Captain's Log
Standing up for the little guy, when the big guys are a bunch of antisocial nerds who want us all dead
This is gonna be pretty brief, because I’m crunched for time this week and also there just isn’t much show yet to write about.
Four episodes in, one of my primary feelings watching Cupertino is anger. Anger at that the kind of things tech bros get up to both in their business and outside of it, and how they use legal tricks and scapegoats to avoid taking responsibility for any of the harm they cause.
Created by Michelle and Robert King (best known for The Good Wife and its spinoffs, as well as Evil), the setup for Cupertino is simple: On the same day, Michael Price (Mike Colter), a founding equity partner, and Olivia Siffre (Rachel Keller), a first-year associate, are fired from their tech company on . Michael is fired for supposedly leaking confidential information; he did no such thing, and he’s sure he’s being set up so the other partners could recoup his equity because they need to promise it to other investors to raise capital. Olivia thinks she was fired because one of the founders sexually harassed her and she turned him down. The two of them decide to team up and go after the company for a wrongful-termination suit. From there, Michael has the idea to start a firm that takes on these big tech companies and how they abuse their power; how they can use the mere threat of litigation and the massive resources they have to crush the little guy.
They’re joined by Christy Palladino (Ella Stiller)1, their assistant, also fired from the firm the same day for talking to Michael after he was fired. In episode 2, Busy Phillips joins up as Natalia Boutella, basically playing Mackenzie Scott, and interested in funding their firm largely to stick it to her ex-husband Kirk (Fisher Stevens). Other recurring characters include Nik Dodani as Vik, a client of the firm in episode 2 who signs on as their tech expert; Renée Elise Goldsberry2 as Nichole, professional rival of (and seemingly with a personal history with) Michael; Joe Morton as Bayard Diamond, Michael’s father who is apparently Johnnie Cochran levels of famous and successful as a celebrity lawyer, and wants to bring his son back into his firm although there’s clear bad blood (at least from Michael’s end); and Bo (Rob McClure), a potential client who seems to be the focus of a season-long case… and who has a fascinating secret that really upends what you might have been thinking the show was going to be.
Mostly, some of the legal proceedings and maneuverings (in and out of court) are what keep the show engaging, but the firm’s targets and stories ripped from the real world make for effective and engaging drama— and might, if you’re like me, re-stoke your anger at the tech bros who are ruining the world and human society and dodging accountability the whole way. We’re only four episodes in, but the stories involve things like a drone company trying to pin a fatal error on one of their coders (and fabricating evidence to do so); Kirk Boutella’s company trying to dodge responsibility for its AI convincing a teenage boy to kill his father; and two bros who founded an upstart prediction market being prosecuted for election interference. (I’m no fan of prediction markets, but this one does some interesting crossing up of our sympathies. Namely, the prosecution and police are extremely aggressive to the point of brutality, and the aggressive prosecution is likely at the behest of an established prediction market who has ties to the president’s sons. Sound familiar?)
Anyway, it is a network legal procedural, so don’t necessarily expect it to reinvent the wheel. It’s an effective one, though, and it’s remarkably timely with its cases (the prediction market / election interference episode aired just last week, five days before election day). And while it might be fiction, it gets to a certain truth of how ruthless and contemptible so many of these companies wealthy enough to practically be their own nation and the people who run them are— and how much contempt they have for the rest of us.
Get mad. Tear it down. In the meantime, at least watch something that’ll give you some hope that we can fight back3. It’s satisfying to see, and as we all know, rebellions are built on hope.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins and St. Denis Medical are back! They’re still good shows! “We Keep the Kisses” and “He Ain’t Noah Wyle” keep up the level of quality we’re used to. St. Denis in particular feels like it’s really hitting its stride. Reggie Dinkins was in its stride from day one, so it less feels like that, but, as with every episode, the season premiere gives us some incredible, laugh-out-loud gags— maybe my favorite of all being where the title is finally dropped.
That’s all I’ve got.
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 Five, Episode Four, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”
“One important question: will I get to keep my nickname?”
“Oh, Frank, I’m glad you’re here. Go get a doctor.”
“And to avoid the inevitable argument: dismissed.”
I love Colonel Potter fitting into that specific kind of authority who gleefully throws around their authority to avoid mild inconveniences.
“Klinger, can you escort me to the art museum?”
“We don’t have an art museum.”
“I’ll settle for the latrine.”
“Say something, Frank, so I know where to spit!”
“Who was that masked man?”
Of all the episodes of this show, this feels the most “the one where” – this is the one where Hawkeye is temporarily blinded. I always remembered this as an embarrassing premise; every American sitcom that takes itself even remotely seriously has one where a character temporarily becomes disabled and sees the world differently, and it always comes off condescending to me. I think I was being unfair to this episode for a number of reasons; number one, nobody is under the illusion this is permanent. More importantly, being excited to explore the world through different eyes – so to speak – feels integral to Hawkeye’s character. This really does feel like him playing with what being blinded can do for him.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, Season Two, Episode One, “We Keep The Kisses”
Good episode. I don’t think this show reaches the heights of my faves, but it’s pretty good – it does fulfill a basic need I have for a good show where my favorite character is whoever is on screen. Biggest laugh: “Jail! No! Space jail!”
Also, this is the first episode written by the team of Ken Levine and David Isaacs, and reflects their love of baseball. (Levine would work as a broadcaster for the Mariners for several years.)
Quiet Please, Murder – George Sanders is a book collector, a thief, a killer, and a forger who steals books and sells forgeries and keep the original. He has has a guilty conscience and insists he has become a masochist as a result. He and femme fatale Gail Patrick make the mistake of selling one fake to a man who hires private eye Richard Denning and another fake to agents of the,Nazis who want to add to Goebbels’s or Goering’s collection. Before long, all involved are trapped in a library after a murder, and during an air raid drill. The plot gets a bit hard to follow, but unusual setting and the game cast give this B-movie noir just enough energy to work. Camera work by Joseph MacDonald.
Elementary, “Breathe” – A relocation expert is revealed on his murder to be a hitman, only it turns out he killed himself in an effort to frame Legally Not Martin Shkreli and get him removed from his drug company’s board. It’s a bit convoluted but also satisfying of course. (This being fiction, the price of the drug goes down. This being Elementary, Sherlock gets to rail about the disaster that is American health care.) Meanwhile, Joan’s adoption attorney screws up and refuses to take responsibility for it, so Sherlock discovers a way to fix things that involves…the King of Bohemia? Well, not the actual king since Bohemia last had a king in 1848, just the man who would be king if Bohemia existed and had a king. But this ended up being a very clever way to name drop the second most famous protagonist in “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
The Lowdown S2E3 – Not as strong as last episode but the beginning and end are killer, with Steve Earle showing up as a near-mystical, sober driver (“Are you gonna kill me?” “I won’t kill you if you don’t kill me” “Fair enough” is very Justified) and Lee having now brought his ex’s himbo husband into this mess. Gilpin of course is always good and there’s a small, world-weary guest performance here from Native actress Shyla Lefner as Mekko’s ex-wife…and the mother of his kid, who Ginger didn’t know about. Lee getting perpetually owned is always funny as is Ginger embodying Zodiac MFer’s principle of exasperation as the most cinematic emotion.
House of Frankenstein – dammit, I watched this one after realising I should have done so before House of Dracula only to find that I should have started with Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, bloody cinematic universes. Oh well, they don’t exactly have the strongest internal logic. This one is fairly fun but I definitely didn’t enjoy it as much as House of Dracula, the same set of monsters are involved (Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man) but this film doesn’t find a particularly interesting way to involve them all. Dracula in particular only gets a brief window to shine, and we all know he’s the best monster, right? One unexpected strength of this one is that Boris Karloff is back, in a different role – he’s great, as ever. But this isn’t one of the better Universal Monster sequels.
Also a Twilight Zone but that’s for later.
You mean “Ella Stiller is the granddaughter of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.”
In the third paragraph there’s a missing word after “from their company on”. I assume the word was “Cupertino”?