Tag Archives: tv

Our Dark Summertime Binge: “Chopped” Season One

August 21, 2019 By in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Chopped season 1!

Aphrodisiac or poison? YOU make the call!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: with weeks to go till vacation and no pressing obligations, my wife Anne and I have been bingeing a few different shows together, while I’ve done some additional grim watching on the side. Certainly not through careful planning on our part, each of the shows has had their own depressing and/or tragic aspects. Veronica Mars season 4 had its mad-bomber mystery and its upsetting finale. Season 2 of Hulu’s Light as a Feather made teen horror out of a slumber party game. The Netflix documelodrama The Last Czars reminded us Russian history is grimmer than many of our TV stories, and trying to cheer your audience up with cult orgies doesn’t help.

This summer we’ve even managed to find oppression and despondency in the things we’ve loved and watched for years. We expected nothing less from Veronica Mars. It paled before the dark side of Chopped.

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Our Dark Summertime Binge: Seven “Black Mirror” Shards

August 19, 2019 By in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Black Mirror!

Toby Kebbell watching his own lifelong YouTube channel inside his artificial second eyelids in a Black Mirror oldie.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: with weeks to go till vacation and no pressing obligations, my wife Anne and I have been bingeing a few different shows together, while I’ve done some additional grim watching on the side. Certainly not through careful planning on our part, each of the shows has had their own depressing and/or tragic aspects. As I wrote at the time, Veronica Mars season 4 fit right in once we finished the finale. The second season (part 1) of Hulu’s Light as a Feather broadened its scope and tightened up its ensemble interplay, but still had Death lurking around every corner. The Netflix documelodrama The Last Czars was a downbeat bummer in its subject matter as well as its various letdowns.

I’ve been selective about which new shows I add to my docket. I’ve skipped many a popular show over the years, which means I stay ostracized from all the best online discussion groups. Among those I’d been procrastinating till now was Black Mirror. The base concept of “Twilight Zone, but cutting-edge and extra nihilistic plus F-bombs” wasn’t an easy sell for me. Also, I heard about that first episode. My son, aghast at the repressed memory of it resurfacing, recommended I skip it and just watch the rest. The suggestion was wise and tempting.

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Our Dark Summertime Binge: Hulu’s “Light as a Feather”

August 16, 2019 By in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Light as a Feather!

Once again McKenna (Liana Liberato) faces DEATH FROM ABOVE! OR AT LEAST SCARINESS!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: with weeks to go till vacation and no pressing obligations, my wife Anne and I have been bingeing a few different shows together, while I’ve done some additional grim watching on the side. Certainly not through careful planning on our part, each of the shows has had their own depressing and/or tragic aspects. As I wrote at the time, Veronica Mars season 4 fit right in once we finished the finale. The Netflix documelodrama The Last Czars couldn’t help but depress with its take on Russia’s traumatic early-20th-century history, though it would prove the most unintentionally funny show we’ve seen in ages about war, revolution, murder, and gloomy orgies.

Meanwhile on Hulu, I caught a supernatural thriller in its second season that was easily the youngest-skewing show I watched this summer, possibly this year. But I had a pretty good reason.

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Our Dark Summertime Binge: Netflix’s “The Last Czars”

August 4, 2019 By in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Last Czars!

Rasputin (Ben Cartwright) and Alexandra (Susanna Herbert) oblivious to Russia’s coming vicissitudes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: with weeks to go till vacation and no pressing obligations, my wife Anne and I have been bingeing a few different shows together, while I’ve done some additional grim watching on the side. Certainly not through careful planning on our part, each of the shows has had their own depressing and/or tragic aspects. As I wrote at the time, Veronica Mars season 4 fit right in once we finished the finale. Shocking developments notwithstanding, it wasn’t the gloomiest show on our scorecard.

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“Veronica Mars” Season 4: Part of Our Dark Summertime Binge

July 23, 2019 By in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Veronica Mars!

Are you there, God? It’s me, the annoying tiny blonde one.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: 2014 saw the release of the Veronica Mars movie, an unexpected follow-up to the acid-tongued detective show that undiscerning Nielsen families treated as persona non grata during its three-season run on UPN and The CW. The movie was made possible through a Kickstarter campaign made wildly successful by a fan base eager to see more, more, more. Honestly, every second of VM beyond the first season has been a sort of gift. Back in the day, shows with its kind of shaky ratings were often stood before a firing squad in five episodes or less. Fans appreciated the film as a Happily Ever After that we needed after season 3’s funereal cliffhanger, but we also assumed it was The End. We moved on, so sure that life in the complicated oceanside town of Neptune, CA, would remain copacetic forever as long as we all agreed never to look back again.

Apparently like Orpheus, someone must have peeked. Thanks to the magic of Hulu and a reunion of principals — creator Rob Thomas and some of the original writing staff, as well as stars Kristen Bell, Enrico Colantoni, and quite a few more — the titular teen detective and her equally-detective dad Keith Mars are back with an eight-episode fourth season that, of course, once again has Neptune in chaos, death at hand, and Happily Ever After wrested away from more than one beloved cast member. Though Hulu had announced a release date of July 26th, they uploaded it a week early amid the fun and busyness of San Diego Comic Con. It was either a pleasant surprise or a shocking downer, depending on whether or not you actually watched it this weekend.

With several weeks to go till vacation and no pressing obligations, my wife and I sped through all eight episodes on Saturday, because free time abounded for some of us who’ll never get to attend SDCC. Over the past few weeks we’d been bingeing a few other shows, each of which had their own depressing and/or tragic aspects. We set all those aside for one day and, by the end of said day, realized Veronica fit right in with all that bleakness.

Courtesy warning: spoilers ahead for thoughts after some 400+ minutes of viewing. Not everything is revealed here, but several tidbits yearn to be explored. The spoiler-free capsule-review version is: season 4 is far better than season 3, possibly better than season 2 (I need more time to evaluate this), and definitely not here to deliver more of the movie’s too-eager-to-please fan service.

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Random Spoiler-y Thoughts on “Stranger Things” Season 3

July 10, 2019 By in Misc. Media, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Stranger Things!

Scoops Troop: they sling ice cream, do maths, and fight Commies. As you do.

Judging by my Twitter feed over the past week, America’s biggest July 4th sensation this year was Netflix’s release of Stranger Things‘s third season for a massive fan base eagerly waiting to follow the further adventures of the pluckiest teens ever to come out of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. As you can imagine, there was no shortage of pre-release coverage, articles, and advertisement here in the good Hoosier state. I’m getting better at finishing new seasons of streaming series as they’re dropped and had this one wrapped up Saturday afternoon. My thoughts didn’t quite streamline themselves into a narrative, but I did have a few.

Most of them are SPOILERS AHEAD, so there’s that. Some of this also won’t make sense to anyone who hasn’t watched it, especially if they’ve never seen an episode. This is virtually stream-of-consciousness, not a pro recap. It’s faster and more fun for me to get it out of my system this way.

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Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” End Credits

June 21, 2018 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Mr Rogers!

Our lovely spokesmodel Anne introducing today’s feature presentation.

Among the many deficiencies in my childhood, I regret Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was not required viewing in our house. In the days before VCRs, DVR, and the Internet, our family’s TV schedule was strictly divided between myself, my mom, and my grandma. I was allowed to pick stations each weekday morning before 9 a.m., after school, and on Saturday mornings. Sadly, the kindly Fred Rogers had the misfortune of airing opposite Grandma’s soap operas and/or game shows. By the time I discovered him while channel-flipping, I was somewhere in my preteen phase — too old to respond to his low-key gentility, not quite old enough to watch him ironically, and nowhere near the kind of adult who could appreciate what he did or how he connected to millions of other, better-off kids.

My wife Anne, on the other hand, used to watch him all the time. As a youngling she watched him, Sesame Street, and other PBS all-stars all the time. He spoke directly to kids, the Viewers at Home. He wasn’t there to bedazzle them with whimsy or lull them with escapist conflicts or sell them toys. He taught, he explained, he knew, he felt, he sympathized, he loved. For some kids he seemed like the only adult who every really got them, who even tried to get them. He fell just short of absolute godhood, but to many, calling him “father figure” doesn’t begin to describe his impact on their lives.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, then, is a rare instance of Anne taking me with her to the movies for once.

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MCC Home Video Scorecard #12: Year-End Title Dump, 2017 Edition

February 16, 2018 By in Misc. Media, Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bob Newby!

Bob Newby, worthiest descendant of the House of Gamgee.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: the recurring feature that’s me jotting down capsule-sized notes about Stuff I Recently Watched at home. In this batch: once again this ostensibly regular feature wound up saved for a rainy day, only to be held in reserve through any number of downpours and snowstorms. I’m already several viewings into a 2018 edition, which means it’s now or never for my 2017 catch-up. I’m a little annoyed at how much time I devoted to Netflix shows throughout the third and fourth quarters of the year, but if I’d watched a lot of movies instead, then this entry would be three times longer and take at least twice as long to write, thus making all the easier to procrastinate into 2019 and beyond. Or all the easier never to write. But I grow weary of finding reasons not to write. One of my many reasons for creating a blog nearly six years was to find reasons not never to write.

Hence: on with the writing! And the viewings! And the writing about the viewings! Double bonus points if I’m not the only one who reads what I write about what view!

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Our 2008 Road Trip, Part 5: Mr. Robertson’s Neighborhood

January 22, 2018 By in Travel, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
700 Club Ticket Stub!

Scrapbooked souvenirs are the best souvenirs.

One of MCC’s more enduring entries from the past two years has been that time we attended a taping of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on our 2016 NYC vacation. That wasn’t our first time attending a live TV recording. That milestone was set nine years earlier, in a studio that met much the same criteria — admission was free but required tickets anyway; no photos were allowed during all the best parts of the experience; and the biggest name in the house was a famous figure in the American political arena who we were forbidden to approach, and who once announced a Presidential campaign but wasn’t taken seriously.

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Our 2017 in Jazz Hands: Another MCC Convention Photo-Op Gallery

January 14, 2018 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Alex Kingston!

My personal fave from this year: at WIzard World Chicago, Alex Kingston, whom I first saw on NBC’s ER. Much later she returned as Doctor Who‘s Professor River Song. She was one among three of the Doctor’s companions we met in 2017.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, one year ago:

Here in the doldrums of January, when not much is going on outside our humble abode, my wife Anne and I have already tentatively mapped out our 2017 convention plans, with room for additions if any wild opportunities come up in the months ahead. As an antidote to the soggy winter blues and the current political climate that has all but murdered my enjoyment of most of the internet lately, we’d like to take a look back at the actors we’ve met over the past three years with this very special photo compilation of one of our favorite convention activities: asking actors if they’ll join us in a bit of jazz hands.

That previous gallery collected our jazz-hands experiences from 2014 to 2016. Our 2017 has come and gone and, as previously reported, we broke our personal record for most events attended in a single year, which added up to a veritable chorus line full of what Broadway pros call “Fosse fingers”. We won’t come anywhere close to topping ourselves in 2018 or for the foreseeable future, so please enjoy the following clipfest starring a plethora of talented folks who have impressed us in movies or on TV who were willing to play along, including one accredited pro who was actually there on the front lines at the dawn of the jazz-hands era.

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Subgenius in France

November 1, 2017 By in Meta, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Les Témoins d'Outre-Mer!

Look, ma! I’m a talking head on live TV!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last December after the untimely, tragic, wholly unfair death of Carrie Fisher, a reporter from our local ABC affiliate asked me for an on-air interview about the time my wife Anne and I met her at Indiana Comic Con 2015 and had the most unforgettable convention experience of our lives. My evening news interview was unexpected, it was surreal, and it was effectively my television debut.

This week, for another unexpected and surreal minute, I found myself on TV again. But this time, Midlife Crisis Crossover took to the international airwaves.

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Top 10 Signs You’re One of Those People Who’ll Never Shut Up About “The Wire”

August 4, 2014 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Slim Charles!

Life and headlines won’t let you put The Wire out of your mind for long. If you’re not spotting its alumni in shows like Community or The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones or True Blood, they’re randomly resurfacing in your daily headlines, such as Sunday’s news that Anwan Glover, a.k.a. Slim Charles (pictured above), was attacked at a Washington nightclub (but he’s doing better now). The worst is when you catch their obituaries, as with last year’s passing of Robert F. Chew, a.k.a. Proposition Joe. They’re kind of everywhere if you know who you’re looking for

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t looking because your refuse to stop. You don’t want to live in the here-and-now, and move on to shows that haven’t been dead for six years. You’re afraid you’ll begin forgetting all those intricate, internecine subplots. You’ll forget the exact moment when you began hating McNulty. You’ll lose track of the names of all of Marlo Stanfield’s crew. You’ll convince yourself you never saw Amy Ryan in anything before The Office. You’ll think of Baltimore as just another city, maybe even plan a road trip there. On purpose.

It’s hard, I know, but if you don’t get over it, other internet users will track you down and stage an intervention. And no one wants that, because airfare is expensive and interventions take valuable time away from tweeting or Netflixing.

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21st Century Digital Fogey

January 13, 2014 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Google Chromecast

Welcome to the newest addition to our family.

Every few years there comes another time in a man’s life when it’s time to upgrade to the next level of entertainment technology. While the old gizmos might work fine and haven’t broken yet, sometimes it’s time to escalate our media consumption anyway. It’s never easy for me. The older I get, the tougher it can be to shift my paradigms to keep up with the Kids These Days.

Another one of those shifts was implemented this past weekend. I’m never excited when they come to pass, but circumstances warranted it, the money was available, the price was unbeatable, and so far the performance is competent.

…

This way to keep up with the Joneses…

An Old Man’s Poor Little Scorecard for the 2013 Emmys

September 23, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments

Emmy Awards

It’s a major award! To some!

I’ve never watched a complete Emmy Awards ceremony. I follow several different TV shows each season, but I don’t watch nearly enough of the “right” shows to have a sizable stake in the proceedings. It’s with good reason that I don’t write about television seven days a week.

The preceding paragraph was copied-‘n’-pasted from last year’s Emmys entry. Not much has changed, so why reinvent the butter knife?

Back then, I thought it would be fun to sort through all the Emmy nominations just to see how many would actually matter to me. I’d committed to that night’s writing topic before I analyzed the list. My conclusion: it wasn’t fun after all.

This year I altered my approach. Instead of painstakingly scrutinizing every last nominee, I decided to wait until the ceremonies were finished and the results were posted online, then check off only the winners, disregarding any of my shows that were nominated but beaten down.

The results were slightly surprising…

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ABC Family Consigns “Bunheads” to One-Season-Wonder Status

July 25, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Bunheads, ABC Family

One last Bunheads pic for the road: Bailey Buntain, Kaitlyn Jenkins, Emma Dumont, and Julia Goldani Telles.

It’s never easy when one of your favorite shows ends prematurely without a chance for a tidy series finale.

After months of stalling on a decision, ABC Family finally revealed on Monday that Bunheads has been officially canceled. Despite internet buzz among select circles that now qualify for collective relabeling as a “cult following”, ratings among the Nielsen commoners were never great, especially compared to the performance of the rest of ABC Family’s mostly teen-soap lineup.

As created by Gilmore Girls mastermind Amy Sherman-Palladino and a talented staff working with minimal resources, Bunheads was a literate, tragicomic fusion of ballet, Broadway, a female-majority cast, Sorkin-speed dialogue, showtunes, obscure entertainment punchlines from previous decades, dexterous back-and-forth rhythms, and musical numbers not set to the tune of current Top-40 hits or overplayed ’80s oldies. On a broadcast network, a show containing any two of these elements would’ve been lucky to reach episode three, even on the CW.

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My “Mad Men” Season 6 Finale Predictions, 100% Accurate on Some Alternate Earth

June 20, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Stan Rizzo, Jay Cutler, Mad Men

Cutler and Stan (Harry Hamlin and Jay R. Ferguson) rush to the nearest TV to see what’s in store for their characters.

So far Mad Men‘s sixth season has been my least favorite. Though I’ve read articulate complaints elsewhere online, I’m still having trouble nailing down the exact reasons for my diminished excitement. I even procrastinated the last few episodes for days after their respective airdates instead of rushing to catch them immediately for the sake of spoilers. I trust that Matthew Weiner and his team have surprises and shocks in store for us in the future, but I’d rather have them five episodes ago than idle impatiently till next year’s final season.

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ABC Family Orders Spelling Bee Game Show, Leaves “Bunheads” Rotting in Limbo

June 13, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Alfonso Ribeiro

Former child actor Alfonso Ribeiro knows about gamesmanship. (photo credit: RangerRick via photopin cc)

If it were up to me, I’d be spending my Monday nights the same way I did last summer: watching and recapping ABC Family’s Bunheads. When I took advantage of a free advance preview of the pilot last year, I was unprepared for a show about a California dance studio to become appointment viewing for an old man who’s never before had any interest in shows about dancing, teens, or dancing teens. (I’d never even followed an ABC Family series before, unless reruns of Whose Line Is It, Anyway? count.)

Full credit for my Bunheads fandom goes to an atypical cast, talented crew, shrewd choices in songs and routines, the constant flurry of unpredictable pop-culture riffs, and Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who had to know that a ballet dramedy would a hard sell in today’s TV landscape. Alas, too few Nielsen commoners supported its first season to guarantee its renewal, but it beat enough late-night infomercials to merit extended reconsideration by the Powers That Be…who, four months after the season finale, have yet to decide whether it lives or dies.

This same management team had no compunction announcing their latest approved acquisition this week: a weekly spelling bee! Because certified TV scientists have proven in their shiny corporate labs that America loves its game shows, erstwhile Fresh Prince sidekick Alfonso Ribeiro will be hosting the upcoming Spell-Mageddon, in which contestants must refresh themselves on their old high-school vocabulary tests and enter the low-stakes world of competitive spelling, without benefit of Auto-Correct or even Auto-text. Truly this promises to be like an aerial death match without a net.

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“Revolution” 6/3/2013 (spoilers): Charlie vs. the Deadly Depths of Level 12

June 4, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

David Lyons, President Monroe, Revolution, NBCAfter an opening montage of moments from the first nineteen episodes set to the tune of “Can’t Find My Way Home”, at long last begins the Revolution season-one finale, “The Dark Tower” (not the first time they’ve referenced Stephen King). When last we left, Monroe Republic President Sebastian “Bass” Monroe and former best friend Miles Matheson were facing off inside the tower with coilguns at twenty paces. Will this be the duel to end all duels? Here in the first minute of the episode?

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“Revolution” 5/27/2013 (spoilers): Charlie vs. the Emissaries of Explodo

May 28, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The Tower, Revolution, NBC

There’s this place. It’s called…The TOWER.

GRENADE!

Thus does tonight’s new episode of Revolution, “Children of Men”, begin with a promise of explosions. We ended last week’s episode with Rachel Matheson triggering the grenade she carried with her into President Monroe’s field tent in hopes of avenging the death of her son Danny. Instead of opening this week with Rachel and Monroe both dead — which, let’s face it, would be a true game-changer — the grenade gets kicked out of the tent, exploding outside and destroying some tanks full of movie combustion fluid or whatever. Everyone in the tent is safe, and Rachel is easily captured and embarrassed.

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“Revolution” 5/20/2013 (spoilers): Charlie vs. the Murderous Mole

May 21, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Jason, Charlie, kissing, JD Pardo, Tracy Spiridakos, Revolution, NBC

Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) and Jason (JD Pardo) share a moment of true love while a disenchanted Atlanta evacuates in panic.

When last we left the heroes of Revolution, Nora had been captured by the Monroe Militia, spirited away to Philadelphia, and brought face-to-face with President Monroe himself. This week’s new episode, “Clue”, Monroe attempts to lure Nora to his side by giving her a white dress reminiscent of the Master’s maidens in Manos: the Hands of Fate, offering her free romantic dinner, and even wearing some of Miles’ cologne, which I’m sure he stockpiles by the gallon for occasions such as this.

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