Category: Television

Finding Her Voice and Sense of Self

April 26, 2020 – Unorthodox (2020) Netflix

I am late to the party on this one – most everyone I know has already watched this limited Netflix series about a young woman who decides to leave behind her Brooklyn community of Chassidic Jews to flee to Berlin. I wasn’t eager to watch Unorthodox. The subject didn’t interest me, and I didn’t have the heart to watch Chassidic characters depicted as two-dimensional bad guys. I thought I knew what I was going to see in this show. But so many of my friends love this show, I decided I would give it a chance.

The show is much more subtle and moving then I expected. Unorthodox is about more than leaving a Chassidic community. It is about a young woman finding her voice and sense of self. Shira Haas, the actor who portrays Esty, the young woman who flees to Berlin, is just amazing. She is vulnerable and completely compelling. The whole cast is good, and the Chasidic Jewish characters are three-dimensional people, not cardboard villains. You feel real sadness for the husband Esty flees, who wanted to have a real and respectful relationship with his wife but didn’t have a clue how to do that and was misguided by bad advice from his community. But mostly you feel bittersweet: exhilaration as Esty begins to find herself and sadness at the cost to her in doing so.

Unorthodox is gripping and genuinely moving. I highly recommend it.

He Belonged to Me

April 21, 2020 – Let’s Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince (2020) CBS

Prince Rogers Nelson died 4 years ago today. He was the first music superstar my age that I followed and loved. I discovered Prince in 1981, six months or so after the release of Dirty Mind, his third album. I loved Dirty Mind — it is still probably my favorite Prince album — it was vital, rocking, soulful, funky and very, very sexy. He played all the instruments on the album. I became a devoted fan, buying his next album Controversy the day it came out and sitting 12th row at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. The intimate auditorium was electric — everyone thrilled to the concert, and it still is one of the best shows I have ever seen. The Time opened for Prince, and they may have been even better that night than Prince and his band. I also skipped class to go alone to the first showing of Prince’s first and best movie Purple Rain, a 10:00 am matinee.

I have followed Prince through the years, buying his records and seeing him when a could, at venues large — sitting in the last row of the Worcester Centrum for the Lovesexy tour — and small — standing behind Ron Wood and his 25-year-old girlfriend, 8 feet from Prince and his Jimi-Hendrix-syle power rock trio in the Conga Room, a small club in Los Angeles. Prince was my age — or so I thought when I discovered him, it turned out his publicists shaved a couple of years off his age. My other favorite musicians are all substantially older than me. I always felt Prince belonged to me in a way that other favorites didn’t because we grew up together, because I watched him become a star.

This concert tribute special was filmed in January. The weakest performances in this concert are the ones that most closely mimicked the original Prince songs — and even these performances are not bad. H.E.R. was a revelation — trading guitar licks with Gary Clark Jr. on Let’s Go Crazy and playing piano and singing her heart out on The Beautiful Ones. Other strong performances included Clark doing The Cross, Beck doing Raspberry Beret, St. Vincent doing Controversy, and Miguel doing I Will Die 4 U. Sheila E. presided over the whole thing. My favorite moment of the night was the reunion of the original members of The Time, including Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, doing a medley of their hits. They were a great band then, and they are a great band now.

The Prince tribute special airs again, this Saturday night, April 25th. Don’t miss it.

Observer Effect

April 17 2020 – Futureman, Season 3 (2020) Hulu

When deciding what to watch these days, I feel pressure because I am going to share my choice with the handful of people who are reading this blog. I would rather be seen as someone who watches stylish foreign films or edgy indie pictures or obscure classic movies, not someone who watches mindless trash. I am trying to resist this pressure. For one thing, I sometimes like to watch mindless trash. That is who I am: I have always been proud of having high/low tastes, liking both high art and very popular entertainments. But mostly, I want this blog to be an accurate account of what I am watching and going through during this strange time and not an idealized account of what I think I should be watching and going through.

Today, I watched mindless trash. The TV show Futureman is a raunchy time-travel comedy produced by Seth Rogen. It is exactly what you would expect from that description, so if you watch it, you have been warned. After another long, stressful week, Futureman is exactly what I needed: fast-paced, silly and fun, not requiring much concentration to watch. I started watching the show a couple of years ago because Wendey directed a couple of the episodes, but I keep watching even though Wendey has moved on to other projects. I am still an adolescent boy at heart. My favorite part of Futureman is the TV-MA warning at the beginning of each episode, saying the show is for “mature viewers only.” Of course, the warning should read: this show is for “immature viewers only.” I enthusiastically qualify.

Moral Compass

April 7, 2020 – Better Call Saul, Season 5 (2020) AMC

Work has been insanely busy. I have all the usual things to do, plus trying to figure out how to respond to the pandemic. We put out this Passover seder supplement asking Californians to call on Governor Newsom to reduce the prison population to help stop the spread of the Coronavirus. I shouldn’t complain. I am lucky to have work at all in these hard times, and I am grateful. But it has left me without as much time as I hoped to watch films. Despite the workload, I have managed to keep up with Better Call Saul, one of my favorite TV shows. This is the story of a lawyer (Bob Odenkirk) and a former police officer (Jonathan Banks) who lose their moral compasses. Rhea Seehorn gives an amazing performance as well as another lawyer and the girlfriend of the titular Saul.  This show is so well-made and smart. 

Wind Through the Trees

April 4, 2020 – Devs, Season 1 (2020) Hulu

I took a break from movies to watch this great new show.  Nick Offerman stars as the Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg figure at the head of a big tech company working on a mysterious new project.  Part mystery, part philosophical inquiry, part five-minutes-in-the-future science fiction, this show is unpredictable and strikingly beautiful. Though it moves at a contemplative pace, it has held my attention for every single moment. It is not as weird or as challenging to watch as Twin Peaks, but the haunting shots of the wind blowing through the trees recall this 1990s favorite.  Devs is better than many of the movies we have watched in this film festival.