Captain's Log
Starting a shorter schedule as the Winter Olympics get underway
The Olympics started Friday, so we’re gonna have two weeks of no new network TV. Which is fine with me for now, because I have some other important things to deal with.
Nothing really to catch up on, although I am intrigued by everything I’ve been hearing about Wonder Man (although I have not seen it yet).
Hey, how about this? We made a little time over the weekend to check out The Muppet Show‘s new special. I didn’t really grow up with The Muppet Show due to my age, so I don’t really have any particular nostalgia for it. But it still seemed like it could be a pretty fun romp, and it was. Human Muppet Sabrina Carpenter fit perfectly as the special guest host, and at least to me, the whole thing felt like it really captured the spirit of the original. Others who are better versed in Muppet can probably provide more detailed and accurate critique. (I would have put it as the header image this week, but I had already picked a different one by the time I saw it.)
Abbott Elementary, “Candygrams” – Man, I thought this was a very good, very funny episode. Certainly by Abbott‘s standards the last couple of seasons. It’s Valentine’s Day, and, not really related to that, Janine and Gregory begin to discuss moving in together. Melissa and Barbara worry that a student in Melissa’s class is going to be ostracized as the only one not to get a candygram, while Jacob (a veteran middle-school teacher) warns Melissa (formerly a second-grade teacher) not to get involved. And Ava and O’Shon have a mild dust-up over all the Valentine’s Day gifts Ava’s past suitors are sending her. I’m keeping it short because there’s a lot of funny stuff I don’t want to give away here, from the culmination of the B-plot, to the brief but always hilarious Tariq appearances in the A-plot, to the culmination of that plot, to the kind of weird and surreal gag in the cold open and tag that this show doesn’t usually go for. Really enjoyed this one; even with the hugging and learning, it’s legitimately very funny.
Animal Control, “French Bulldogs and White Broncos” – Actually not anything to do with O.J. Frank gets two passes from a grateful civilian for a couples horse ride out on some farm, but he doesn’t have a date to take, so he and Victoria bet that he can get one or she gets the passes. Shred tries to help him find one throughout the workday; without saying too much, this episode brings a little more to the forefront what they’ve subtly seeded at a few points, Frank and Victoria actually being on the same wavelength more than either one would care to admit. In the B-plot, Patel is running an event Bob Barker would be proud of (he calls it “Sip and Snip”), although Emily’s inability to delegate has her stressed the whole time and trying to spy on him. Then Patel and the others working the event may have accidentally neutered a prize breeding bulldog… so maybe Emily was right to be worried. Solid episode; while the show has been pretty subtle in seeding the ideas of a Frank/Victoria pairing, we get enough here to see their genuine chemistry and how well they get along (even if, admittedly, a lot of that is a shared love of snarking on other people because they hold themselves above them). The pure stupidity of Patel’s scheming over the bulldog is pretty funny, too.
Going Dutch, “None of the Good Guys” – Maggie’s continued struggles in dating lead Conway to pull a couple of tricks to turn a singles mixer into an event personalized for her; after Patrick offends a group of Belgian separatist protestors, one of them threatens to infiltrate the base and do terrorism, and Patrick and Shah have to determine his identity and find him before he can (made more difficult by him hiding among the other men at the singles mixer). Good episode, with a few particularly funny bits— Maggie’s latest boyfriend getting the Patrick vetting interview and that immediately unveiling a couple of hilariously terrible secrets; everything, and I mean everything, to do with Papadakas performing as a magician at the singles mixer.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “Seven” – Great episode that is spent immediately dealing with the aftermath of the big scene at the end of the previous one. Dunk is mad at Egg for hiding the truth about who he is from him, but his innate decency won’t let him stay mad for too long… and then there’s the matter of the Targaryen’s particular form of justice… one which gives us the episodes title, and one which requires Dunk to find six other knights willing to join his cause, either by appealing to whatever personal relationships they’ve formed, their sense of justice (which might actually work for the ones who saw the incident), or just their dislike of Aerion Targaryen. Technically, an episode where the plot doesn’t move far, but it sure finds a lot of compelling material to explore on that short journey, with some great scenes and great character interactions— though not losing the show’s sense of humor. We’re off to a great start after four episodes.
Best Medicine, “Eyewitness Blues” – It’s already time for another tradition, the town’s annual Blueberry Festival and accompanying pie contest. Some of the early stuff was particularly irritating to me, from both ends— the townspeople continue to be stubborn about taking medical advice, especially when doing so could interfere with the Really Important Festival Of The Week, but Martin is also such a dick about going out of his way to not care and shit on the festival that… like, why are you even here, dude? You don’t like the people and they don’t listen to you.
But, the episode markedly improves after about the first third or so. Mark’s plot is pretty funny, especially as such a genial and friendly guy (who has to inform a lot of women they may have an STD). Martin and his aunt get a nice story (nice by the end, anyway). Martin generally softens up and becomes more reasonable, and even (after grumpily insisting on not being a judge) accompanies Elaine to the festival as her cameraman.
Speaking of Elaine, this was by far the best use of her. Watching her practice her Reporter Voice (and put it to use) was inherently funny, but even more so were her attempts to conduct “man on the street” interviews at the festival, none of which go well. Elaine’s interviews were the hardest I’ve laughed by far at this show. My favorite exchange:
“Hello ma’am, have you traveled a great distance to sample Maine’s finest blueberries here in Port Wenn?”
“…Elaine, it’s me, Irma.”
So, some improvements. Now, the one thing that does worry me (especially after looking at the description of next week’s episode) is that, apparently, every episode is about the Annual Something-Or-Other, and Tradition Dictates that everyone ignore all sound medical advice and practice so they can participate. What does a normal day look like in Port Wenn? Do they even have normal days? I’m definitely more on Martin’s side if every day is some kind of Annual Event1.
Life more than TV here. The rest of the month might be dedicated to fixing that.
Okay, we actually finished the Dennis Duffy 30 Rock episodes before last week’s episode, but I’m still happy to talk about them if you want! And I’m also happy to talk Fringe. (Which I have been occasionally rewatching.)
The hunt for a Valentine’s Day episode led us to season 2 of Happy Endings— obviously, starting with “The St. Valentine’s Day Maxssacre,” but that led us to a couple of others as well.
I was also informed that we have reached the 25th anniversary of The Pricemaster, which you all should be familiar with by now.
The untimely and tragically young death of James Van Der Beek also led us to a few episodes of Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, trying to pick some of our favorite James stories. The second episode contains one of those, when James is thwarted in his attempt to teach acting seriously at NYU because his entire class just wants to hear Dawson’s Creek stories. Ultimately, James learns to embrace his role of being adored by fans of the show and his responsibility to use that to do some good, and make some Dawson’s Creek fans’ dreams come true (particularly if those fans are attractive women and their dreams are “have sex with Dawson”). Great performance from a dude who knew how not to take himself too seriously. The world is a little dimmer for not having him in it.
Nothing, but a lot of network shows are taking hiatuses during the Olympics. FOX seems like they are not, though, hence Best Medicine this week, and Going Dutch tonight (although Animal Control is a rerun).
Today, How to Get to Heaven From Belfast premieres. Next week, this section will actually be quite long.
On another note, I missed that we got a confirmed date for Invincible season four: March 18.
Let’s hear it.
About the writer
Captain Nath
Born on the bayou, thriving in the mountains. Writer, gambler, comedian, singer-songwriter, bon vivant, globetrotter, and all-around Renaissance Man with perfect opinions about TV and music. Pronounced with a long A and with the H.
It's a gaming ship.
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Three, Episode Fourteen, “Private Charles Lamb”
“We’re thinking of chipping in to buy you a spine.”
“Frank, you can fool some of the papal some of the time.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“Tell ‘em, Trap.”
“You tell ‘em, then we’ll both know.”
I nearly thought this would be about how Radar got his animal hutch (which would make it out of order with the previous one, not the first time nor the last that this would happen), but instead it was about Radar saving a lamb from a feast. It’s interesting, actually, how this show manages to convey both a System and the individuals moving through it; one could imagine a different version of the show where Radar is a one-scene character who makes a fuss and then disappears, but we know and love him even in this one episode, let alone across the series.
It also has a classic moment of M*A*S*H plotting, where Frank visits Mulcahey to complain about the feast, finds he isn’t in, starts writing him a note, and a boy who shot himself walks in to confess, sees Frank, and mistakes him for the priest – a very Seinfeld crossing-up of plots, actually. I also especially note that when Frank writes the note, he writes and edits it, which he then turns into a stupid little joke, and there’s two things funny to me: one, that the show allows Frank to make his own stupid little jokes and not just be a wet blanket all the time, and two, that his joke is only a few degrees away from a normal Hawkeye joke, where the wordplay is a little less clever and the pop culture reference a little more banal.
A fun episode, but Radar grew up on a farm, and eats meat. It makes little sense for him to act this way.
I feel like I can underrate Wayne Rogers’s comedic delivery sometimes–I think about him most in terms of easy warmth–but that “You tell ’em, then we’ll both know” is top-notch.
Beautiful point about Frank.
Inside No. 9, “The Referee’s a W***er”
A glorious comedic episode that ratchets its comedy and drama along beautifully. David Morrissey plays a referee overseeing his last game before retirement; it’s a match with especially high stakes (thanks to the relegation/promotion system), and everything is going wrong. Like a lot of the show’s best episodes, this ratchets up the tension to what feels like an apocalyptic level: we’re witnessing the end of one small world and seeing some huge changes in people’s lives. And it’s very, very funny: there’s a Reece Shearsmith line + delivery here that not only killed me in the moment but almost made me do a literal spit-take an hour later when I remembered it while having a drink. Killer ending.
Also rewatched “Once Removed.” Still very funny and brilliantly plotted.
Looooooooooooool, I forgot this was a British show and spent a few minutes trying to figure out what a censored “W***er” could stand for and my initial thought had me baffled — why would it matter that a referee was that? Why would a referee be that in the first place? Why are you using this racist characterization to drive an episode? Very Randy Marsh of me, fortunately the pence eventually dropped.
This is extra-hilarious to me because I thought about specifying “football (soccer)” just in case, but I didn’t even think about that part.
Stand by Me – This one really holds up. I was surprised how much beauty and heart is here. Somehow Reiner got four young actors with limited experience to give great performances, performances that I don’t think three of them ever matched again. Somehow Reiner turned the pie contest from something that made me wince when reading the book to something I smiled at here. This captures that exact feeling you have when you are 12 and school is about to start and the summer heat has not gone away and you want to hang with your friends but maybe you are about to outgrow them or maybe not. Certainly on the short list of Reiner’s best work, and on the short list of best King adaptations. And that Sutherland kid is pretty good too.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “The Gentleman from America” – He sure is! More later.
Frasier, “Enemy at the Gate” – The long-unawaited return of Jerkass Frasier. Already grumpy, he enters a garage, gets the ticket, and decides to leave right away. But even that brief arrival makes him responsible for paying $2. And Frasier refuses. On the one hand, he’s an asshole here. How he treats the parking attendant is terrible (and dear lord, the rich white dude berating the Latino working man is gross). OTOH, I can relate to what Frasier was feeling about small and illogical injustices – I had a couple of tantrums of this sort I am not proud of now – and that makes this tolerable. And then the kicker: Frasier is late to his show, Roz tries to answer some calls, Roz accidentally says she slept with Frasier, and Frasier arrives and goes on the air unaware and his description of his garage tantrum ends up being the worst possible thing. I am not sure what to make of that at all. Also, there is a sweet little bit with Daphne and Martin on the occasion of her moving out.
Phoenix’s “I just wanna go somewhere no one knows me” makes me tear up every damn time. He’s about as heartbreaking in My Own Private Idaho. (What a career he would have had.)
What got me was Gordie finally crying about his brother’s dead, and Chris comforting him.
And yeah.
“He hates me!” “No, Gordie, he just doesn’t know you.”
The greatness of the four leads here sometimes overshadows Sutherland but yeah, he is superb. Really nails the Ace of the story, this guy who is heading to burnoutville but isn’t there yet and still has tremendous power in the non-adult world, and who is malevolent in the King bully fashion that is more accurate than a lot of people want to admit.
He’s really convincingly nasty in a scuzzy, small town way, like when he talks about feeling up this girl. (And totally different from The Lost Boys where he’s nasty in Joel Schumacher’s cool, homoerotic, charismatic vamp way!)
I think that’s why I always had trouble with this one. Real life had that bad enough for me.
Just a bit of Winter Olympics when I didn’t really know what else to do with my time. Caught the last few performers in the figure skating “free dance” or whatever it’s called. I thought the Canadians were the best personally but maybe I just liked their costumes, I don’t understand how they judge this kind of thing really.
I don’t either, and I keep thinking that there’s a difference between a competitive sport and an impressive display of artistic athleticism, and that anything with a sufficiently performative bent should be an exhibition rather than something that’s formally scored. Just let people do beautiful ice dances in beautiful costumes! I love watching it! No one has to win, or at least no one has to pretend a win is objective!
It’s possible I’m simply not competitive enough to enjoy the Olympics properly.
Just seen a headline stating that one of the British competitors is “in prime position to win skeleton gold” and I’m pretty sure all of this sounds more exciting when you DON’T know what’s going on.
Remember Pirates of the Caribbean? They long ago melted down those gold doubloons for use at the Olympics.
The bones are their money.
This has always been my issue with sports where a judge is used to define the rules of play — an ump calling balls and strikes, a ref saying whether the ball is in or out — and a competition where the judge determines the outcome of play. (Boxing is a weird hybrid — the ultimate end of a boxing match is a knock-out, which is pretty indisputable, but most matches have judges scoring and determining victors and that leads to all kinds of shenannigans.) Maybe another way to look at it is sports where the ugliness of play doesn’t matter — just look at the Super Bowl, or even better the AFC championship beforehand — as opposed to sports where style helps determine victory. The latter can lead to really cool stuff but ultimately falls back on the subjectivity of the Russian judge.
FYI very good article about this, in figure skating as opposed to ice dancing: https://defector.com/ilia-malinin-brings-figure-skating-to-the-crossroads. Some excerpts:
“The subjective part of figure skating—PCS, or Program Component Score—is fundamentally fake. In theory, PCS is made of discrete parts, but in practice, judges pick one number and vary it by .25 across the three categories of composition, presentation, and skating skills. Scores inflate with reputation (you are rewarded with name recognition and longevity), federation size (a skater usually gets rewarded with higher scores if they are, say, American or Japanese), and how late you perform among your fellow skaters (scores always inflate toward the end). Complaints that a particular skater is under- or over-scored are fundamentally a complaint with the broken nature of figure skating judging….
The flip side to that sentiment is that there is a beauty to Ilia Malinin performing in a jump competition, if not necessarily one aligned with figure skating’s traditional aesthetics…The argument that Malinin’s skating poses is that there is an artistic beauty to a human body performing a miracle, the same beauty that runs through all athletic achievement. If figure skating is a sport, then it is—on top of being an artistic performance—something to be won. And if figure skating is to be won, then the elements that compose athletic beauty must necessarily be a part of what the sport rewards or admires: the ruthless simplicity of knowing how to win and being able to execute it to a degree no one else can; the gulf a spectator feels watching someone else exist in a way that is incomprehensible to them, physically and psychologically.
the fall and rise of Reggie Dinkins. Tracy Morgan! Daniel Radcliffe! Robert Carlock! Whaddaya need a roadmap? Morgan plays a disgraced ex NFL star who got caught gambling; Radcliffe is a documentary filmmaker hired to film a documentary after leaving in Hollywood in disgrace. I assume together they will both help each other. Morgan and Radcliffe both have such great comedic impulses that even if the writing is bad they’d be funny; the writing is good. They’ve got some great absurd asides, much like 30 Rock. (my two favorite: Tracy: “this sword is from when Tom Cruise played a Samurai. [turns to camera] That really happened.” Daniel, during a break down on a blue screen movie set “Now the scene is a tennis match? ! Some of these tennis balls are tennis balls!”) The only real question is if this is enough to make me get Peacock or live cable or try watching it when it’s broadcast through my antenna like some sort of stone age media consumer.
man on the inside , season 2. Do you like Mike Schur but thought Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place were too edgy and cynical? Do you want to trade good pacing for a slightly longer run time per episode and a sensation of comfort? Have I got news for you!
Ted Danson goes undercover at a university to find out who’s sabotaging the president’s attempt to land a billion dollars from a tech bro alum. Max Greenfield and Mary von Steenburgen are also there. It’s okay. It has the bones of a better show but it’s too soft. Its a gentle lullaby of a sitcom.
That Reggie Dinkins pilot might have been the funniest episode of TV I’ve seen this year, which is amazing because it’s not all that fully formed as a show yet. Between this and Mr. Mayor, Bobby Moynihan has been far funnier as a sitcom supporting character than in anything else I’ve seen him in. “I’ve been practicing my Jim Face!” It’s back on the 23rd, BTW.
I made it through two episodes of A Man on the Inside and didn’t dislike it, but I also didn’t really feel that compelled to keep going. Anyway, I find this description hilarious.
A Muppet show – or anything, really – from Seth Rogen is not my thing, so I passed this by.
We are one shy of finishing Stranger Things. And I suspect that this is not a show I plan to ever revisit. It does what it says on the tin, does it well enough, but is there anything here that demands a rewatch? The penultimate episode has the usual mix of good to great character moments, some good setup for the finale, and a lot of info dumping that doesn’t add up to a lot. The secret secrets of the Upside Down do not make much sense. The evils of the Army do make some sense, but it feels like under Linda Hamilton’s command, only the dumbest soldiers are sent to serve (with one small exception). But that is not the big thing here.
The big thing is Will coming out. Which is, to a large degree, Noah Schapp’s coming out (though he’s been out for two years). As such, since a lot of what Will is saying is what Noah is likely feeling, it’s very heartfelt. But it’s a speech. It’s not at all natural. Nor is the immediate acceptance by everyone, not in 1987. (Believe me, if any friends had come to me then, I would have freaked.) The writers and Schapp clearly want to balance a realistic approach to being gay in 1987 with treating queer viewers with respect and warmth, but it ends up not really feeling right. (I will say that Will not actually saying he’s gay seems accurate, but more like how it would be done on a TV of the time than anything else.)
And here’s the thing. This scene was touching and warm. And then I watched Stand By Me – more elsewhere – and wow, the progenitor of this show is just so much more natural, and so much better actors. I am a defender of the actors here more than some, but it’s clear that the Duffers and Shawn Levy and everyone else are content with letting the actors just do their thing instead of working to coax better performances from them. This might be why good kid actors have become, to a large degree, just okay adult actors. Granted, it’s easier to coax good performances for a ninety minute movie than for 60 hours over seven years. But here might lie the difference, and the big flaw.
Anyway, one to go. Will they get it right? I have no idea.
Speaking of stand by me, it’s funny how they name drop soooo much 80s pop culture but not stephen king, where Stand By Me and IT is the whole source of everything that people like about stranger things. (I guess we should be grateful none of the characters read IT or things could have gotten pretty weird with their group dynamic when Dustin suggests a ritual to make sure they’re ready to face vecna together).
Still watching The Pitt each week, and last week’s episode was a good one, even if it’s becoming a tad painful to watch how Santos is being maneuvered into making some presumably catastrophic error with the AI dictation app because Al-Hashimi first amplified the charting pressure and then offered this as a solution. (Actually, this may all be an elaborate red herring setting up some other AI dictation app problem, but while I’m fervently anti-AI and would like to see its potential problems dramatized, the signposting about this plot development is obvious to the point of being distracting.) Whitaker has learned not to get fluids on himself. The Robby-Langdon tensions continue to escalate.
Not exactly related but Robby’s refusal to admit he has problems (or to lash out when someone pokes at them and he has no defense) reminds me of my dad, and now I wonder how many guys over 50, let alone 35, are like this.
Threw on a few Always Sunny episodes with a friend who hadn’t seen ’em, including the greatest title cut of all time, “Sweet Dee Gets Audited”, the Boggs Challenge one, and “Child Beauty Pageants: A Proud Tradition.” The latter continues to gain horrific credence with the Epstein files and more scrutiny of how children get exploited and sexualized in pop culture. (Even the Gang notice that these parents have left their kids alone, with strangers, inside a bar.) Big laughs too like Frank’s growing panic that he’ll be arrested and in the Boggs one how several passengers react to the Gang’s drunken insanity. (“Whatever you say, Boss Hoss.”) Guest starring Boggs as himself!
“Frank Reynolds’ Little Beauties.”
Oh look at this guy knowing every episode title!
Normally I wouldn’t give you much grief, but this is the show that literally gives you an episode title card every episode, haha.
Also because it’s impressive you came up with such a long, complex title that’s still wrong. Most people, I think, would have gone with “The Gang Hosts a Child Beauty Pageant” or something.