Captain's Log
It's a slow week for me, so hopefully you've come prepared to pick up the slack
This ended up being a pretty slow week, but the TV schedule will pick up soon enough.
Digman!, “The Hunt for Bella” – The season 2 premiere picks up from the season 1 finale, where the mix-up of the Holy Grail for the Unholy Grail has given rise to the Antichrist– excuse me, the Auntie Christ, possessing Bella’s body, and the Uncle Christ, possessing Quail Eegan’s father. Our team must figure out how to exorcise the demons, and in Rip’s case, how to do so in a way that possibly preserves the chance of resurrecting Bella. Anyway, I won’t tell you too much– including the other B-plot with Eegan– so you can discover it for yourself, but I will say, the show is still firing nonstop with the jokes and it’s still a very funny thrill ride. Delighted to have Digman! back.
Rick and Morty – “Hot Rick” – I don’t know if this is supposed to be a pun or the literal description of Memory Rick in the season finale. Memory Rick first showed up in season five and had a brief cameo last season where we saw him in Jerry’s memory; here, he’s been running around those memories and convincing Jerry that Rick was actually a bigger presence in their lives in his younger days than he actually was.
Rick figures out what’s going on, and here’s where it gets interesting, as this episode really moves past the mere conceptual comedy plot and striking for something deeper and more emotionally resonant. In this case, it’s kicked off by Rick trying to remove Memory Rick from Jerry’s brain, then what Rick does in his attempt to be more emotionally available, and what that leads Memory Rick to do and how it affects Beth…
And I could keep going, or have been more detailed in what happened there, but I want you to find out for yourselves. There are a few episodes I liked this season, and none I hated, although a significant chunk of the season felt like it was sorely lacking for inspiration. But this is the first episode that felt like the plot wasn’t just there for the jokes and was actually getting to the deeper issues of the characters; in this case, that’s the relationship between Rick and Beth and how it’s been fraught by Rick’s prolonged absence, and that even his return attempts to be a better person and father can’t undo that damage. You can’t fix the past, even in your memories. You can only do better in the present.
Strong finish to what was a mostly-fine but uneventful season. Other than this one, “Summer of All Fears” and “Nomortland” were probably my favorites.
No FOX animated shows this week. What I’m seeing on Wikipedia is that Bob’s has four episodes left this season, with a double-header tonight, then one each of the two weeks after that, and The Great North has one left scheduled for August 14 and another TBD. With Sunny and Digman! only becoming available to me so late on Wednesday night, I don’t have anything else new for you this week. Sorry!
As I said, It’s Always Sunny and Digman! are available online so late, they’re probably not going to make it into this article the next morning except in special circumstances.
King of the Hill, “A Beer Can Named Desire” – My personal favorite episode and one I never get tired of; my Louisiana roots are part of that, but it’s the brilliant characterization of the Dauterives, particularly Gilbert– his influence on Bobby is funny enough, but his dialogue is also never less than perfect. “I am more acquainted with sinners than saints, and sinners always look good.” Also watched “Keeping Up With Our Joneses,” where Hank’s punishment to Bobby for smoking a cigarette leaves Bobby nicotine-addicted and gets Hank and Peggy to start smoking again, until Luanne steps up and saves the day. My wife’s favorite scene is Bobby eating his breakfast sausages like a cigarette (including stubbing them out on his plate), so I had to mention it, but I also want to come back to Luanne saving the day: “Function, damn you! Function!”
Party Down, episodes 2-4 – “California College Conservative Union Caucus” is just about as good as it gets, particularly for levels of Ron humiliation. I mean, it’s bad enough that he’s sucking up to the third-in-command of a bunch of rich dweebs, but to fail at even that… and also, “What if Ronald Reagan had quit?” “Acting? He did.” “Yeah, that’s actually where I got the idea.”
I don’t have as much to say about “Peppers McMasters Singles Seminar” or “Investors Dinner,” but they are great episodes too. Also, Casey’s husband sucks ass– I mean, good on her for divorcing him, but even if he’s objectively right about her career, he doesn’t fucking respect her! Can’t stay married to someone who doesn’t respect you.
We also continued with a little more Smiling Friends, although the first couple episodes of season 2 aren’t my favorite, and Those Who Can’t, now into season 3– still funny, although I feel like the third season is less and less tethered to the teachers’ ostensible jobs at the school. There are some funny plots, though, and Jerry Minor shows up as a guidance counselor who actually cares about his job and quickly finds himself at odds with our main quartet as a result. Perhaps the most inexplicable twist is in the season premiere, when it turns out that despite himself (and everyone’s expectations), Fairbell is actually doing a good job as principal.
That was the Rick and Morty season 8 finale.
King of the Hill‘s revival season is coming out on Hulu August 4, and while I doubt we’ll be able to get to all of it at once, we should at least be able to see something to write about.
Your turn to tell us what you watched!
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
As noted already, I wrapped up Sherlock and Daughter. Even as CBS announced that its present day pastiche Watson will feature Sherlock Holmes. That’s now 275 Holmes (and probably a similar number of Watsons). I have not tried Watson, and doubt I will any time soon, but I am usually a sucker for Holmes. Me and a lot of people who work in TV, apparently. At some point, probably after I finish with The Practice, I plan to revisit Elementary (whose producer also created Watson), But no power on Earth can get me to watch more of Sherlock. I bounced off that one hard. Anyway, I liked S&D, and hope there’s more.
Plowing along with The Practice, though finding it’s not a show easily watched every day. The individual stories are very good, the acting is good, but it does get a bit repetitive sometimes, and there is something of an unwillingness to engage with the show as a soap. Two episodes full of Bobby and Helen, and then two where we don’t even see Helen. That isn’t how things are usually done. Gotta wonder if Kelley really wanted to stick with the legal stuff and did the soap stuff because it was expected. Or maybe he just needed a break from it since he circles back to it big time later.
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Ten, “The Sniper”
“Washing socks?”
“I got to. I left ‘em out for the elves to do last night, they wouldn’t touch ‘em.”
“Can you blame them?”
This is a canny idea for an episode – the camp gets harassed by a sniper – with some interesting, even revealing things about the show’s morality. It ends, of course, with Hawkeye discovering the sniper was just a sixteen-year-old kid and choosing to forgive him, but this sense of forgiveness also extends to Frank, when Hawkeye finds him freaking out and trying to work up the nerve to go out with his pistol; Frank ends up revealing how long it took him to pass medical school. It’s a bit that people have reasons for doing the things they do and, more importantly, that there’s a core of humanity to people that makes it hard to rationalise being inhuman to them when you know it. Frank doesn’t deserve a murderous death.
There’s also clever setup to the plot, when Frank playing with his gun is what Hawkeye initially blames the gunfire on.
There’s a great gag where Frank and Margaret completely fail to get attention from everyone, and then Hawkeye simply waves his hand and everyone goes quiet.
“Now, I hate to do this, but I’ve made a decision.”
“Another first.”
Always Sunny, Season Seventeen, Episode Four, “Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation”
“Two hundred Paddy’s Pub t-shirts are probably giving the game away.”
“We didn’t so much go to the corporate retreat as watch clips of it on Youtube.”
The Gang thinking they can use exactly what everyone else very obviously has seen just yesterday is so in-character for them.
“The business is more important than any individual.”
Charlie failing to grasp absolutely anything they’re talking about never fails to amuse.
“I’m sorry guys, but my hand is clenched so tightly into a claw that any–”
Of course the Gang is focused on who to blame here.
“You don’t want to wash the bar with a water-based liquid.”
“Now, I’ve taken to using baby oil almost exclusively when getting out of the shower.”
The Gang inadvertently explain Musk’s psychology when discussing the Cybertruck. It supposed to be his return to the promises of his youth.
Professional slap-fighting actually is a thing in certain places.
“I do hear you guys about this – as long as we’re outside of the earshot of this reporter, I’d like to add you can stick this line of logic up your various assholes.”
The characters being forced to talk like this, in turn, forces the writers to use more precise and thus funnier language.
It’s funny how much of American culture is adults just wanting to be children free of responsibility again, and having absolutely no self-awareness about that.
“Dee, I thank you for your service, I love you like a sister–”
“Well. I am your sister.”
“I think we’re styling the wrong mannequin here.”
Didn’t Charlie actually sleep with the Waitress and then get bored with her immediately?
“I would say ‘all due respect’, but I don’t respect you.”
“I hear you guys, you know, ear-wise, and mouth-wise you’re giving me various wordables that are adding up to thoughts.”
“God damn, you are not good at this.”
“If anything, it looks like it should go into space!”
“We are finally ready to make our statement: no comment.”
Odds Against Tomorrow
Conor recommended this, and I’m very glad he did. This is a terrific noir that uses its social criticism to enhance its genre elements: it starts off as a gripping but more leisurely crime drama, fleshing out its characters in a rich and thoughtful way, and then everything we’ve learned about them sets up the classically noir push down the slide towards doom. It’s a smooth move from the literary pleasures of exploration to the dramatic pleasures of action, all done with exceptional cinematic style.
I’ve seen and loved a lot of Robert Wise movies, but it’s important to know there that The Haunting is one of my ultimate cinematic touchstones, a movie I loved almost as soon as I started consciously paying attention to movies, and a movie I’ve never stopped loving; there are a lot of cool, surprising stylistic ties between Wise’s work there and his work here, a common sensibility and vision despite the different genres, different editors, different cinematographers, and different composers. Wise’s presence is never as indelible as Hitchcock’s, but I still feel like you could stumble ass-backwards into the auteur theory just by watching this and The Haunting, which is cool.
Fantastic central performances from Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan, too, and fantastic supporting performances from everyone else–this is such a stacked cast that you get almost incidental Gloria Grahame (and may I say, “Damn“) and Wayne Rogers’s first on-screen appearance.
Me, before watching Odds Against Tomorrow: No one can play a murderous marimba!
Harry Belafonte: *murders me by playing the marimba*
Great movie and it uses noir to make a unique case against racism — being racist fucks up your cool crimes! This is present to a lesser degree in The Killing but explicit here. And underneath that is “being insecure in your masculinity fucks up your cool crimes,” an even harsher lesson.
Hell yes, glad you liked it as much as me! Amusingly, my nephew is obsessed with “So Long, Farewell” from another Wise movie, The Sound of Music, which feels as trite as Tomorrow is clever yet stripped down.
The Practice, “Hide and Seek” – Three cases. 1) James Whitmore makes his first appearance as Bobby’s famous mentor, Raymond Oz. Oz asks Bobby to back him up on a trial because of a few memory lapses, but it’s soon clear that the lapses are affecting Oz. And so Bobby needs to convince his mentor to retire, but can he? Whitmore gives a bravura performance as a man whose skills as an advocate are so strong he can win a case and deliver a closing without remembering the case. (Remember what I saw last week about how Orson Welles delivers a better closing than the whole regular cast here? Same for Whitmore.) 2) A terrible human being Eugene helped put back on the streets murders and sodomizes two boys. Eugene loses it and beats up the scumbucket in open court. Titus Welliver plays the scumbucket. 3) Jimmy helps a client who was once a sex symbol on a Giligan’s Island-like show, and can’t help but feel like he owes her help for what she – or rather her character – meant to him. This is intended to be sweet, but comes across as a bit skeevy. Valerie Perrine, who by this point had probably made peace with being a sex symbol, is effective here. Other guests in this loaded hour include Ken Howard as Whitmore’s client, and Bonnie Bartlett as Whitmore’s wife.
Doctor Who, “The Gunslingers,” first two parts – The First Doctor and his companions land at Tombstone. Not much happens so far, and half the cast cannot maintain American accents. Plus parts of the same song keep popping up. I haven’t seen a lot of First Doctor material, and this one doesn’t really argue for seeing more. But I will keep going to finish the serial.
Frasier, “Hot Ticket” – Frasier and Niles can’t get tickets to the final Seattle performances of a theater legend, and can’t bring themselves to admit this to anyone. What makes this work is that the friends the brothers encounter are even worse snobs than they are, and that the actor (Fritz Weaver) is a poser. In the end, if briefly, the brothers realize what snobs everyone is, but of course that won’t stop them from attending a brunch with the other snobs. Plus a great gag involving a play on Daphne Moon they must have been saving.
Ariel – a rewatch of an Aki Kaurismaki film that I remembered liking very much but didn’t remember much detail about. It falls somewhere in the middle of his “miserable / funny” spectrum of filmmaking, following a guy who quits his mining job to travel after a suicidal colleague gives him a Cadillac convertible (extremely inappropriate car for Finland), only to immediately have all his money stolen at the first stop. Further misfortune follows, but also – romance! It’s not quite top-tier Kaurismaki for me but it’s very good and an excellent example of his economical, deadpan filmmaking. A dying character utters the line “bury my heart at the dump”, which is one of the best lines of dialogue I think I’ve ever heard (or read, at least – I assume it was even cooler in Finnish).
Charity Shop Sue – some more episodes of this locally-filmed cringe-comedy web series. It’s getting weirder as it goes on which is mostly a good thing. But I can only take so much in one go…
Videoheaven (2025): Got to see last night Alex Ross Perry screen his three-hour video-store documentary at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester NY. The doc shows us that video stores are now, already cultural artifacts of the past. But perhaps, as ARP suggested in the Q & A, public libraries are the new place for films to circulate.
An ode to video stores? At the Eastman House?! Be still, my heart! Damn, this sounds like a great night.
ARP goes Wiseman on VHS? This sounds like a great screening, awesome you got to be there.
Watched a few Simpsons season 5 episodes with commentary last night. Always funny to hear David Mirkin rip on Garrison Keillor, and there are a few other fun details (like “that sandwich wasn’t double bolted”) too.
Miller’s Crossing
First time, over two days. Watching it like this brings up the importance of Albert Finney’s presence, as he disappeared at the exact cut-off moment but looms larger and larger in Gabriel Byrne’s character mind the more the movie goes on. It’s a fascinating counterintuitive filmmaking choice but it works in classic Coens fashion, and the ending lands beautifully because of it.
That’s one my one semi-novel observation for this, so I’ll just play the hits: Byrne is gracefully opaque, Harden is surprisingly effective as a femme fatale, Turturro is terrific and his big scene drove me to tears even as part of me was screaming at Byrne for it, J.E. Freeman is incredible, an all-time henchman. Terrific dialogue throughout, with Polito getting the most fun dynamic. It’s about ethics.
And as with most Coens works, terrific action/character/plot workings. Not quite top-tier from them, but only because it’s crowded up there.
“Watching it like this brings up the importance of Albert Finney’s presence, as he disappeared at the exact cut-off moment but looms larger and larger in Gabriel Byrne’s character mind the more the movie goes on.”
Hee hee, you know about Finney’s secret appearance after he leaves, right? It is a damn shame about Trey Wilson’s death, but also hard to imagine anyone but Finney in the role. And yes, the movie rules, the Dane forever.
No, I didn’t know about this. I’ll look into it.
It is very funny (and visible) once you know about it!
I was going to make a joke at your expense here, but the movie is not called Dave Shutton’s Crossing.
Generally, my favorite films by favorite directors tend to fall in line with the critical concensus. I have to agree that MILLER’S CROSSING isn’t their best film, its ornate language and stoicism towards letting the heart overtake the mind makes it my personal favorite Coen “joint”.
What’s protocol on Thursdays for television? General reply to article or WDWW response? This is super important and I am extremely invested in the one correct answer.
Anyway, Digman! has become our evening de-stress watch because it is very funny! I love a comedy that squeezes juice from its premise. Each episode is generally kicked off by the search for whatever artifact they’re after with the story putting the characters through some kind of looney logic associated with it (e.g. after discovering the original Ten Commandments, the world spirals into amoral chaos after Rip drops and breaks the tablets). Not a big fan of non sequiturs being so close to the top of the toolkit for punchlines, but at least they’re funny too. Andy Samberg’s a strong voice actor, too, clearly doing some kind of combination of Bill Paxton and Nick Cage (arguably the two biggest movie treasure hunter outside the obvious guy).
Continuing with the UK version of Ghosts which is an interesting study in the differences between American and Brit sitcom approaches (or at least approaches to this show). Far fewer episodes of the UK edition, but also a lot more interesting use of camera and (actual) location. It’s also a lot more abrasive than the comfort food assembly line of the US, maybe like McDonald’s versus a pub burger. I don’t think you could subsist off either alone, but the American one might fool you into thinking you can, through ubiquity if nothing else. (Also I like how the Brit cast is moves around like an honest-to-god assembly following a script, where the American one has members appear or disappear obviously according to the actor’s availability that week.)
I definitely hear Cage more than Paxton in Samberg’s performance. Anyway, cheers to someone finding Digman! as funny as I said it was! Jeers to the new episode still not being available for me to watch.
I’ve had to take a week off from The X-Files, but I still watched a few episodes of Taken this last week: “Acid Tests,” “Maintenance,” and “Charlie and Lisa.” A couple unstructured Crawford thoughts, plus a Tom Clarke thought:
Owen Crawford’s death in “Acid Tests” is a fantastic bit of drama, especially in how Eric–heartbroken for years by his father’s barely controlled distaste for him–finally gives into bitterness (he has to; he was directing all of it at his brother, who did have Owen’s love, but that’s not an option anymore) and hits Owen with Sam’s death and Owen’s own ignorance of it. It’s part of the project, but Owen’s on the outside of it now, kept away from the knowledge that his beloved son burned up in a death spiral with an innocent-but-dangerous alien hybrid. And then Eric just keeps hitting, keeps scoring points for the first time in his life, because he recognizes the moment that he’s in and sees Owen recognizing it (in a more conventional way) too. This is Owen’s death, the one he saw in Jacob Clarke’s eyes. I love the Greek tragedy inevitability of this, too, that Owen’s knowledge of his fate–which led him to dislike the son he knew would be there when it came–effectively ensured it; as Eric notes, if Owen could have tried a little harder to prioritize being a kind, engaged father, this all could have happened differently.
Eric’s then on his way to learning that lesson himself with his daughter Mary, who sees his disengagement from her family with seething contempt and responds to her grandfather’s legacy in part because he’s supposedly the only person who disliked her father as much as she does. I also like that Eric is consistently softer than Owen, not that it always does him much good; when he tries to seduce a Clarke for information, he falls in love, and he genuinely wants to use Becky as a way out of the Crawford legacy. But when she doesn’t go with him–in part because Tom (not unfairly concerned) convinces her that that legacy has influenced him even more than it has–he doesn’t have the imagination or the will to find a way out on his own.
Meanwhile, one of the things I continue to love about Tom Clarke is that it feels like he follows Tristan’s rule of Whedonesque characterization–he’s defined by a couple central motivations, which he follows in varied and surprising directions. He goes from famous alien skeptic to famous alien truther, and completely overhauling his public reputation (and probably trashing some of his mainstream respectability in the process) doesn’t bother him, because what he’s committed to the entire time is, in this order, 1) protecting his family, 2) following and promoting the truth, and 3) fucking up the Crawfords because they infamously got in the way of principle (1). It can lead to some interesting clashes and occasional fuck-ups–he’s genuinely unkind in how he handles the Becky-Eric romance, and that’s because he’s angry that he feels like Becky isn’t following his first principle enough, as if she’s disregarding what Eric’s dad did to their mom and almost did to their brother–but it means he’s very consistently himself, and the series consistently makes that cool and interesting.
I’ve let Rick & Morty fall by the wayside, but I found that when it got into the heavy relationship stuff is when it lost me anyway. Melodrama you can get anywhere! I just want jokes.
The episode had some real juice most of the season was lacking. Nothing in the season was as bad as the years the show devolved into an alcoholic family melodrama, but a lot of it also felt uninspired, like they didn’t really care to take the premises as far as they used to or pack the episodes with jokes like they used to. Giving it some kind of deeper hook gave this one life.
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
Aug. 8th: Gillian Nelson: Noah’s Ark
Aug. 15th: Gillian Nelson: I Captured the King of the Leprechauns
Aug. 18th: Sam Scott: Imitation of Life
Aug. 2oth: John Bruni: Shadows
Aug. 22nd: Gillian Nelson: Khrushchev Goes to Disneyland
Aug. 29th: Gillian Nelson: The Monorail
Aug. 31st: Tristan J. Nankervis: North by Northwest
And in September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
Sept. 22nd: Sam Scott: Holiday
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