of the two Mayan motor clubs.

One is Bishop, well played by Michael Irby, and head of the Mayans club in far-southern California.  The other is Marcus, well played by Emilio Rivera, head of the club more up north, and someone we saw in Sons of Anarchy.  The focus in Mayans M. C. is on Bishop's club, but Marcus's presence is not insignificant.

And this week we saw an important exchange between them.  After Bishop shoots and kills Jimmy - the surprise killing in this week's episode (almost every week has one) - he asks Marcus why Marcus did not want Bishop to tell his club about the planned killing beforehand.   Marcus's response indicates he doesn't trust Bishop's crew - Marcus suspects that someone in the southern chapter may be a rat.

This conversation between the Presidents demonstrates an important facet in Mayans, M. C. - there's not just one, but two, Mayans M. C, in this story, and I'd guess that sooner or later that number will be crucial.

Meanwhile, we also get a great scene from Felipe, when he takes a classic-looking gun and points it a detective keeping track of him and E. Z.   There's more to Felipe than meets the eye.  He's not only fiercely protective of his two sons.  He knows how to deal with pesky police.

Looking forward to more of this series.

See also: Mayans, M. C. 1.1: Pulling Us In ... Mayans M. C. 1.2: The Plot Thickens

 

The Sinner Season 2 Finale: The Ambiguity of Harry

A good twist in the season 2 finale of The Sinner this week.  Turns out Marin's killer wasn't a killer - her shooting was an accident in a scuffle - and it wasn't the Beacon who was part of this.  He's apparently long dead after all.

Jack Novak was a pretty good surprise - the kind that is instantly believable after coming out of the blue.   And his connection to Marin certainly is plausible.  He raped Marin, after she and Heather came back to his/Heather's house, as teenagers, with Heather blind drunk and Marin not in any shape to go home.  And at that point, the rest was predictable:  Jack is Julian's father, and he'd been sending money to Vera for Julian (maybe Vera was blackmailing Jack).

The Vera and Julian escape thread was also handled well.  Vera wants to take Julian to Washington state, where'd he'd be free and safe.  But Julian doesn't want to run the rest of his life.  And Harry is able to convince Vera on the phone that her best course of action is to bring Julian back to upstate New York.

The one unsatisfying part of this finale is, unsurprisingly, Harry's story.  We still don't know exactly what happened between him and his mother, and still don't not know exactly why he wants oblivion, even after he and we finally here the recording of what he said to Vera when he was under the influence of that mind-altering drug.   I guess this means that, if The Sinner continues - which I hope it does - we'll have as a more-or-less constant the ambiguity of Harry, and still not knowing what made him what he is today.

But that still amounts to a highly original, compelling character, and I'm definitely game for a third season.

See also The Sinner 2.1: The Boy ... The Sinner 2.2:  Heather's Story ... The Sinner 2.3: Julian's Mother ... The Sinner 2.5: The Scapegoat ... The Simmer 2.7: Occluded Past Unwound - Mostly

And see also: The Sinner season one: Wild, Unconventional, Irresistible Mystery

 

Jose Antonio Vargas and Joy Reid at Powerhouse Arena

 I first heard about Jose Antonio Vargas in 2007 from my wife Tina.  She was editing Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia pages, and Jose had called her for an interview in a article he was writing for The Washington Post about the impact of Wikipedia on that Presidential election.  Those were early days in the advent of social media - or what I call New New Media (buying a book online is new media, creating a book online is new new media, or consumers becoming producers).  Twitter and YouTube were just a year old, and Wikipedia, though a little older, was not allowed as a reference in student papers in probably every class except mine at Fordham University.   But it was a new new medium par excellence - anyone who could read an article on Wikipedia could edit it - and Tina and Jose recognized its importance.

Tina and Jose kept in touch after that article was published in 2007.  We were delighted when Jose's team at The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize the following year for their reporting of the Virginia Tech massacre, and applauded his incredible bravery when, in 2011, he announced that he had been living here in the United States since age 12 as an undocumented immigrant.  Jose and I had met for the first time, a month earlier, in May 2011, when we both were guests on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, talking about social media and politics.   Tina and I greeted him at a screening of his autobiographical documentary Documented at the Village East Cinema in Manhattan in 2014 and saw it again on CNN.  (Jose had asked Tina to look at part of it before the film was completed.)

We of course were in the front row last night when Jose was interviewed by Joy Reid at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn about his new book, Dear America.  First, the venue, with a Manhattan Bridge archway out the window as backdrop for the speakers, was perfect.  And Joy conducted a savvy and sensitive interview, not easy when you're better known than the subject of interview.  Jose told the story of his difficult and dangerous life, which is the story of his book, which I'll review here in the next few weeks, after I've read it.  It's the story of someone not only unwilling to accept the hand our idiotic and arbitrary immigration laws has dealt him, but unwilling to accept this for everyone else in the same or similar boat as he.   Not only does Jose refuse to live off the radar, he and his group Define American actively campaign in every way they can to take this discriminatory radar, inconsistent with the true spirit of America, totally offline.

From such an all-out warrior, we shouldn't be surprised to find unusual opinions.  Jose of course sees Trump as a threat to what is good in America, but musing about Presidents and their impact on immigrants, he cited George W. Bush as the President who was most congenial to immigrants, meaning that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama not as much.  In other words, Democrats and Republicans have been more equal opportunity abusers of this crucial aspect of the American dream than we may have supposed.

Go see Jose talk wherever you can.  And get his book.  And look here soon for my review.

The First: The Best

Tina and I binged The First on Hulu the last couple of nights - the first being the first mission with people onboard to Mars.   We enjoyed it immensely.  I'd say it's the best of any-mission-to-anyplace-in-space narrative on screen, and that includes some masterful motion pictures like Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff.

The First begins with a shocker which I won't reveal, and then focuses on a mission to Mars in the 2030s.   The future depictions on Earth are just right - causal voice commands to turn lights and phones off, given by characters for whom these ways of doing things have become a comfortable way of life.  But that's about the only thing that's not teeming with tension and anxiety, as five humans plan to risk their lives, in a joint private company/NASA mission which the U. S. President is by no means 100% in favor of.

But the real emotional pay dirt in The First is not political or scientific - and there's plenty of excellent science in the story - but in the impact of this mission on the families of the astronauts. This has been a complex dimension well explored in earlier missions-to-space movies, but not as effectively as in The First, in which each one of the astronauts has to negotiate a powerful nexus of family reservations, to say the least, about their loved ones going on a life-risking voyage.

The story is buoyed by two off-the-chart performances.  Sean Penn has been an Al Pacino/Robert De Niro-level actor for decades, but he's been infrequently seen on screen in recent years.   His Tom Hagerty in The First, the astronaut leading the mission, more than makes up for lost time.   I've previously seen Natascha McElhone, who plays an Elon Musk or Richard Branson kind of outer space CEO in The First, in Californication and Designated Survivor.  Her Laz Ingram in The First is so much better - a tour-de-force combination of powerful, single-minded, and empathetic - that I could almost believe I was seeing a different actress.   Penn and McElhone, and indeed The First as a whole, are eminently Emmy-worthy.

I was on a plenary panel about Religion on Mars at The Mars Society Conference in Pasadena this past August 24.  I had to leave before Beau Willimon's panel on The First on August 26.  Willimon was the brains behind House of Cards and now The First.   If I could flag down a time machine, I'd travel back there and tell Willimon what an outstanding job he did on The First.   Like all great popular culture, this series will play a role in getting a real mission to Mars with humans aloft in what I hope will be sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, I look forward to the next season.

The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True

The evolution of porn continues to take center stage in The Deuce 2.2, with Candy realizing that a good way to go forward, get more sophisticated, in her movies is to base at least one on a fairytale - or maybe it's a nursery rhyme - Little Red Riding Hood.   Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs' "Little Red Riding Hood" plays in the background - also a raunchy version of that nursery rhyme and always good to hear.

In other movie-related developments on The Deuce, Larry Brown - played by Gbenga Akinnagbe from The Wire and lots of other memorable performances - asks Candy why there are not any "brothers" in her movies.  He aptly points out that acting is the essence of being a pimp, and he would be up to cast in her movies, and you can see the wheels in her head beginning to turn.

And ... at very least, Lori will be heading out to Hollywood, because you can't have a story about the movie business without some significant kind of Hollywood involvement.  What these movies are of course doing is lifting our characters way beyond New York to the world at large.

Indeed, the local non-movie threads in this episode are just two brief scenes.   One concerns the windowless peepholes and their complications.  The other concerns an alternate mob move on Vincent's bar, and will likely lead to some sort of bloodshed before the season is over.

As a media theorist, I'm enjoying the emphasis on porn over in-person pimping and prostitution, meaning, so far, I'm liking this season more than season 1.

See also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing 

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

Paul Simon Farewell Concert at Prudential Center: "Don't Give Up"

Tina and I just got back from Paul Simon's Farewell Concert at the Prudential Center.  We both thought it was one of the very best concerts we've ever attended - and that includes at least two concerts with Simon & Garfunkel decades ago.

Paul Simon was always as much a poet as a lyricist and songwriter, which is not something you can say about even the greatest lyricists, like Lennon and McCartney, whose words only occasionally reached the realm of sheer poetry.  Simon does that almost every time, in every song.   I knew that before tonight, but his words leaped even more out at me than I recall in the past.   He has a nonchalant profundity almost rolling off his tongue, from "Call Me Al" and "Late in the Evening" to "Crazy After All These Years" (his line "I fear I may do some damage one fine day" has always been one of my all-time favorites).

And his new songs have it too.   The fun and sass of "Rewrite" is as good as "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,"  the haunting beauty of "Questions for the Angels" as memorable as "For Emily," and the keen watercolor imagery of "Rene and Georgette Magritte with their Dog After the War" is right up there with the brush strokes of "Hazy Shade of Winter".

And if the music and singing and band weren't enough, Simon's repartee between songs was worth the price of admission.  He talked about a song he gave to someone else, and he now wanted to reclaim as his own. I thought he was perhaps talking about "Red Rubber Ball," which he wrote and was a big hit for The Cyrkle.  He wasn't.  He was talking about "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the big Simon & Garfunkel hit, mostly sung by just Garfunkel.   Talk about a dis - I don't why Simon harbors such anger for his former partner, but this was a rapier thrust all the way back to 1970.

But in many ways the best line was what Simon had to say about these Trumpian times we live in, without mentioning his name.  "Don't give up," he said quietly to a cheering audience.  And then he sang an especially meaningful "American Tune" ... "I don't know a soul whose not been battered ..."  And we all were tearing not cheering, then applauding.

You know what - I don't think this and his next few, concluding performances on his farewell tour will be his last.  The audience tonight had too much groove, and Simon far too much joy and commitment to his performance, for that to be true.

Look for my review here whenever he does his next series of concerts.

Mayans M. C. 1.2: The Plot Thickens

Mayans M. C. continued to develop and flex its muscles and smarts in 1.2 as a complex, multi-level drama with all kinds of conflicts and connections.

The big one in 1.2 was between the cartel and the rebels, who have kidnapped cartel leader Miguel's young son.   He wants the Mayans to get him back, and since the Mayans have all kinds of connections to the rebels, this puts them right in the middle, where they'd rather not be.  Among other things, the Mayans don't like Miguel's brutal tactics, leading to one of the best scenes in the hour, when prospect E. Z. speaks out against this, and Bishop literally puts his body between E. Z., and the angry Miguel, who is menacingly advancing on E. Z.

Miguel and E. Z. have another profound reason to be at odds.  Miguel's wife Emily, loving mother of the kidnapped boy, was E. Z.'s girlfriend before he went to prison.  She seems to love Miguel now, but has problems with his business, which she'd rather not know about, but now needs to, so she can understand why her son was kidnapped.   She still has some feelings for E. Z., and he definitely has some for her, and given his connections to the rebels, this puts him a conflicted situation par excellence.

His only completely reliable ally at this point is his father, well played by Edward James Olmos.  Actually, all the parts, major and minor, are very played, including Michael Irby as Bishop, Richard Cabral as Coco, and Clayton Cardenas as E. Z.'s brother Angel, who (presumably) doesn't know about his brother's sleeper status.

All of this is riveting viewing, and I'm looking forward to more.  (Prediction from my wife Tina: Devante - great to see Tony Plana in this role - and Miguel's mother killed Miguel's father.  This is in keeping with the Sons' Hamlet motif, and makes sense.)

See also: Mayans M. C. 1.1: Pulling Us In

 

The Sinner 2.7: Occluded Past Unwound - Mostly

The Sinner really came together - or maybe, its occluded past unwound - in episode 2.7 earlier this week, the next-to-last episode of this season.

We finally have almost all the pieces in the puzzle of how and why Julian came to murder the couple who were driving him to Niagara Falls.  He thought he was being kidnapped.  They weren't his parents.  And, actually, he was being kidnapped, by his mother, Marin, who had prevailed upon the couple to bring her biological son to her.

So that part is mostly settled.   But there's a new mystery, which could be connected to a piece of the original mystery of Julian and the poison he administered.   Who shot Marin to death?  We saw that Julian had access to Marin's gun.  This of course suggests that Julian killed her.   But we also saw Marin talking on the phone, to someone who in some way was her accomplice in her retrieval of Julian.

Who was that?  The only one who makes any sense is Lionel Jeffries aka The Beacon.  He's after all Julian's father.   And he's been missing from Mosswood.  We assumed he was dead, but we never actually saw him killed.   And... if Jeffries killed Marin, is there some way that he killed the original couple, or at least, helped prepare the deadly tea?

The main argument against that is why didn't he then take Julian with him?   Will be good to see how this all works out in the finale of this strange, compelling season of this strange, compelling series.

See also The Sinner 2.1: The Boy ... The Sinner 2.2:  Heather's Story ... The Sinner 2.3: Julian's Mother ... The Sinner 2.5: The Scapegoat

And see also: The Sinner season one: Wild, Unconventional, Irresistible Mystery

 

The Deuce Is Back - Still without Cellphones and that's a Good Thing

The Deuce is back on HBO for its second season.  As was the case with first season, the most enjoyable aspect of this series is its deft capturing of the New York City sleaze ambience of the 1970s.   I remember it quite well - no, not because I was a part of it - but because I walked those streets often, first as a singer/songwriter going in and out of recording studios (which resulted in Twice Upon a Rhyme), later as graduate student at The New School and NYU.

Season 2 zooms in more than half a decade after Season 1.  Koch is now Mayor - as cops debate whether or not he was a "homo," and take figurative shots at Abe Beame, admittedly the most boring Mayor in New York history.  The pimp business is now thoroughly appreciative of the monetary opportunities of porn, and a much slimmer Harvey is still making movies, while Candy continues to push their creative boundaries.

As with the first season, the centerpiece is Vincent Martino (James Franco) and his twin brother Frank (of course also played by Franco).  In a different kind of narrative, Frankie could well be an invention of Vincent's brain.   He flits in and out of scenes, and is often barely seen.   But since he is indeed seen and interacted with by characters other than his brother, chances are Frankie is real.  Certainly Abby acts as if he's real, and the decisive moment in 2.1 is the love she sees in Vincent for his brother when Vincent forgives his debt.   This fans the attraction and love she feels for Vincent, and provides a nice bed for the two of them in bed together at the end.

Something I also liked in the first season, which continues in the second, is how everyone manages to live personal lives and do whatever business with no cell phones.  The 1970s would be the last decade without even a hint of one in the streets or in a car, and the same is true for personal computers.    Given the enormous degree to which all of us in 2018 depend upon those devices, it's almost gratifying to see how well our people did without them back in the 1970s.

So I'd keep watching The Deuce, even if it wasn't about porn and all of that.  See you here next week with more.

See also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

Paul McCartney at Grand Central Station: Unique, Memorable, Gratifying, and Priceless

left to right, front: Rusty Anderson, Paul McCartney, Brian Ray
left to right, back: Wix Wickens, Abe Laboriel, Jr,
"I've Got a Feeling" - tonight at Grand Central Station

My wife and I saw Paul McCartney and his band perform at the Nassau Coliseum a year ago.  We loved it.  Thought it was the best concert we'd ever attended.  Tonight's nearly surprise concert at Grand Central Station, which we just saw live streaming on YouTube, was even better.  I'm not kidding.  I'd intended to live tweet it at least a little, but the music was too good to do anything other than watch and listen.  I managed a couple of snapshots at the beginning, then even that was too much of a distraction from this wonderfully astonishing performance.

It's often said that the Beatles invented all kinds of trends in music, which McCartney continued doing after the group split up.  "Helter Skelter" presaged heavy metal.  Tonight McCartney and his band  (Brian Ray and Rusty Anderson guitars, Abe Laboriel Jr. drums, Paul "Wix" Wickens keyboard) - always fabulous - gave it an extraordinary performance, with Wickens picking up a guitar to join McCartney and his other two guitarists for a four-guitar rendition.

Speaking of guitars (by the way, this review is just about what most struck me, and is not in order of the songs performed), Paul and his two guitarists did that priceless three-way guitar duel in the "Carry that Weight" medley just pefectly.  And just about every song was that way - unique, memorable, gratifying, and priceless.

The mini-early Beatle set, in which McCartney did "From Me to You" and "Love Me Do" was a heart-tugging form of time-travel, with the songs sounding almost just the way I first heard them, or remember first hearing them, in the early-mid 1960s.   "Let It Be" - a song which McCartney wrote for Aretha (she turned it down, but later recorded it after the Beatles) - was profound and tender.

The new songs, from the just released Egypt Station, were great, too. I've already heard a lot of "Come On To Me" on The Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio, and it's already a favorite.  I liked the live performance even more than the recording. "Fuh You" and, especially, "Who Cares?" - a put down of bullies - were outstanding.

The Beatles were far and away the best in their time.  Paul McCartney continues to be that to this very day, with new albums and concerts.  We're lucky indeed to have him on our planet.

Hey, the concert is still up on YouTube at this moment - you can watch it here.  See also Paul McCartney's Two New Songs, Paul McCartney at Nassau Coliseum, and A Vote for McCartney.  Also The Village Voice Goes Silent.





Paul McCartney, "I've Got A Feeling," tonight at Grand Central Station


nothing to do with McCartney, but a lot about Grand Central Station

Mayans M. C. 1.1: Pulling Us In

Hey, the Mayans M. C. debut, Kurt Sutter's latest, was good, and may well have the makings of great.   My wife and I enjoyed it.

A little context.  Sutter is best-known for his series, Sons of Anarchy, also on the FX Channel.  I first heard about Sons when I was teaching a graduate course about "Television and New Media" at Fordham University in 2013.  Each student was required to choose a TV series, and follow its reception in social media.  Most students chose high-concept, sophisticated series that I was already was watching, like The Americans.  One guy picked Sons.  I'd never heard of it, but he was a bright student, so I said sure.  His reports got me interested in the series.

But I still didn't get around to watching it - which of course required watching all of the earlier seasons (Sons of Anarchy debuted in 2008), and I wasn't quite ready to make that commitment.  Our daughter, telling us about a year later that SOA was one of the best series she'd ever seen, pushed us over the top.  We watched and devoured every episode of Sons of Anarchy, and consider it one of the very best shows ever on TV of any kind.  It was indeed high concept and sophisticated and so much more.

Mayans take place in the same place as Sons, and indeed we saw some of the Mayans in Sons.  But that means Mayans has huge burden - it's in effect competing with SOA, where there was so much powerful content that I won't even summarize.  The first episode shows that Mayans could be on track to doing that.

For Sam Crow fans, we got a quick view of Gemma (Katey Sagal), in an eight-years earlier scene with E. Z. (J. D. Pardo) in prison.  And Les Packer, a character played by Robert Patrick who appeared in a couple of episodes of Sons, leads a group Sons in support of a Mayans operation.  The Mayans and SAMCRO were by and large allies in Sons of Anarchy, so that makes sense.

It's too soon to tell if Mayans will achieve the Shakespearean heights of Sons of Anarchy, but there are already some strong and tempestuous family relationships on hand in Mayans, including father and son, and brother to brother.  Sutter wove his magic in SOA, the unlikely but irresistible mix of violence and humor, and after the first episode of Mayans, we're more than ready to give this new series a shot.

Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime: Right Up There

You've got to give Amazon credit, doing a new, rebooted Jack Ryan series, starring John Krasinski in the title role, after the likes of Harrison Ford, Alex Baldwin, Ben Affleck had knocked the role out the ballpark - well, certainly Harrison Ford - in a series of riveting movies from 1984 through 1996.  Sort of like what Amazon attempted when it brought Philip K. Dick's alternate history masterpiece novel The Man in the High Castle to the streaming television series screen with little-known actors.   And with the same result: both succeeded splendidly.

I haven't read any of Tom Clancy's novels, which I think is actually good when judging a movie or a television series based on the novels, because it allows appreciation of the movie or TV series on its own terms.   And my wife and I, binge-watching the eight Jack Ryan episodes in just two nights, really enjoyed this first season of this classic American spy-action story.

The trapping are familiar and updated - ISIS in Syria, attacking a church in Paris, and before the end of these episodes, bringing the fight to the U. S. homeland, with an ebola virus and a dirty bomb designed to wreak havoc.   But although this new Jack Ryan is reminiscent of both Jack Bauer and Homeland, with some Doron from Fauda thrown in, it has a pace and a heart all its own.

Jack is determined to not only save the day but do the right thing - as in trying to come through for the people around him on his commitments - for not only his friends but relative innocents caught up in the struggle.  His immediate boss, James Greer, is played by Wendell Pierce, who gives the best performance of his long career since The Wire.  Abbie Cornish is good as Dr. Cathy Mueller, who we know in a subsequent story will become Cathy Ryan or Mrs. Jack Ryan (Jack, by the way, is a Dr., too - a PhD in economics).  Ali Suliman as Suleiman is scathing, sensitive, and memorable as the terrorist mastermind.

There's humor, surprises, interludes of non-stop action and deaths - expected and unexpected - in just about every episode.  I'm ready for the second season, which I'll review here as soon as it's up on Amazon.

Ozark 2: Against All Odds and More

Tina and I binge-watched Ozark 2 on Netflix, about a year after we did the same for the first season.  The second season is at least as good, which is to say, excellent indeed, in many ways a unique piece of television narrative.

As in the first season, the Byrde family is against all odds in their (Marty and Wendy's) attempt to set up a casino or at very least survive in the Ozarks.  Their in-and-out enemies include not only the cartel and the FBI, but a variety of psychos, miscreants, and killers including the Snells (or at least, Darlene Snell), the preacher Mason, Ruth's father Cade, and just for good measure the Kansas City mob.  Some of these characters don't survive the season, but I won't tell you who.

I will say that Wendy has a more prominent and crucial role than in the first season, and Laura Linney gives this a tour-de-force performance, one of her best in any role in her long and storied career.  We see her delivering every conceivable emotion, ranging from rage to tenderness, balancing her maternal instincts with an iron will to survive.

Indeed, for a variety of reasons, women play a more decisive role in this second season than in the first, with not only Wendy, Darlene, and Ruth on center stage, but Helen the cartel lawyer in some critical scenes delivering memorable lines.   The Byrde children - Charlotte and Jonah - are also more central to the story, and it's great to see Harris Yulin as Buddy back in action (it is only me, or does Yulin look like at least two or three other actors).

Ozark has carved out an original and compelling niche for itself, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Ozark: Frying Pan into the Fire

The Village Voice Goes Silent

Last night brought the news that The Village Voice, once the hottest, coolest, in synch weekly newspaper in town, was ceasing publication.   This was the last act in a decline which saw the Voice being given away for free on the streets of New York (in an attempt to boost circulation to staunch declining ad revenue) to going completely online just last year.  Though I've long read much more online than on paper, I hate to see any newspaper go under.   And the Voice's passing has special meaning for me, since it was the first place to publish anything that I'd written.  Actually, my first three publications were in The Village Voice.

In September 1971, I was putting the finishing touches on my LP Twice Upon A Rhyme in Mario Rossi's recording studio at the end of Brooklyn.   Ed Fox, Peter Rosenthal, and I lived in the Bronx, and on the clacking train ride out to Brooklyn, a copy of the Voice, then in just its 16th year of publication, was usually close at hand.   One night, I read a typically tone-deaf, dyspeptic review by Robert Christgau in the Voice of Paul McCartney's second solo album, Ram.  I was sufficiently infuriated that, next day, I pounded out a lengthy Letter to the Editor on my electric portable Smith Corona, stained with coffee and orange juice but still working, and I sent it off to The Village Voice.  I doubt I even made a copy, and pretty much forgot about it.   I didn't really expect to see it published there in the Letters column.

My expectations were right.   I eagerly grabbed a copy of the Voice the next week.  The first page I turned to was the Letters page.  Nothing whatsoever there by me, or about McCartney.  But a few days later, early in October, I found a letter from the Voice in my mailbox - a letter and a check.  I looked at the check, first.  $65.00.  I looked at the letter.  It was from Diane Fischer, one of the Voice's main editors.  She said she assumed it would be ok with me if the Voice published my letter as an opinion piece, in its "Taking Issue," section, and paid me $65.00 for it, for which a check was enclosed.

I was thrilled.   The release of Twice Upon a Rhyme on HappySad Records (a record company created by Ed Fox and me, after two or three major labels turned our album down, and we were not interested in shopping it around, for what could have been years) was still a year away, and I still thought of myself as a singer and songwriter, not an essay writer.   But in retrospect, the publication of my letter as "A Vote for McCartney" in The Village Voice on October 21, 1971 was a turning point in my life.  I'd imagined that Paul McCartney would contact me after reading the article, and maybe get me signed to Apple Records.  That didn't happen.  But what did is I began getting far more recognition as a Voice "columnist" - on the strength of that one publication - than I'd received, or would receiving be in ensuing years, as a singer and songwriter.

My second essay in The Village Voice, "Murray the K in the Nostalgia's Noose" was published a little over a year later to the day, in the October 26, 1972 issue.   I'd sent that one in as an essay, not letter, to Diane, after Tina and I had heard and loved Murray the K's return to New York's airwaves on the July 4th 1972 weekend.   Diane (or someone at the Voice) had taken that title from a line in my generally very flattering essay, which said Murray needs to be careful that "nostalgia doesn't become a noose around his neck".  Murray managed to track down my phone number - no doubt the Voice gave it to him - and I received a call from him the very evening that that issue of the Voice hit the streets.  He told me how much he appreciated my essay and offered me a job as a producer on his new NBC radio show.  I took it, and even wrote and recorded a song, "Murray the K's Back in Town" which he played on his show.

By the time my third and final article was published in The Village Voice - in its July 4, 1974 issue - I was already back at school, completing my BA in Journalism at New York University after a long break from the classroom.  My article about Murray the K had brought me to NBC where, after Murray left, I began working as a producer for Wolfman Jack.  After he left, I wrote an essay about his departure from New York, and Diane not only published it, but kept my title, "Wolfman Hits the Road, Jack".

I'd go on, academically, to walk up the street to the New School after getting my BA from NYU.  At the New School, I earned an MA and began reading everything I could by and about Marshall McLuhan.  I went back down the street to NYU's Media Ecology program for my PhD, which I earned before the end of the decade.  And the rest, as they say, is (my) history.

I did have two more significant interactions with Christgau in that decade.  One came in the mid-1970s, when he rejected an article I'd submitted about the evolution of "The Wizard of Oz" in rock music, then culminating in Elton John's "Yellow Brick Road".  Christgau had been put in charge of all the music pieces in the Voice, and I received a letter from him saying that my essay was very well written but said nothing of any importance.  No check was included.  Undaunted, I sent the article to The Soho Weekly News, a more local kind of Voice, focusing more on popular culture than politics, just down the street.  They accepted the article, sent me a pen-and-ink drawing to go with the article, but before they'd had a chance to publish and pay me for the article, I received a letter from - believe it or not, Christgau - explaining that he also was a consultant or something for the Weekly News, and was advising them not to publish my article.  So it goes.

The Soho Weekly News was gone by the early 1980s.  But Christgau continued at the Voice, which I continued to read, despite his caustic reviews of music that I loved.  But the Voice also had Nat Hentoff, as passionate a champion of the First Amendment as ever there was, and Ron Rosenbaum, who could write a riveting, lengthy essay that you couldn't put down, about Mayor Abe Beame, who took boring to a whole new level.

I consider myself privileged to have been in the pages of this remarkable publication which captured the times we were in, fanned and extended them, and made me even prouder than I was to be a New Yorker.