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Reviews
Private Practice (2007)
Standard Nighttime Soap with Good Ethical Issues
Soap operas, daytime or otherwise, require certain standard elements. Among those elements are attractive, immaure characters, often with too much money and vast wardrobes, who deal unsuccessfully with mature, adult challenges and dilemmas. These challenge and dilemmas are often presented to the characters and to the viewing autience in an intensity and frequency that no normal person or family would encounter in the course of an entire lifetime. To this extent, Private Practice, in spite of its unique setting of an LA medical practice, would be a predictable snore, unless, of course, you enjoy watching good-looking people self-destruct in slow motion.
However, the relative success of this series lies two factors. The first is the placement of certain characters who do, indeed, have the maturity or character to handle the idiosycracises of the more childish ones, Addison Montgomery being of particular interest--a highly competent, over-accomplished obstetic specialty physician/surgeon with low impulse control, poor boundaries and an underdeveloped ethical foundation. Other characters share similar traits in varying mixes.
The second saving grace in my opinion is the many relevant medcial ethical issues it addresses, often dealing with childbirth, children, families and sexual identity and orientation.. In the course of an episode, the viewer is presented not just with the morality (or lack thereof) concerning each character's choice of who he or she shares a bed with. There are also issues concering the complex and nuanced realities of favoring or opposing certain groundbreaking medical procedures, genetic research, new medications, abortion,,euthenasia, addiction, in vitro fertiization, surrugacy, giving birth and raising children out of wedlock, etc.. It's a medical ethicist's Disneyland and nightmare at the same time.
Whether one is culturally conservative or liberal, the etihical matters an episode addresses become useful examples of how nuanced, complex and even revolutionary the behavior and decisions one makes can be. Those who espouse simple, straightforward answers to these matters cannot but be confronted with how certain bumper sticker ethical statements can play themselves out when the rubber of the issue hits to reality of the road. Private Practice creates reasonably believable acid tests for most medical ethical matters.
As the son of two medical professionals myself and a Chrisitan lay minister, I'm not always happy with the way the series' practice partners hash out these issues in the break room of the office, around kitchen tables, n living rooms or beds or around a conference table while they mix discussion of the ethical issues with office gossip and with the revelations of other's train wrecks of personal lives. The Strum und Drang of their own private hells collide with their patient's agonies too often and intimately to be believable. Mature adults I know don't behave that way. But, hey, it makes for good TV and keeps the paying advertisers believing that the show is being watched by those who may wish to purchase thieir products or services.
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (2020)
Truly Disturbing Expose
Anyone who has experienced sexual abuse or assault may wish to avoid watching this. This story is of one high-profile character in a much, much larger planetary enterprise that operates in a dark world of secrecy among powerful persons and institutions.
I have come across many disturbing characters in my day, and I have read about truly disturbing historical people, and Epstein's name is on my Top 5 list of those who most resemble the power and character of the Devil himself.
Nevertheless, those who can stomach watching this short series should watch it. Sex trafficking and sex slavery is a massive international enterprise today on a level that seems to contend in scope and cash flow with the slave trade of past centuries. Although the moral outrage of the sex slavery and trafficking is similar, the difference is that the latter is much more technically advanced and has the complicity or often active participation of institutions and governments worldwide.
It represents a strong admonition to protect those you love from this type of evil and to give victims their voice. It also admonishes me to practice spiritually healthy sexual thinking and behavior and, if we love them, to model the same for the next generation.
Lorena (2019)
Extremely well done documentary...and traumatic
His documentary is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those who cannot stomach the some of the facts of this case. The research and editing were especially skilled, balancing the tragic and perverted aspects of both Lorena as well as her former husband John. It also shines an uncomfortable light on us.
This was not just the tale of these two people, but it was a story emblematic of the history and tragedy of domestic violence in our contemporary society as well as all civilization.
The film draws a portrait of Lorena as an Ecuadoran immigrant with stars in her eyes and tragically naive and immature faculties for assessing the character of a man who would be worthy to marry or even allow to be intimate with her in any way. She clearly did not have the maturity or temperament to be married as such a young age to a seriously disturbed man as John Wayne Bobbitt. The end of the story pictures her in her mid-50's with a mature much wiser outlook, but with the war-wounds of a battered spouse. I was both outraged and unnerved by the fact that she took a knife and cut of her husband's genital, but I was also sympathetic to the horriffying abuse she suffered.
More tragically, the portrait of John is that of a deeply contradictory soul, one who is "not the brightest bulb in the pack" by the assessment of one of the lawyers in his criminal trial, and yet very mild, cordial and even shy. On the other hand, his persona contains that of an enraged survivor of childhood sexual and domestic abuse himself. By the end of the 8-hours of documentary footage, I felt both great compassion as well a deep contempt for this man who, although a pathological liar, was himself incapable of seeing that he first lies to himself about reality. In contrast to Lorena's survival, John remains clearly a lost soul with no one to support or understand him. I don't know whether to sit and listen to his pain or to wack him in the side of the head for having been one of the biggest a&*^%olles and perverted rapists in this century. He makes me ashamed to be a man and makes me understand all the rage of women against men in general, although he is a symbol of the lowest among our gender.
Finally, the film did a great job of shining a light on us, society and the media, for treating the Bobbitt case as a form of perverted and amusing tabloid entertainment on the one hand and as an epic tragedy of our own selves on the other. At some points the film causes us to look at the situation with tongue-in-cheek satisfaction that of a man who got what was coming to him and a look at a couple who seemed to have deserved each other. Then again it caused us all to look soberly into the mirror of our own perversions and weep with horror at what we have become.
After decades since this incident, will domestic violence cease in America? Will be ever be healed? The film's message seems to be "probably not": we remain in denial and the current climate of our culture (Epstein, Wienstein, the #MeToo movement, Trump in the Oval Office, etc.), it will probably get worse. Perhaps much worse.
I marked this as containing spoilers since some viewers may be unaware of the facts and history of a case that is widely known by most Americans.
Eureka (2006)
Interesting and entertaining, but stay away from Eureka
I'm almost finished with watching the fifth and final season. It's an interesting series that I'm sure taxed the scientific researching capabilities of the writers. The characters are well-considered and bursting with a PC mixture of ethnic and gender types, although the LGBTQ crowd might have a few gripes. Nevertheless, the overall premise is very good. For entertainment purposes, it's worth watching. If you wish to be inspired to learn more about science, though, move on.
Just like never wanting to live in scenic town of Cabot Cove, Maine (because that would eventually make me either a murder victim or murder suspect), so also I'd never want to actually visit Eureka. It's a highly-concentrated gaggle of nerdy brainiacs whose Keystone Cops adventures would probably spell the end to the entire planet...in every episode. It's a village full of Sorcerer's Apprentices.
Often the only thing saving the cosmos from complete destruction is the interventions of the main character, Sheriff Jack Carter, a well-constructed Everyman with average intelligence and lacking the conspicuous egos and/or curiosity factors of the rest of the cast, who all seem to be blessed with intellectual superpowers but cursed with the inability to utilize even the most rudimentary safety protocols, principles of the scientific method, common sense and/or good judgement. It's like giving AK-47s and nuclear fissionable materials to toddlers every episode...just to see what happens.
Another reason I'd never want to live in Eureka is that I'd never be able to sit down at the local coffee shop and bistro, the Cafe Diem, to finish enjoying a "vinspresso" without being evacuated from the building or the town before I can finish. My house would be in constant threat of being levitated from the earth, of disappearing into another dimension or of simply being incinerated. I'd not be comfortable going to bed with my wife out of the fear that I might wake up next to someone else (although Jo would be nice) or that I myself would be transformed into something either hideous or simply disagreeable.
Of course, without these elements of suspense and plot twists, the series would have no "umph" to engage the viewer to watch and learn what these egg-heads do to put the town, planet or cosmos at risk of accidental annihilation. Some variation of the line, "That's not supposed to happen" seems to be uttered at least once in every episode. It's like "I Love Lucy" meets the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Another problem I have as a non-physicist/-neuro-scientist/-computer engineer is that all of the elaborate word-soup noun phrases they use to describe the gagets, do-dads, phenomena and procedures do nothing to educate me on why the crazy things happen that happen. It's like those old Japanese horror films about Godzilla that explain/justify why the monster came to exist in the first place. Start with some nuclear reaction of some sort, add an aspect of theoretical physics that does not really exist and put in a pinch of magic--and then "poof": along comes some insane catastrophe that none of the scientists who were doing the research expected to happen.
Sheriff Jack Carter's least favorite word in this series came to be "theoretically." I don't blame him. Sometimes I'd want to have him yank an death=ray activating device out of Fargo's hands and blurt out, "Give me that! You get it back when you can show me you actually know what you're doing with this."
Of course, the animating (and funding) force behind all the research these nerds do is the government in the form of high-ranking military characters or politicians, neither of whom understand what the scientists are actually doing and whom the viewer trusts to accomplish anything except make more powerful weapons or advance careers,
Finally, consistent with the times, none of the female characters, even the evil ones, are incompetent or lack a certain attractiveness on some level. Even Dr. Monroe is self-confident and sexually self-aware. You'll have to depend on selected males to be blindly egotistical, bumbling, lacking in sensitivity, emotional intelligence or some aspect of genuine, full-orbed humanity.
I'll have to admit, too, that one character that kept me watching each and every episode was Erica Cerra's Deputy Jo. Hot. Hot. Hot.
Death in Paradise (2011)
Don't Visit or Move to Saint-Marie!
I enjoy watching detective mystery series regularly. I figure that I've watched hundreds upon hundreds of hours of TV episodes and movie mysteries about who killed whom, why and when. If these stories ever corresponded to real life, and when you add them all up, I figure two things: 1) most of the people on the planet would be dead at the hand of someone else while those who remain would be incarcerated; and 2) murderers are far more brilliant than what I've lead to believe, especially murders of passion. Such clever and covert planning!
Further, considering the ratio of victims and murders in relation to the general population in certain mysteries, I would advise that the viewer NEVER visit or move to two places on earth: Saint Marie in the Caribbean or Cabot Cove, Maine, home of the amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. Oh, and stay away from 221B Baker Street in London.
I've been informed by a man with a PhD in literature that the first mysteries in the Western world were originally penned in the Middle Ages and usually involve clergy persons as detectives. This works pretty well if you posit that most clergy are aware of the dark depravity of the human soul and that some are pretty good at plumbing said depths to determine motive, means and opportunity. We humans can be pretty sick--or at least mystery writers are.
5 to 7 (2014)
Fantastic writing; casting less than worthy of the writer
I loved almost every word of this script. With so much other great writing under his belt, I'm not sure how Victor Levin is able to remain in his skin. Even the ordinary words are placed like jewels in the sky. Most of the voice-over narrative read like a great literary novel, as it should. Certain other parts were also beyond well-done, for instance, the "good-bye" letter from Arielle. I wouldn't change a word.
However, the casting did not reach to touch what the words were attempting to make flesh. The main character, Brian Bloom, was too young or too underwhelming or too lacking in passion to meet the expectations and hopes I had for his character; the love interets, Arielle Pierpont, was too predictable of a classic, standard-issue French lover to be believed as someone who would throw her entire life away, to give her heart to such a young man. Both needed something extra or different to create the needed chemistry for them to be sympathetic to the viewer--Brian to be more outwardly passionate and perhaps mature, Arielle to be covertly needier and quirkier than a collected dipomat's wife might be. I stayed with them in their affair, but more for what I had hoped for them than what they actually shared. For any romantic movie, the lovers must match. For this film, the lovers needed not just match, but create an epic type of passion that drags the viewer in an causes the viewer to be just as heartbroken, just as destroyed as the characters themselves. And, yes, the parting destroyed him and her both.
Yes, time and a more mature view of life gave them both the ability to embrace the gift they had for that moment of time. But that gratitude could have been much greater if the on-screen passion of the actors and the desire of the characters themselves were also splashed across the screen with a little more of a Jackson Pollack type of abandon. '
If the casting and direction were a bit more senstive, this could have been another Dr. Zhivago but with less production costs.
Would I watch it again? Sure! But only if it were a rainy day, I had plenty of popcorn, and I could share it with a woman I had a secret crush on.
Emily Owens M.D. (2012)
Yeah, it's like high school, but....
I didn't want to watch this at first because it appeared to be a warmed-over and dumbed-down version of Grey's Anatomy. If it weren't for Mamie Gummer's fantasic acting chops and genine camera presence, in some ways, it is. I've watched only seven episodes, but I can't imagine the overall tone to change. That would be like moving the literary tone from Danielle Steele to Tolstoy. The audience might suffer mental whiplash.
The formula for this series is the same as most prime-time soaps: take a cast of characters with major, adult, life responsibilities but poor interpersonal problem-solving skills and below-average maturity levels, and then put them into situations in which no one in the viewing audience would find themselves or seek out, and, if so, would never make the mid-pubescent decisions the characters would make. It's like putting middle-school children into hospitals, law offices (LA Law, Ally McBeal), or police stations (Hill Street Blues, Blue Bloods) and watch the moral, legal and interpersonal chaos unfold. It's a way of putting the Three Stooges into Crime and Punishment scenarios: character pratfalls and emotional food fights embedded in genuine existential crises and tragic, fatal outcomes.
Unlike the unstated formulaic character of most series of this sort, Emily Owens, MD, is simply stating clearly in bold lettering the actual nature of the series: adults behaving childishly. Adolescent behavior such as gossip, talking behind each other's backs, getting 'catty' and breaking trust are the principle methods of creating each episodes' conflicts. Throw in a few genuine moral dilemmas and puzzling diagnotic conunndrums and you have the recipies for a great mind-numbing TV series. (I can almost visualize Emily and one of the other female characters eating baloney sandwiches and drinking from juice boxes at lunch, discussing, using air quotes, whether they "like" or "like like" some dreamy male intern or resident.) It's Judy Blume with adult vocabulary.
The writer's have all they need to keep this formula going indefinitely and still collect their paychecks without reaching to grasp a genuine literary challenge in their script writing tasks. So, grow up! The producers wouldn't want it any other way. Grab the popcorn and enjoy: this ain't Twin Peaks. And no one is going to talk about the last episode at the water cooler tomorrow: that's Mad Men territory.
Supergirl (2015)
High -estrogen Superheroines
On the "up" side, this is a classic comic book adaptation of a DC comic genre that present some interesting moral dilemmas and social commentary on democratic values, the triumph of liberal ideology that is much more nuanced than the days of Superman comic book days in the 1950s in which all coflicts were resolved in 30 minutes, commercial breaks included.
On the "down" side, the issues here are so heavily framed in the context of a triumphal feminist/pro-LGBT world that it's hard not to see this series as more of a tract for a world destined to be all-inclusive and a celebration of diversity in which no one is an enemy and all behavior and belief is relative since no philosophical foudation exists for moral character.. In this series, feminism and all its benefits, with none of its flaws, wins. All main characters from Kara (Supergirl), to her sister to the US president, corporate heads, etc. are all females in this completely matriarchal society. Males are supporting charachers and accessories, which is probably justifiable in light of George Reeves' and Dean Cain's solitray macho versions. Let's bury them and all hug now.
Furher, goodness is defined by the inherent assumption that evil is a vaporous manifestation of a deprived upbringing and/or the misfortune of addictions or bad role models and not a universal metaphysical force that exists in opposition to a reality called "Good". All the bad guys are redeemable. I'm waiting for Supergirl to mimic Jack Nicholson's character in Mars Attacks and make the appeal, (opening her arms) "Why can't we all, just...." (she wraps her arms around herself) "get along?"
Most distressingly, the male characters are cardboard cut-outs of either beefy, masculine eunucs (Hank), supportive Ken doalls (James), asexual tech geeks (Winn ) or annoying bad boys who turn into love interests (Mon-El). Character complexity is unfolded more by events than any inherent deep psychological conflict that is part of an existentially and metaphysically messed-up world.
In spite of these criticisms, I have to hand it to the director, Chyler Leigh and the writers that the way Kara's sister Alex came out as gay is believable and well-acted--that is, absent any character in her inner circle who would consider a lesbian lifesyle to be morally objectionable, which doesn't exist in this universe.
Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Pretty Good, but....
I'm between jobs and killing time before the next one starts, so I've been watching this series on Netflix. I'm into the middle of the third season. When you obsessiview series, it's easier to pick up certain patterns. Both good and bad.
One is this: Steve and Danno decide to find a suspect. They encounter (usually) him in a public venue or in a house or building. Instead of coming up close to the suspect before identifying themselves, they call his name from twenty yards or more away. Predicatably, the suspect runs. Steve and Danno run after him. The music rises and speeds up. People in the crowd are pushed away. Applecarts are upset. Tables at outdoor restaurants are overturned. Women scream. Children cry. Men call out, "Hey, you!" They finally capture the suspect by some flying tackle and make a snide remark as they cuff him. This takes up at least 30 good seconds of screen time.
Instead, why don't they just box the guy in before even approaching him? Why don't they cover windows or other exits? Why don't they find some more creative ways to assure an easy capture? Steve is a Navy SEAL. He knows how to do this. Writers, invest in better plot lines and dialogue and less in predicable and unnecessary chase scenes.
CSI: Miami: Ambush (2008)
Lisa Sheridan did a great job in "Ambush"
For someone who had to play a corpse for most of the episode, I'm very impressed by Ms. Lisa Sheridan's work as Kathleen Newberry in the "Ambush" episode of Season 6. I've never noticed her before in anything she'd done, but the kind of physical work that this role required was pretty demanding, and that in spite of the fact she had to remain immobile most of the time. I'm aware that anyone who has to play a corpse in the CSI series is pretty well doomed to play a thankless role. So I guess I should be thanking the writers and director for some of this. I see from her resume and bio information that she's pretty active in the business. Now I'll keep an eye out.