The original idea for the TV Tomb of Mystery was to prevent purchase of new DVDs by doing deeper dives on the ones I already had. It never really accomplished that, though, and the end result was a fair amount of random TV covered but not a tenth of what I wanted to get through.
Looking at those early posts I see a lot of over-introducing the reader to the shows I covered, or screencap-bloat. I got better at the bloat as I went along - FWIW, not much now; I’m sure these skills will come in handy in the blogging retirement home - but it makes some of those Young Indiana Jones, Friday the 13th or Avengers posts kind of messy. Ditto for the TV Proms. Ah well.
Before I seal the TV Tomb of Mystery and leave it all to the cyber-grave-diggers of the future, let’s have one last look at some of the TV I keep around here. All descriptions from imdb.
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| (1988) |
Year ago, I used to always tell people my plans for a series based on Cook's adventures, with a coda season of George Vancouver’s to the Pacific Northwest. If you had a drink with me anytime 2003-2008, you probably heard the pitch and me acting out the episode of the Endeavour crashed on the Great Coral Reef, told in Lost flashback style to Cook before he left England, all to the haunting strains of "Asturias." I mean, I've got the whole thing storyboarded out in my head, and with drone-cameras and CGI, it'd be even easier.
People tuned me out, I guess – it happens – but had anyone at that time told me “You know, boy, from the things you're saying, it sure sounds like you’d appreciate this Australian mini-series that follows the historical record closely and emphasizes each of these beats you’re talking about. No 'Asturias,' but every other scene you mention is in there." I sure would have appreciated it. I guess I can't blame my stateside friends for not knowing. But what about all those Australian bartenders I met during this time? Not a one? No one on the internet? (It was somehow never mentioned in the four years I belonged to the Captain Cook Society, as well. Who surely must have been aware of it - and both its quality and sensitivity to the folds of the story from so many sides. Bizarre.)
Oh well. At least I got there. Here’s what I learned: (a) my original idea of three mini-series and a coda would’ve been way too much, (b) even so, this one is rather top-heavy to the first voyage, but boy do they cover everything and then some and exactly as I pictured it all in my head – so wonderful when that happens, thank you to all involved, (c) the performances are top notch, but extra props to John Gregg's Sir Joseph Banks. Truly one of the best marriages of actor-to-role I've had the pleasure to see. The miniseries structures itself wisely in his and Elizabeth Cook (played by Carol Drinkwater)'s relationship with the Captain, checking in with them at home during the later adventures, and this (ties things together well). Extra points to Xabier Eliorriaga as Lord Sandwich, as well; what screen presence this dude has.
Hard to tell if people who are not obsessed with Cook's voyages will enjoy it half as much as those who are. But if you're in the latter boat, you're in for a treat.
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| (1985) |
It's funny that they use an old picture of Candice Bergen up there. Mainly because the big takeaway of this mini-series for me is: how to take a group of effortlessly attractive actresses and add years and layers of distraction to their faces and figures in some kind of Liberace cosplay.
I get that it's an exaggeration of the fashions of the era - and possibly there's something meta here, as well; think of the "Hollywood Wives" trope now, wouldn't it be a group of over-stylized women with Botox leers and what not? - but it's always odd when attractive women are done up so garishly; it's like the opposite of what normally happens on the silver screen. I'm surprised their agents didn't get the production shut down.
Normally I have great patience for things so steeped in trashy retro, but I struggled to make it through the first episode and ending up turning the second one off. Maybe someday. I will one day work my way through the novels of both Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann. Not sure why, but it's a promise I made myself long ago.
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| I always love seeing Tony Hopkins in any pre-Silence of the Lambs role, though. It's like a whole different career. |
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| (1991) |
Few series this side of Young Indiana Jones bring me back to the early 90s era of cable than this one. I've spoken often of this over the life of the blog, the time travel aspect, how certain media brings with it an eau de nostalgia. It's a phenomenon many folks have commented on over the years, of course, not just me.
Why this is, with either YIJ or this, I don't know - this isn't a favorite show, nor were these TV viewings of yesteryear particularly memorable. I couldn't tell you the night I watched either (although I do remember a memorable morning-after-huge-party viewing of "Fortitude" which was my first experience with the "wake and bake" phenomenon; as such, that episode might be seared on the brains more than others) and yet for some reason, the 'member-berry-flypaper of these shows is stronger than most others. Go figure.
As for the show itself, it's good, not great. The lack of digital remastering really hurts. Vonnegut was once my favorite writer until I woke up one day and discovered I couldn't read it anymore. I'm afraid to revisit Slaughterhouse Five or Timequake lest I discover I don't like those, and they were huge and influential books for me and I don't want to discover that. I like "Fortitude" with Frank Langella and "The Foster Portfolio" the best - great performances by Jon Cryer and Katie Wolfe.
Goes for everyone, actually. Great episode - I just watched it again.
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| (1958-1960) |
Former combat cameraman Mike Kovac is now a freelance photographer in New York City, specializing in difficult and dangerous assignments where he can get the kinds of pictures that other photographers can't, or won't take.
Here's one I took a chance on because the whole series was like $9. What a bargain! I'll buy almost any TV on DVD at that price, if it came out before, say, 1990, and isn't M*A*S*H. Old TV has a whole different rhythm, whole different feel. Great for background, or great to watch and pick out actors and actresses you've seen elsewhere. Combat and M Squad are like that, too. I enjoy the mild disorientation of it all more than any of the actual stories, usually. But that's okay.
Great idea for a retro show, if someone wants to reboot it. That is: a show done now but set in the 1950s. You could teach new generations about the mechanics of photography * , great period costumes, flashbacks to WW2, the whole nine yards. Epic. The material is perhaps under-exploited here in the original version, as is the star power of Charles Bronson. (He takes his shirt off a lot, though, if that's your thing.)
* I have a book on the shelf about studio photography from the 50s that could pass for one of those appendices giving technical specs for steampunk maguffinery in a fantasy novel, so obsolete are its references and opaque its descriptive processes.
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| (1998) |
Another one I had no idea existed until this year when flipping around in Marvel Legacy Animation in Disney Plus What a find. My kids are all fascinated by it, even if they don’t know what to make of it. Understandably - this is not an entry-level, it's for people steeped in Marvel lore. I think that basically has become everyone by default, thanks to the MCU, so no issues now. Different story back in the 90s, maybe? I don't know. Anyway: what a cool show. Larry Brody (author of "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" while we're here) gets the DSO Sorry-I-Missed-It-Award of 2021.
The animation is a cross between a sort of Johnny Quest style and that not-quite-fully-developed CGI look of the 90s. Beyond the Mind's Eye meets Starlin/ Kirby. Quite memorable.
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| (1989 - ) |
It may seem a little odd to include this one, but my kids have had Simpsons-mania lately so I’ve been revisiting it all and even seeing some of the ones I never saw.
You ever play around with Frinkiac? It’s fun. I showed it to my kids and they can't believe it. I told them they could even make their own. Here's the first one they did and made me upload to the screensaver on the tv.
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| (2017 - God Help Us) |
This show could be the reigning champ of nonsense-TV, a genre that has blossomed alongside prestige-TV in the first few decades of the twenty-first century. Or perhaps not alongside and perhaps not blossomed. More like sprouted like poisonous toadstools in the shadows and basements between and underneath the skyscrapers.
The connecting thread is, ostensibly, Harry (Bill Pullman at his squintiest and shaggiest) a detective who at one point had amazingly ridiculous personal problems that mirrored aspects of the crimes he was investigating (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) before they stopped any pretense of that and then the ridiculousness of the crimes being investigated shoved everything else aside. Nothing about the show - from the relationships to the crimes to the investigations to the anything - is even within shouting distance of realism, but it's a fascinating glimpse into the biases and projections of the people making it. It's one of those "emotionally true" deals, if you identify as porcelain. Each episode rewrites the details on which the previous episode hinged and kind of looks at you, confused, if you bother to bring it up. It's a fascinating way to make TV.
Each season is a textbook example of wild disconnect and escalation, of understanding the grammar of visual storytelling but not the actual meaning. It soaks the grammar with a superficial grasp of trauma, void, like I say, of verisimilitude of any kind, and this makes some of seasons one and two great fun to watch. Season three, however, is about as pointless and un-fun a season of television as has ever been filmed. My wife and I watched it to the bitter end under the mistaken conclusion our fellow trash-TV friends, with whom we long-distance-consumed together seasons one or two, were watching, too. They sensibly gave up after the first or second episode. It's almost like someone from the show peeked out and saw no one was taking it seriously and wanted to make absolutely sure no one had any ironic fun at the show's expense. Mission accomplished, I guess.
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| Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020 - ) |
The support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, have to keep up with their duties, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies.
Fun stuff. I don’t have much to say, really – I’ve got a bit more to say on Enterprise, and that’ll appear in these pages sometime soon, but I think I’ve said just about everything I can possibly say about Star Trek in life. I will begin disproving that about five seconds after hitting publish on this blog, I'm sure, the way I “quit collecting comics” in 1991. But that’s how it feels anyway (for both).
The voice performances from everyone here are great, especially in episodes like "Crisis Point." Tawny Newsome deserves an award for that one. Maybe she got one, I have no idea. I bought the first season and will likely watch it another time or two, but like all new Trek, I just can't see myself keeping up with it. This one is better than all the rest of it (Picard, Discovery) that I've seen, though. The wokeisms are all there but they don't (at least in s1) overpower. A good bridge between the eras.
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| (2006 - 2013) |
Man, that description, while technically correct, is terrible. Is "arrogance" Donaghy's defining trait, particularly vis-a-vis Liz Lemon? Is "Liz tries to keep from going crazy?" really what the show's about? Maybe, I don't know. The show's a lot more interesting than that description.
This was on the air when Dawn and I started dating, so we saw plenty of it back in the day. We both figured it'd be a fun one to binge-watch, but we petered out around the end of season one and then watched some random episodes and never got to the finale or live-filmed episode as we planned. Not sure why. We both enjoyed everything we saw.
Come to think of it, Thirty Rock hasn't done so well in syndication; it seems like it'd be a binge-watch show, though, doesn't it? Or something that you'd watch reruns of a lot, like The Office? Why isn't it? Trying to figure out why is one of those ‘Which notes, your Majesty?’ sort of situation. Everything you identify as perhaps being too much seems essential when you look at it.
Season 5’s Reagan-ing episode is start to finish gold. I wish I could get the clip I wanted to for the link but no luck. It's great, though - a standout for a show where every episode is, in some fashion, a standout.
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| Seasons Two and Three (1988 - 1990) |
Well, I meant to give each season the same treatment I gave season one, but no luck there. Ironic, since season one is my least favorite of the show's three seasons.
I took a bunch of screencaps when I watched the show earlier this year - only a few of which ended up below - but practically none from my favorite three episodes of the series: the last two ("The Raid" and "Payback") and "And Make Death Proud To Take Us." Or "Road To Long Binh," or so many others. This is the sort of glaring omission which makes me want to do the whole thing over from scratch. And I would, if my blogging DEROS was not coming up too fast to make such a thing impractical. I included a few of the guest or recurring stars below (Penny Johnson, Angela Bassett) but not all of them (Michael Madsen, Carl Weathers, so many others).
Both season two and season three added new characters and twists, and production moved from Hawaii to Los Angeles. It all worked fine for me, especially the new cast members. Season three based a lot of material on John Plaster's S.O.G. which is an essential - if confusing - Vietnam read.
The show seems to be finding a new audience these days, which makes me happy.
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| (1978 - 1982) |
The misadventures of the staff of a struggling Top 40 rock radio station in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Somewhere along the way I started throwing this one at night as my before-bed show. I watched a few seasons closely – or more closely than just-for-background, but lately it’s been more background. It has a cadence and familiarity that is perfect for that 11:15 hour, if I’m somehow not already asleep in my chair.
My nocturnal habits aside, what a perfect show. It belongs in the same conversation as any sitcom of its era and surrounding ones, from Cheers back through the Mary Tyler Moore Show. It seems dated – and it is dated – but the writing and situations are all still sharp, and it’s just a fun show. Plus with each year that passes it's more and more of a perfect museum piece on a fascinating era. Not just for radio but for all of it.
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| The chatter in the WKRP facebook group I belong to is evenly divided between Bailey-vs.-Jennifer and Herb's suits. |
Although the show was on the dim edges of my perceptions before we moved to Germany, it was not shown on AFN, at least that I remember, so I don't remember it from when it was on the air. I associate it more with the shows in syndication on UHF of the late 80s. I only ever watched a full episode a few years ago - lo and behold, hey, this is great stuff. I intend to take as deep a dive, someday, into the behind the scenes production details as time allows.
Like Tour of Duty, it's a show with some fake-out DVD releases with alternate soundtracks, so look before you leap, potential buyers.
The TV Tomb of Mystery is now sealed, notwithstanding a couple of one-offs for Enterprise and Coupling. (Put that in hieroglyphs.)
