Perry Mason (Season 2)

It has been some months since Perry (Matthew Rhys) won the Emily Dodson case.  Well, it was a hung jury, but the DA declined to try the case again, so essentially a win.  Despite that, Perry has avoided criminal law.  He and Della (Juliet Rylance) have acquired a litigious grocer (Sean Astin) as a client who allows them to pay the bills and even hire a receptionist.  Though his legal career was on an even keel, his emotional state was a wreck.  His farm was sold, so he lived in an apartment and was reduced to riding a motorcycle.  Emily Dodson had since drowned herself.  Yes, time for more drinking and feeling sorrowful.

Then a big case arrived.  Two Latino brothers were arrested for the murder of Brooks McCutcheon, the son of the wealthy wheeler-dealer Lydell McCutcheon.  Though Perry was approached by the family of the brothers, he initially declined the case.  However, Della pushed and he investigated just enough to think they might be innocent.  And so began his latest case.

Much of the cast from last season is back.  Detective Holcomb (Eric Lanuge), who killed his partner in the last season, has returned as a shady business partner to the murdered Brooks McCutcheon.  Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) had split from Perry at the end of last season and now works for the DA's office, a fact which Perry proves oblivious despite hearing about it repeatedly.  Assistant DA Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk) has been elevated to DA, but he is being blackmailed for being gay.  Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) was the prime investigator for Perry, but also had outside jobs, including one for the DA's office.  Then there is Perry's ex-wife and son, who move back to Los Angeles.  His son is enrolled in a private school where Perry soon finds himself involved with his son's teacher, Miss Ginny Aimes (Katherine Waterston).  Della Street's love life also changed, where she abandoned Hazel (Molly Ephraim) for the more exciting & wealthy Anita St. Pierre (Jen Tullock).

In order to fill 8 episodes, it had to be a more complicated case than expected.  Of course, that also means that all the introduced characters are probably linked to the crime.  Yes, that proved to be the case.  Brooks' antics were small time but, if investigated, could reveal much bigger crimes related to his father and his father's business partners.  The murder was strategic, to prevent something worse.  Are the Latino brothers just scapegoats or assassins for hire?

Perry proved to be mostly an idiot.  In an early episode, he took measurements about the murder scene and of the two brothers.  This convinced him that they were not the shooters and that he should take the case.  He never brought this up in court and it proved to be bogus.  So, he was an idiot then, but you should have forgotten that from episode 2 by the time we reveal evidence in episode 5.  Right.  Later, the DA somehow learned of critical evidence in the defense's hands.  How could that possibly be?  Well, the obvious solution is that Pete Strickland - who had been in the office many times before and was now working for the DA - might have done some snooping.  This is even more likely when you consider how Pete and Perry have had a falling out.  What does the brilliant Perry Mason deduce?  It must have been his son's teacher, Ginny Aimes!  He confronted her immediately.  Ugh.  When Pete later admitted to it, Perry was dumbfounded.  What?  The DA's investigator investigated my office?  Duh!

By contrast, Della was on the ball.  She gets to have the final confrontation with the main villain and she gets to do much of the strategizing.  She's not some depressed drunk, but a mostly well-adjusted lesbian whose life and career are looking good.  And just to battle those rumors, she and Hamilton start attending events together and hint at marriage.

The season ends with Perry Mason in jail!  Yeah, his withholding of key evidence - accessory after the fact - put him in the klink.  Is it any surprise that the series was cancelled after this?

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Creature Commandos

Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has received intel that Circe - a sorceress from Wonder Woman's home island of Themyscira - has traveled to Pokolistan to assassinate Princess Ilana.  Waller decided to dispatch General Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) with a band of 'creatures' to protect the princess.  Why creatures?  Congress has shutdown the Suicide Squad program, forbidding Waller from sending humans on such high casualty missions.  The creatures - none of whom are quite human - are a work around.  There are 5 creatures:

The Bride (Indira Varma) is the Bride of Frankenstein.  She has 'lived' for 200 years and spent much of her time fleeing the monster, Eric Frankenstein (David Harbour).  She is strong, tough, and anti-social.  She is also the leader of the creatures when Flag is absent.

G. I. Robot (Sean Gunn) is, as the name states, a robot.  He was deployed during World War II where he killed Nazis.  He is obsessed with killing Nazis.  His arms conceal machineguns with which he kills those his teammates identify as Nazis.

Weasel (Sean Gunn) is a human-sized weasel-like creature.  He's basically an animal.

Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk) is a walking radioactive man whose skeleton is always visible through his translucent body.  He can burn through anything with his touch, often graphically killing opponents by melting their faces.  Yikes.

Nina (Zoe Chao) is a female creature from the black lagoon.  She had a rare lung defect that her scientist father 'fixed' by screwing with her DNA.  Now she's aquatic with green skin and gills.

Most episodes have the story of the present as well as an origin story for one of the creatures.  Though all of them are in prison and thus available for Waller to dispatch, some of the origin stories indicate that they were wrongly incarcerated.

The dull-witted and lovestruck Frankenstein was frequently funny, but often quite dark.  He was only too happy to murder anyone in his way.  There is a montage of the Bride and Frankenstein encountering each other throughout the years, her always running and him always chasing.  The guy won't take a hint after 2 centuries.

Overall, it is entertaining.  Not exactly superhero stuff and quite similar to the Suicide Squads and Peacemaker.

Perry Mason

The day after Christmas in 1931, an infant, Charlie Dodson, was kidnapped for a ransom of $100,000.  Though the ransom was paid, the child was dead. The police suspected the child's father.  However, his alibi checked out and the child's mother was arrested and charged.  The kidnappers were discovered dead in a murder-suicide scenario.  Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin) had been having an affair with the lead kidnapper.  E. B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) had accepted the case when the father, Matthew Dodson, was accused.  However, Matthew's father, Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), was unwilling to foot the bill for an adulteress.

Sister Alice McKeegan (Tatiana Maslany) was a radio preacher with a nation-wide following.  Herman Baggerly was a supporter of her ministry, and the Dodsons were members of the church.  Alice involved herself in the case, much to the irritation of the church fathers and her own mother, Birdy McKeegan (Lili Taylor).  Curiously enough, the lead kidnapper and Emily's lover had been an accountant for the church.  It is noteworthy that Sister Alice is largely based on a real person, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), a radio preacher based out of Los Angeles.

Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) was a divorced father, a dishonorably discharged officer from the Great War, a failed dairy farmer, and a private eye living a hand to mouth existence.  He is a man with few friends and spends much of his time depressed or drunk, often both.  He has the emotional self-control of a toddler who wants his mother to buy a toy at the store.  He is only too happy to cheat, if that is what it takes to get his way.  "There's what is legal, and there's what is right."  Perry is E. B. Jonathan's investigator, who more often argues with his boss; it is a wonder that E. B. put up with him.  This Perry Mason is a foul-mouthed slob.  The number of F-bombs dropped might compete with a Tarantino film's use of the N-word.  This guy is an interesting character, but he isn't Perry Mason.

Della Street (Juliet Rylance) was E. B. Jonathan's secretary, though she spent most of her time arguing with her boss, quite similar to Perry.  She must be repeatedly reminded to answer the phone.  Della lived in a boarding house; one of the other boarders, Hazel (Molly Ephraim), is her lover.  Yes, Della is a lesbian; must get that representation in there.  Oh, Assistant DA Hamilton Burger is also homosexual; don't want to leave the fellas out.  It turned out that Della did most of the work for the law firm and expects to be a partner in a couple of years.  Really, E. B. proved to be an empty suit with an over-inflated ego.

As a Depression-Era show, one expects a downer soundtrack.  Such is delivered.  There is a repeated melody that signals sadness and depression.  There are no breaks in the gloomy setting, just one long tale of woe and dread.  It's a miracle that there were not more suicides among these characters.

The trial, which serves as Perry Mason's first as a lawyer, is ludicrous.  DA Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) pinned his entire case on the fact that Emily was having an affair with the kidnapper.  He proved beyond any doubt that she was an adulteress, therefore you must find her guilty of murdering her child and sentence her to hang!  Not only is his case thin on evidence, he knows the detectives on the case were corrupt; heck, he demanded that the detectives eliminate anyone who knew too much.  Yes, the whole justice system is rotten to the core.  Half of the stuff that Perry and his fellow investigators, Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) and Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), uncover proved to be inadmissible.  Sure, that's nice for the audience to see the full story but it helped the case not at all.  Then there was the imaginary cross-examination of the actual killer that harkened back to the Raymond Burr series.

Excellent cast, a terrific film noir setting, this had lots of potential.  However, it should have been some original character, not an origin story for Perry Mason that changes all the characters.  Watch Spider-Noir instead.

Barry (season 1)

Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) is a former US Marine who now works as a hitman for Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root).  Barry is clearly depressed and directionless.  He doesn't like what he does but there is nothing else for him.  Fuches has a new job: go to Los Angeles and kill a man who is screwing the wife of a Chechnyan gangster.  Barry follows the man to an acting class and fumbles into being in a scene with his mark.  Hey, that was kind of fun.  And his mark is a cool guy.  Because Barry dawdled on the hit, the Chechnyans kill the mark and Barry kills some of them.  Barry is now determined to stay in California and pursue acting, but his hitman past won't stay in the past.

This is a particularly dark comedy.  Is it comedy?  The situations that Barry finds himself in are outrageous, which is what makes them funny.  Barry plays it straight while many of the other characters are goofy.  Henry Winkler as Gene Cousineau the acting teacher is particularly good.  Anthony Carrigan is quirky as the number two man among the Chechnyans.  He has a mild delivery of every line, whether it be compliments or threats.  He is an entertaining yes-man with a peculiar look: completely bald and no eyebrows.  Sarah Goldberg plays Barry's love interest, Sally Reed.  She is an aspiring actress and the most talented member of Cousineau's class.  For her, everything is acting and advancing her career.  As such, she and Barry are on-again, off-again through the season.  The central character, Barry, is something of a mush.  He doesn't know what he wants, which seems very strange.  Here is a man who kills people for a living, but he can't say 'no' to some of the dumbest ideas.  His timidity in facing people leads to some truly horrendous outcomes.

Not great, but not bad either.  Good enough that I will start the second season.

Avenue 5

Avenue 5 is a luxury space liner run by the Judd Corporation.  Herman Judd (Josh Gad) is aboard the ship, trying to make the voyage a success.  However, he is a socially awkward mogul who is more likely to get the opposite results.  Captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie) exudes confidence and reliability.  He is famous for saving lives on the Avenue 3.  Of course, he disclaims any credit, stating that it was the fire suppression system that did all the work.  Right as the ship is approaching Saturn's moon of Titan, where they will get a gravity assist to send them back toward Earth, the ship's gravity resets.  This cascades into a series of disasters that cause the Avenue 5 to miss its window for rerouting the ship.  Suddenly, the three week cruise becomes a 3 year cruise!  The passengers are not happy.

Following the disaster, the actual working of the ship is revealed.  The high-tech bridge with its attractive and smartly-dressed crew are just a facade.  They are actors who deliver specific lines from a script.  Likewise, Captain Clark is just an actor.  The real captain was killed in the disaster and the real crew lives below decks in quarters that look like a World War II submarine.  Despite the luxury appearance, it turns out that the ship was cheaply made.

The show is a dark comedy, but the laughs are few and far between.  It has a distopian feel to it.  Among the regulars are Iris Kimura (Suzy Nakamura), Mr. Judd's executive assistant and yes-woman, Matt Spencer (Zach Woods) the ship's activity director and counselor who offers mostly unhelpful and sad advice, Karen Kelly (Rebecca Front), a particularly vocal and nosy passenger who horns her way into authority, Billy McEvoy (Lenora Crichlow), the lead engineer who emerges from below decks and is one of the few competent people aboard, and Spike Martin (Ehtan Phillips), a retired astronaut who is always eager to join whenever he sees an opportunity.

Much of the 'comedy' comes from characters doing obviously stupid things.  Why wasn't someone who knew better in charge of jettisoning weight from the ship rather than a bunch of busy body passengers?  That comic at the comedy club is dreadfully unfunny was not funny.  It was mildly amusing, maybe causing a brief smile but that he went on and on in an unfunny set that later required him to be unfunny was like milking a stone for laughs.  Ugh.  The characters are stupid enough for this to be pure slapstick silliness.  Then again, Herman Judd is quite stupid for a successful businessman.

Mediocre.  It has a second season.  Maybe it improves.

Generation Kill (2008)

Kuwait, 2003: The 1st Recon Battalion of the 1st Marines are preparing to invade Iraq.  Evan Wright (Lee Tergesen) arrives to accompany 2nd platoon of Bravo Company during the invasion.  The Marines are not exactly keen on having a reporter along but he is soon accepted.  Second platoon is commanded by Lt. Nate Fick (Stark Sands), but Wright is assigned to the Humvee commanded by Staff Sergeant Brad "Iceman" Colbert (Alexander Skarsgard).  Lt. Col. Stephen "Godfather" Ferrando (Chance Kelly) is a hard charging marine and quite eager to get his men "into the game" with plenty of action.  When he has an officer meeting, he invariably tells the men that they aren't being aggressive enough.  The narrative follows two aspects of the war.  First, there are the various battles, skirmishes, and encounters with the Iraqi fighters and civilians.  This is pretty one-sided, as the marines utterly dominate the battles and only have 1 interpreter to converse with non-combatants.  Second, there is the esprit-de-corps - or lack of it - of the marines themselves.  Questions of competence, issues of morality, second-guessing of tactics, and so forth are frequent topics of discussion.  The marines also trade insults and unflattering nicknames.  Despite their battlefield dominance, the behind-the-scenes action paints the officer corps as a mixed bag of good officers and incompetent ones.  Also, the marines often find they need to scrounge for equipment, be it batteries for their night vision goggles, lubricant for their gun turrets, or even food.  The rule is that the marines 'make do.'  To demonstrate the 'make do' ethic, one of the marines who lost his helmet finds himself wearing a motorcycle helmet for a while before upgrading to a helmet taken from an Iraqi soldier.

The series primarily follows Team 1 of the 2nd Platoon and is even more focused on the Humvee in which Evan Wright is riding.  During the driving scenes, the driver, Corporal Ray Persons (James Ransone), babbles incessantly while Iceman stares out the window at the passing Iraqi landscape.  Ray is the standout character who steals many scenes with his humorous banter and frequent singing.  In the backseat, Wright occasionally asks a question or - during battles - sits wide-eyed and silent.  There is also Lance Corporal Trombley (Billy Lush), who is perhaps too eager to shoot someone.

Despite being a series about war, it was light on action.  Sure, lots of things blow up, Iraqis get shot, and bullets ricochet off the vehicles, but it doesn't impact the characters.  They are inured to this from their time in Afghanistan and that insouciance makes the action seem more like annoying inclement weather than a dangerous firefight.

This is no Band of Brothers.  It offers a narrow glimpse of the Iraq War and a brief biography of a score of marines during a two-month window.  Just okay.

Deadwood (season 1)

The story opens in Montana Territory where Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) hangs a prisoner outside the jail door rather than allow a mob to lynch him.  With that as his final act as sheriff, he resigns and leaves for Deadwood.  The road into Deadwood is crowded with wagons bound for the gold rush.  Among the wagons are Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine), Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), and Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie).  The town of Deadwood is only a few months old and situated on Indian land, thus placing it outside the jurisdiction of the United States.  To make matters more interesting, news of Custer's Last Stand at the Little Bighorn has just happened.  Many of the proprietors are a law unto themselves, most notably Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), the owner of the Gem Theater, which is really a bar and brothel.  Into this maelstrom ride Seith Bullock and his partner, Sol Star (John Hawkes), who open a hardware store.

Many of the characters are historical figures who lived and died in Deadwood while others are composites, and many others are just fictional.  Though many of the events are true, the chronology is not.  For instance, Bullock arrived in Deadwood after Hickok had been killed, but the show has them meeting and becoming friends.  Bullock arrived in early August 1876 (1st episode) and General George Crook arrived in Deadwood in September 1876 (12th episode).  Eventful place!

Ian McShane is too old for the real Swearengen, who was 30 at the time, but he does a great job.  It is no wonder he won a Golden Globe for his performance.  Much as I like Timothy Olyphant, he has a limited emotional range here: simmering anger.  He is too often about to blow a gasket.  So much righteous indignation.  I like the incorruptible good guy more than most but give him a sense of humor.  He's going to have a stroke with how high-strung he is portrayed.  Keith Carradine doesn't last long in the series but makes for an excellent Wild Bill.  Oddly enough, a decade earlier he played Buffalo Bill Cody to Jeff Bridges Wild Bill.

The show does not shy away from profanity and many of the characters are quite proud their colorful speech.  Nudity and violence are also plentiful.  Entertaining and recommended.

Peacemaker

The HBO series pickups up soon after The Suicide Squad concludes.  Peacemaker (John Cena) has recovered from his bullet wound and being caught under a collapsing building.  Surprised that no one has arrived to put him back in jail, he goes to his home, a mobile home that is painted in patriotic colors.  However, it turns out he is not free.  An independent group - including two office operatives seen in The Suicide Squad - impress him into service.  Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) is the leader of the team and declares they are up against the Butterflies.  Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and Economos (Steve Agee) have been assigned to the task force as a punishment for their actions in The Suicide Squad.  The crew also has a greenhorn agent named Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), who is actually the daughter of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis).  Added to the crew is Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), Peacemaker's occasional partner.

Though Peacemaker remains a homicidal goofball, much like he was in his last appearance, there is a lot of character development.  His dynamic with his abusive and racist father, Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick), explains how he came to be who he is.  His father is also the White Dragon, an Iron Man like supervillain with high-tech battle armor and a variety of powerful helmets that Peacemaker acquires.

The opening credits scene is awesome.  All the characters dance onto the stage like some Vegas show.  It is so unexpected and funny that I watched it virtually every episode.  Great stuff.

The downside of the series is the insertion of politics.  There is a big message about environmentalism and how humanity is on a course to destroy the earth.  Yeah, okay.  Also, it turns out that Leota is a lesbian and her wife appears in most of the episodes to voice concerns about what Leota is doing.  5'5" Harcourt easily trounces a thug who is nearly a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier.  Fine.  White males get all the big character flaws: Vigilante is abysmally stupid, Peacemaker's father is a rabid racist, John Economos is a mostly pathetic loser, and Peacemaker is a dim bulb.  By contrast, Murn is competent and focused.  Harcourt is kickass and qualifies for a serious spy thriller.  Leota is a noob who blossoms into a hero.  However, she is the butt of some physical comedy, something mostly reserved for the white males.

Despite the modern political tropes, the show is highly watchable and quite entertaining.  I look forward to further antics from Peacemaker and his crew.  Recommended.

Chernobyl

The HBO mini-series opens in April 1988 with Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) recording his conclusions and opinions regarding Chernobyl.  After carefully wrapping the cassette tapes in paper and hiding them for some unknown contact, he kills himself.  The narrative resumes with Lyudmilla Inatenko wandering her apartment in the middle of the night when she spots an explosion.  Moments later, the shockwave hits and her husband joins her to stare at the distant blaze.  Meanwhile, inside the nuclear plant, the technicians are trying to determine what just happened.  Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter) is the man in charge but he spends all his time laying blame and denying that there has been an explosion.  Nuclear plants meltdown but they do not explode.  Soon, Lyudmilla's husband, Vasily, departs for the fire; he is a firefighter.  As he fights the fire, it becomes obvious that the site is highly radioactive but the fire must be fought.  It is at this point that Legasov is summoned to a meeting in Moscow where he learns of the disaster and is dispatched with Deputy Minister Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgard) to determine the severity and provide solutions.  The situation is indeed dire and many Russians must sacrifice their lives to save millions.

The 5 part series shows both the heroic efforts to contain the disaster and also the political minefield of doing so in a communist state.  At one point, they get their hands on a German robot which fails immediately because it is rated to the 'stated' radiation level rather than the actual radiation.  Lying is too often the default setting and it proves catastrophic.  Without a robot, more Russian men must clear radioactive debris.  By the end, one has massive respect for the Russian people and contempt for the Russian government.

Great acting, high drama, and even educational.  Thumbs up!

Confederate

The makers of Game of Thrones have floated the idea of a new HBO series that considers what America would be like had the South won the Civil War.  Doubtless, the success of Man in the High Castle - which proposes an alternate history in which Germany and Japan divided the United States between them after winning WWII.  Let's look at the numbers.

The 1860 Census found that the United States had 31.4 million people.  Of those, approximately 9 million lived in the South and 22 million in the North.  That's a pretty impressive advantage for the North but there's more.  Of the 9 million people in the South, more than 40% were black.  In South Carolina, the population was 57% black, virtually all of whom were slaves.  The North had 72% of the railroads, 92% of iron & steel production, 75% of the wealth, 68% of the exports, and 85% of the factories.  The math is quite hostile to a Confederate victory.  The only reason the South lasted as long as it did was because they had a better officer corps at the start of the war.

 

The South was fighting a defensive war, which is often a recipe for defeat.  Twice, Lee sallied into the North; some of his army refused to follow.  They had joined to fight against Northern aggression, not commit Southern aggression.  However, suppose that Lee took Washington, DC and even captured Lincoln and most of the government.  Suppose that the North accedes to the South's separation.  There still remains an Underground Railroad.  More John Browns will attempt to spark slave revolts.  After the Colonies won the Revolutionary War in 1783, England tried to undo it in the War of 1812.  The same would happen with the North and South and unless the South dramatically departed from the King Cotton economy, the North would be even more formidable in a rematch.

 

I may watch the premiere but my suspension of disbelief is going to be stretched to the breaking point very quickly.