I haven't felt like writing a blog entry in a couple of weeks and no one seemed to notice or care, so whatever. But whenever I watch another TV series thanks to social distancing or self-isolating or whatever, I like to write some of my thoughts on it. Because why not?
Anyway, Chuck was an NBC series from 2008-2012 and while my sisters were fans, I never really got around to watching it. Just like I never got around to watching other NBC series of that era like Community and Parks & Recreation until later when I binged them on streaming. I still haven't gotten around to binging The Office yet either.
Anyway, again, this show was about the eponymous Chuck Bartowski who works for the Nerd Herd at the Buy More, which is like the Geek Squad of Best Buy. He lives in Burbank, CA with his sister, who is way too overprotective and interested in what he does, and his sister's boyfriend Devon, aka Captain Awesome because he's a really hot doctor who does stuff like climb mountains barehanded and go down white water rapids for fun and so on.
One night, after his overprotective sister tries to set him up with some girls, Chuck gets an email from an old friend. When he opens it and inadvertently answers with the right code, he gets a whole bunch of CIA/NSA secrets zapped into his head. It's this computer system called "the Intersect" because I guess it was supposed to be the intersection of all these intelligence agency systems.
Because of this, when Chuck sees something like a person or object that's referenced in the Intersect, he "flashes" and sort of instantly downloads all the information into his consciousness. It's a neat trick, but it also makes the government take a vested interest in him. Rival agents Sarah Walker of the CIA and John Casey of the NSA work covertly to capture him, but when he flashes on something they have to take down a bad guy, which for Chuck is not nearly as fun or awesome as in movies or TV.
By the end of the pilot the government wants to put Chuck in a lab somewhere, but he uses his leverage of being the only one with the Intersect to stay in Burbank and continue with his normal life--more or less. Casey takes a job at the Buy More while Sarah works across the way at a hot dog restaurant so they can keep an eye on him.
The first season then is mostly just Chuck flashes on something and then with Casey and Walker they have to go stop whatever bad guy. An organization called Fulcrum is the big bad for season 1 and season 2. Also in season 2 we meet Chuck's dad (played by Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap and Enterprise), the scientist who created the Intersect and then went on the run from the government, leaving his family behind. His former partner (Chevy Chase of Vacation and Community) is a big software guy who is also the leader of Fulcrum. After taking him down, Chuck gets the Intersect removed but then inadvertently gets a new version beamed into his head.
The new version is sort of like The Matrix where he can instantly learn skills like kung-fu, how to pilot a plane, or basically any language he hears or sees. So a lot of season 3 is him learning to use that and trying to become a professional spy. He and Sarah started expressing their feelings for each other in the previous seasons but season 3 is when they start to get hotter and heavier, which is complicated when the government brings in a new team leader in the form of Daniel Shaw (Brandon Routh of Superman Returns infamy) whom Sarah gets a crush on. Kristin Kreuk of Smallville is brought in for about 3 episodes as a competing love interest for Chuck, though nothing really ever comes of that. It wasn't really believable that someone flying first class to Paris would instantly move to Burbank and work at the Buy More just to see some guy she met on the plane and then he's never around her anyway. I thought she might turn out to be a bad guy, but nope.
Shaw is an expert on the season 3 big bad "the Ring," not to be confused with that movie about the killer videotape. He thinks his wife was killed by the Ring, but when he's captured, they show him that it was really Sarah who killed his wife, thinking she was a terrorist. Finding that out, Shaw becomes a double-agent and gets his own Intersect and kills Chuck's dad. The bitter irony is that when Shaw and Chuck fight it's probably the closest to a Superman-Shazam fight we'll ever see.
At the end of Season 3, Chuck finds a hidden base used by his father and starts to search for his mother. So in season 4 he finds out his mother (Linda Hamilton of The Terminator) is a deep cover agent working for a guy named Alexei Volkoff (Timothy Dalton of two James Bond movies) in Russia. While trying to reunite with his mom and take down Volkoff, Chuck and Sarah also plan to get married.
At the end of Season 4, Chuck gets the Intersect out of his head and is fired by a CIA honcho named Decker. But flush with cash from Volkoff, he decides to start his own company with Sarah and Casey. And then his friend Morgan finds a pair of glasses that gives him the Intersect.
Season 5 is my least favorite as like with seasons 5-7 of Archer, they have him split from the government but then don't really seem to know what to do with that idea. His private spy company is floundering, badly overshadowed by the competing Verbanski Corp led by Gertrude Verbanski (Carrie-Anne Moss of The Matrix and Memento), who has a thing for John Casey. Morgan's use of the Intersect turns him into a huge douchebag who loses a lot of his old memories, so that they eventually have to get the Intersect out of him. Then Decker sets Chuck up to take the fall for the release of a dangerous computer virus and after Verbanski literally blows Decker up, they find out Shaw was really behind it all. So they have to take him down. Then some other guy named Quinn wants a copy of the Intersect that Morgan hid when he was a huge tool under the spell of the Intersect. Sarah uses that Intersect when she and Casey are cornered in a trap but then she's eventually captured by Quinn, who erases her memories of the last 5 years and sends her after Chuck...but of course she can't kill him and thanks to Casey giving her a log she made of her "mission" as Chuck's handler in the first 2 seasons, she realizes Quinn is the bad guy. They go after him and something called "the Key" that like in a GI JOE miniseries is broken into 3 pieces, the last of which is possessed by their old boss General Beckman. Quinn puts a bomb under her seat in a concert hall and if the music stops, the bomb will go off. They catch up with Quinn and get his Intersect glasses hoping to use them to restore Sarah's memory, but to defuse the bomb, Chuck puts on the glasses while his coworkers from the Buy More keep the music going with a fairly decent cover of "Take on Me." And the day is saved but Sarah's memory still isn't back. The show ends on a beach with her and Chuck kissing and snuggling and maybe her memory will come back or maybe they'll just start over. Or whatever. The end.
It didn't surprise me that this show was produced by Warner Bros because it largely follows the same template as Smallville and most of the later superhero shows on CW. Only instead of superheroes it's about super spies. There are a lot of the same tropes like the main character is kind of outside normal society. He has a best friend of a different ethnicity (Morgan being Latino). There's the will they-won't they love story that stretches out for a few seasons. At first only a couple of people know his secret. Then his best friend finds out. Then Captain Awesome finds out. Then his sister finds out. And so on until pretty much by the end everyone knows. And while it starts off with fairly simple bad guy-of-the-week stories, as the show goes on they have to keep adding to the history of the Intersect, just like how Smallville kept adding to the history of Krypton or Arrow kept adding to the history of Oliver's time after washing up on the island, or how The Flash keeps adding to his powers and the "Speed Force" and all that.
One thing I didn't like were some of Chuck's co-workers at the Buy More. Morgan is OK and his boss "Big Mike" was mostly fine, though probably under-used considering they added him to the credits in season 2. Lester and Jeff were just creepy and not really funny creepy. More just annoying creepy and when the Buy More burns down in season 3 I was really hoping they wouldn't be back, but unfortunately they were. They had another co-worker, an Asian girl named Julie who went out with Morgan for a little while, but she got written out after season 2, which made sense because the show really didn't seem to know what to do with her.
Another little thing was in the beginning there's a line between the NSA and CIA, who are sort of competitors for the Intersect. But as the show goes on, the line blurs and it starts to get hazy in terms of who's working for who. General Beckman, their overall boss, was supposed to be NSA but then she seems to also be a supervisor of CIA people too? It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it's probably just more convenient that way.
Anyway, especially if you like those CW shows then you would probably like this too. For the most part I enjoyed it as a light action-comedy series. I guess you could also compare it to shows like Monk or Psych on USA that combined comedy with mystery, though in this case less mystery and more action. The final season isn't as good, but the other 4 seasons are mostly fun if you've burned through other stuff on your queue and are looking for something else to watch. If for no other reason, watch some episodes of seasons 3-5 just because the girl playing Casey's daughter is a super cute redhead. Just saying.
I streamed it free with Amazon Prime but it might be on Netflix or Hulu or maybe that new Peacock thing coming out since it was on NBC.
Fun Facts: Robert Duncan McNeill (Parris on Star Trek Voyager) was a producer and frequent episode director. His Voyager co-stars Robert Picardo and Ethan Phillips appeared as guest stars on the show. John Casey was played by Adam Baldwin of Firefly, and also did a couple of cameos on Leverage, another show I watched recently. A Chuck/Leverage crossover would have been awesome.
As an aside, that Zachary Levi was on this show and then in Shazam is another case of where most of Warner Bros superhero actors have been in some other Warner-related product. Like Ben Affleck did Argo, The Town, and Gone Baby Gone through WB before getting hired for BvS. Or Jason Mamoa was in Game of Thrones which was on HBO, which is part of the same conglomerate as WB. I could probably find some other instances. It seems kind of old-school Hollywood that way but then WB is one of the big movie studios so I suppose it's hard not to have done some work for them. It's just a little conspiracy theory I've been toying with.
(Though you probably weren't wondering, this blog entry is titled like an episode of the show where each episode was called Chuck vs...whatever.)
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Inspirations
One good thing about going to work--besides the money and health insurance--was I had plenty of time doing mind-numbing stuff that gave my brain time to think. You'd think being home all the time I'd have more time to think about stuff but really at home I was usually busying myself with my phone, the Internet, or writing. Really the best time for thinking was on the toilet or before I fell asleep.
Mostly for that reason then a lot of the stories I wrote during the pandemic were inspired by movies or TV.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Obviously part of the inspiration for this was that segment with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, but the original inspiration was watching a movie called Maniac on the Rifftrax channel of Pluto TV. This was a movie so old that a young Phyllis Diller had a part in it! It's about a mad scientist whose assistant inadvertently kills him and then disguises himself as the mad scientist to cover it up.
My story is a lot less violent. There's an incompetent sorcerer's apprentice named Serge who spills some ingredients and so his master goes out to find more. While Serge is alone in the shop a hot chick comes in and he promises her a potion. But he screws it up and turns himself into a hot chick. Mayhem ensues.
Mr. Big Gets Swapped: The inspiration for the cover and title were that I had this cover made up a long time ago for a Rich Man, Poor Girl sequel that I never wrote. The inspiration for the plot actually came from season 3 of Legion where in one episode his girlfriend is seemingly killed and ends up in some netherworld as a baby and grows up again until she realizes an important lesson--I wrote a blog entry on that if you want to know more.
Anyway, in mine there's a rich guy who wants this lady's property for a golf course and resort. (So Donald Trump is probably also part of the inspiration.) She puts a spell on him and he wakes up as a girl. Then he jumps forward in time a couple of times. Only later does he realize he's living the woman's memories and so they become friends and he stops trying to buy her land.
Derelict: The inspiration for this was one part one of those old Star Trek episodes where they'd land on some planet and get captured by aliens that would fuck with them. And another part that Twilight Zone with Bill Mumy as the little kid who can wish people into the cornfield and shit. It's a premise I sort of used already for a story called The Cage, the title for which came from the Star Trek pilot. The setting of the Bermuda Triangle and name for the boat came from a movie that used to be on the Rifftrax channel of Pluto TV called The Bermuda Triangle.
In my version there's a guy who has a boat in the Bermuda Triangle. Out of nowhere a ghost ship appears and kills him. He wakes up on an old ocean liner sort of like the Titanic. A woman who looks sort of like Amelia Earhardt (but isn't) tells him he's on a boat called the White Whale II and then he finds out that it's run by a little girl who, since she's a little girl, doesn't like boys and so turns the guy into a girl. Later another guy shows up and is also turned into a girl and they fall in love. And then find a way to overthrow the little girl.
Night at the Carnival: The original inspiration was a short story I wrote as part of the Photobomb collection, which was based in part on Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. But most of the story was inspired by a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode where they riffed on a crappy movie called The Incredibly Strange Zombies...that is about a guy who pisses off a fortune teller who hypnotizes him into a zombie who kills some people.
My version is again less violent. Two guys go to a fortune teller at a carnival (at night!) and piss her off. She uses some potion to turn them into women. Mayhem ensues!
Shrinkage: The inspiration for the title came from a riff on Abraxas Guardian of the Universe on the Rifftrax channel of Pluto TV. During the movie Abraxas (Jesse Ventura) emerges from a lake and one of the riffers shouts "Shrinkage!" The cover for the story was repurposed from one that was supposed to be for The Incredible Shrinking Manhood sequel I never wrote.
The story was based on what I probably would have written for that sequel: an aging porn star based on the legendary Ron Jeremy takes a supplement that a co-star gives him. It helps him to get it up but afterwards his dick starts to shrink and he gets more and more feminine until he turns into a woman. Mayhem ensues!
I'm not sure what the inspiration for the title of this story was. Maybe I saw a magician on TV or on the Internet or something. Whatever it was, I thought, Presto, Change-O would make a perfect gender swap title!
But coming up with a story was harder. The first one I wrote about 2,000 words one Saturday afternoon and realized it wasn't really working out. So I went back to formula. The final product was inspired largely by an MST3K episode called Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. In the first third of the movie, a jerk gets a book of spells from Merlin and tries them out. Each time he uses a spell, he gets older, so he uses a spell to make himself young that turns him into a baby.
In my version an old couple buy a house to flip it and uncover an old spell book. When the guy tries it out, he finds himself getting older. He tries another spell that makes him young--but also a woman. His wife tries the same spell and also becomes a young woman. Mayhem ensues!
I'd been trying to think of a third story for the Swapp series for a while. Then it came to me one night while I was watching the Rifftrax of Feeders. It wasn't really something in the movie itself so much as I was thinking they cast the lead characters wrong. The guy picking up chicks looked like Napoleon Dynamite's brother Kip and the nerd taking pictures with a 35mm camera that probably came free with a magazine subscription was a lot less dorky-looking. (To me he looked like a book jacket photo of Michael Chabon in the 90s--Google it or something.) So I thought that the actors should switch roles and then it got me thinking: what if a guy and girl switch genders?
The idea, which maybe I'll have started by now, is that a guy and girl who work together talk about their dating issues and the guy thinks girls have it easier and the girl thinks guys have it easier--so they use the Swapp app to switch genders. And mayhem ensues...probably.
I took another stab at writing one based on Sharknado but it was dragging on too much so I just stopped it to work on these other projects. At some point I'll probably try it again. A couple of weeks ago I was watching the MST3K of the movie Tormented and got an idea for a story from that. I might get to that--or not.
So now you have a window into my thought process. Fortunately no one read this or they might get freaked out by it.
Mostly for that reason then a lot of the stories I wrote during the pandemic were inspired by movies or TV.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Obviously part of the inspiration for this was that segment with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, but the original inspiration was watching a movie called Maniac on the Rifftrax channel of Pluto TV. This was a movie so old that a young Phyllis Diller had a part in it! It's about a mad scientist whose assistant inadvertently kills him and then disguises himself as the mad scientist to cover it up.
My story is a lot less violent. There's an incompetent sorcerer's apprentice named Serge who spills some ingredients and so his master goes out to find more. While Serge is alone in the shop a hot chick comes in and he promises her a potion. But he screws it up and turns himself into a hot chick. Mayhem ensues.
Mr. Big Gets Swapped: The inspiration for the cover and title were that I had this cover made up a long time ago for a Rich Man, Poor Girl sequel that I never wrote. The inspiration for the plot actually came from season 3 of Legion where in one episode his girlfriend is seemingly killed and ends up in some netherworld as a baby and grows up again until she realizes an important lesson--I wrote a blog entry on that if you want to know more.
Anyway, in mine there's a rich guy who wants this lady's property for a golf course and resort. (So Donald Trump is probably also part of the inspiration.) She puts a spell on him and he wakes up as a girl. Then he jumps forward in time a couple of times. Only later does he realize he's living the woman's memories and so they become friends and he stops trying to buy her land.
Derelict: The inspiration for this was one part one of those old Star Trek episodes where they'd land on some planet and get captured by aliens that would fuck with them. And another part that Twilight Zone with Bill Mumy as the little kid who can wish people into the cornfield and shit. It's a premise I sort of used already for a story called The Cage, the title for which came from the Star Trek pilot. The setting of the Bermuda Triangle and name for the boat came from a movie that used to be on the Rifftrax channel of Pluto TV called The Bermuda Triangle.
In my version there's a guy who has a boat in the Bermuda Triangle. Out of nowhere a ghost ship appears and kills him. He wakes up on an old ocean liner sort of like the Titanic. A woman who looks sort of like Amelia Earhardt (but isn't) tells him he's on a boat called the White Whale II and then he finds out that it's run by a little girl who, since she's a little girl, doesn't like boys and so turns the guy into a girl. Later another guy shows up and is also turned into a girl and they fall in love. And then find a way to overthrow the little girl.
Night at the Carnival: The original inspiration was a short story I wrote as part of the Photobomb collection, which was based in part on Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. But most of the story was inspired by a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode where they riffed on a crappy movie called The Incredibly Strange Zombies...that is about a guy who pisses off a fortune teller who hypnotizes him into a zombie who kills some people.
My version is again less violent. Two guys go to a fortune teller at a carnival (at night!) and piss her off. She uses some potion to turn them into women. Mayhem ensues!
Shrinkage: The inspiration for the title came from a riff on Abraxas Guardian of the Universe on the Rifftrax channel of Pluto TV. During the movie Abraxas (Jesse Ventura) emerges from a lake and one of the riffers shouts "Shrinkage!" The cover for the story was repurposed from one that was supposed to be for The Incredible Shrinking Manhood sequel I never wrote.
The story was based on what I probably would have written for that sequel: an aging porn star based on the legendary Ron Jeremy takes a supplement that a co-star gives him. It helps him to get it up but afterwards his dick starts to shrink and he gets more and more feminine until he turns into a woman. Mayhem ensues!
But coming up with a story was harder. The first one I wrote about 2,000 words one Saturday afternoon and realized it wasn't really working out. So I went back to formula. The final product was inspired largely by an MST3K episode called Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. In the first third of the movie, a jerk gets a book of spells from Merlin and tries them out. Each time he uses a spell, he gets older, so he uses a spell to make himself young that turns him into a baby.
In my version an old couple buy a house to flip it and uncover an old spell book. When the guy tries it out, he finds himself getting older. He tries another spell that makes him young--but also a woman. His wife tries the same spell and also becomes a young woman. Mayhem ensues!
I'd been trying to think of a third story for the Swapp series for a while. Then it came to me one night while I was watching the Rifftrax of Feeders. It wasn't really something in the movie itself so much as I was thinking they cast the lead characters wrong. The guy picking up chicks looked like Napoleon Dynamite's brother Kip and the nerd taking pictures with a 35mm camera that probably came free with a magazine subscription was a lot less dorky-looking. (To me he looked like a book jacket photo of Michael Chabon in the 90s--Google it or something.) So I thought that the actors should switch roles and then it got me thinking: what if a guy and girl switch genders?
The idea, which maybe I'll have started by now, is that a guy and girl who work together talk about their dating issues and the guy thinks girls have it easier and the girl thinks guys have it easier--so they use the Swapp app to switch genders. And mayhem ensues...probably.
I took another stab at writing one based on Sharknado but it was dragging on too much so I just stopped it to work on these other projects. At some point I'll probably try it again. A couple of weeks ago I was watching the MST3K of the movie Tormented and got an idea for a story from that. I might get to that--or not.
So now you have a window into my thought process. Fortunately no one read this or they might get freaked out by it.
Monday, June 15, 2020
Guilty Pleasure Watching in Cougar Town
The last TV series I watched before I had to go back to work was ABC/TBS's Cougar Town. It was a show never really on my radar to watch when it was on, though I remember one night I caught an episode when I still had TBS and it wasn't bad. So when I really had nothing else going on near the end of the lockdown and I saw this on Amazon Prime, I said what the hell?!
The show was co-created by Bill Lawrence, who created Scrubs, a show that I liked--at least the first few seasons. It starred Courtney Cox, who was my favorite of the female Friends as a recently-divorced woman in Florida. She's over 40 and looking for a younger guy to go out with, hence a cougar. Get it!?
The thing is, that premise is really only the pilot episode and a few after that. It reminded me of Parks & Recreation where if you watch the first six-episode season Leslie Knope is a real dope. After that they changed the show so she was a naive goody-goody instead of a blundering idiot. In the same way the first few episode Jules Cobb is looking for casual encounters with dopey young guys. Then a few episodes into the first season she starts dating her neighbor Grayson, who's only a couple of years younger than her.
After that the show mutates to focus more on Jules and her friends in the neighborhood. Most of the episodes are driven by their relationship hurdles and drinking a hell of a lot of red wine and hanging out at Grayson's bar. A lot of it focuses on Jules's good-natured attempts to meddle in the lives of her son and friends while also managing her relationship to Grayson.
A good thing is that unlike Scrubs or Friends there's really not much will they-won't they crap with Jules and Grayson. They date for a couple of seasons and then get married in season 3 and stay married until the end of the series. That made it easier to watch than those NBC shows because you didn't get that awkward shit where they break up but still have to hang around each other until they get back together.
The showrunners made a running joke of the fact their original title no longer really fit the premise of their show. In the second and third seasons especially when the title card came up the text that originally said "Welcome To...Cougar Town" like a postcard (see above) would have some smart-ass message about changing the title. The funniest one though was when the text read, "This is not The Simpsons chalkboard gag" a few times--like the chalkboard gag.
The first 3 seasons were on ABC but then they cancelled it and TBS picked it up off waivers for three more seasons that were 13 episodes instead of the 22-ish on ABC. So it wound up with like 102 episodes overall.
Spoiler alert: the last episode was actually one of the best final episodes I've seen. It takes the old last episode staple and turns it on its head when it seems like everyone except Jules and Grayson are leaving the neighborhood. She's getting freaked out by this but then Grayson reveals that really no one is moving; it was just a way to give her the birthday gift she wanted of hearing what everyone would say at her funeral through their goodbyes to her. So they get together at the end to...drink wine like they always do. Life goes on. Huzzah.
Overall it's a good show if you just want some light-hearted comedy without tons of slapstick and laugh tracks. Since Scrubs took place in a hospital there were often serious life-and-death issues but there's not much of that in Cougar Town. There's an occasional "very special episode" like when Jules's father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's but there aren't many of those. The light-heartedness made it a fun, easy watch during this stressful time. So while I wouldn't put it as one of the greatest shows ever, it's a decent watch. For someone like me who wasn't really the intended audience, I consider it guilty pleasure watching.
A couple of Fun Facts: besides Courtney Cox, Friends alums Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, and Jennifer Aniston all had guest appearances in episodes of the series. Also, it was co-created by the guy who created Scrubs and also featured quite a few cast members of that show including Courtney Cox (who was in the last season of that show on ABC), Christa Miller, and the guy who played the evil Dr. Kelso played Jules's father. The wacky neighbor Tom also had a small recurring role in Scrubs, I'm pretty sure. In one episode the assistant hospital administrator Ted appears along with his a capella group and during the credits they have a bunch of other people show up from that show including Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, and the guy who played "the Todd." An Easter Egg in one episode is there's a medical plaza sign that lists a Dr. Dorian, which was Zach Braff's character name on Scrubs.
The show was co-created by Bill Lawrence, who created Scrubs, a show that I liked--at least the first few seasons. It starred Courtney Cox, who was my favorite of the female Friends as a recently-divorced woman in Florida. She's over 40 and looking for a younger guy to go out with, hence a cougar. Get it!?
The thing is, that premise is really only the pilot episode and a few after that. It reminded me of Parks & Recreation where if you watch the first six-episode season Leslie Knope is a real dope. After that they changed the show so she was a naive goody-goody instead of a blundering idiot. In the same way the first few episode Jules Cobb is looking for casual encounters with dopey young guys. Then a few episodes into the first season she starts dating her neighbor Grayson, who's only a couple of years younger than her.
After that the show mutates to focus more on Jules and her friends in the neighborhood. Most of the episodes are driven by their relationship hurdles and drinking a hell of a lot of red wine and hanging out at Grayson's bar. A lot of it focuses on Jules's good-natured attempts to meddle in the lives of her son and friends while also managing her relationship to Grayson.
A good thing is that unlike Scrubs or Friends there's really not much will they-won't they crap with Jules and Grayson. They date for a couple of seasons and then get married in season 3 and stay married until the end of the series. That made it easier to watch than those NBC shows because you didn't get that awkward shit where they break up but still have to hang around each other until they get back together.
The showrunners made a running joke of the fact their original title no longer really fit the premise of their show. In the second and third seasons especially when the title card came up the text that originally said "Welcome To...Cougar Town" like a postcard (see above) would have some smart-ass message about changing the title. The funniest one though was when the text read, "This is not The Simpsons chalkboard gag" a few times--like the chalkboard gag.
The first 3 seasons were on ABC but then they cancelled it and TBS picked it up off waivers for three more seasons that were 13 episodes instead of the 22-ish on ABC. So it wound up with like 102 episodes overall.
Spoiler alert: the last episode was actually one of the best final episodes I've seen. It takes the old last episode staple and turns it on its head when it seems like everyone except Jules and Grayson are leaving the neighborhood. She's getting freaked out by this but then Grayson reveals that really no one is moving; it was just a way to give her the birthday gift she wanted of hearing what everyone would say at her funeral through their goodbyes to her. So they get together at the end to...drink wine like they always do. Life goes on. Huzzah.
Overall it's a good show if you just want some light-hearted comedy without tons of slapstick and laugh tracks. Since Scrubs took place in a hospital there were often serious life-and-death issues but there's not much of that in Cougar Town. There's an occasional "very special episode" like when Jules's father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's but there aren't many of those. The light-heartedness made it a fun, easy watch during this stressful time. So while I wouldn't put it as one of the greatest shows ever, it's a decent watch. For someone like me who wasn't really the intended audience, I consider it guilty pleasure watching.
A couple of Fun Facts: besides Courtney Cox, Friends alums Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, and Jennifer Aniston all had guest appearances in episodes of the series. Also, it was co-created by the guy who created Scrubs and also featured quite a few cast members of that show including Courtney Cox (who was in the last season of that show on ABC), Christa Miller, and the guy who played the evil Dr. Kelso played Jules's father. The wacky neighbor Tom also had a small recurring role in Scrubs, I'm pretty sure. In one episode the assistant hospital administrator Ted appears along with his a capella group and during the credits they have a bunch of other people show up from that show including Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, and the guy who played "the Todd." An Easter Egg in one episode is there's a medical plaza sign that lists a Dr. Dorian, which was Zach Braff's character name on Scrubs.
Friday, June 12, 2020
Prompt Service #5: Bad Product
My book of prompts asked me to write about a bad product. Through Amazon Vine I've come across my share of bad products. And some that are really good. Of course a lot of them end up in-between.
What makes a bad product? Some if it just doesn't work. Or others if something breaks right away. One watch I got from Vine half the watch band came off when I was trying to get it out of the box.
Others are just bad by design. One watch has a traditional analog face, but there's also a digital box on the left side. The dumb thing about this design is the analog hands cover it up whenever it's 9:00 or X:45. It's such an obvious design flaw that I don't know why someone didn't notice it before they got to the phase of releasing it.
Another one I'm reminded of every year around this time. The apartment I've lived in for the last 5 years doesn't have central air, so when Vine offered an air conditioner that's not a window unit, I jumped at the chance. And it works, but there's one really obnoxious design flaw.
You have to connect the adjustable white hose between the unit and the vent that goes in the window. But they designed it so there's really nothing to actually keep the hose connected. There are no screws or brackets or glue or tape or anything. They basically seem to hope that gravity and a prayer will keep it connected. The obvious problem that usually happens at least once is the stupid hose will pop out one end or another and then if you're not in the room and paying attention it turns the room into a sauna from all the warm air spraying around.
Again you have to wonder why someone didn't notice this in the testing phase, if not earlier. I mean it should be pretty obvious that there's really nothing holding the hose in at either end and with the force of the air blowing out, it might not stay in by just wedging it in like those old Poploids toys from the '80s. That's what really gets frustrating about it: why didn't anyone notice how stupidly this was designed before it got to me?
So there you go, that's a bad product for you. Of course that could relate to books. If you don't plan your book and don't edit it and stuff then your book can turn out really bad before it ever gets to a reader. Just saying.
What makes a bad product? Some if it just doesn't work. Or others if something breaks right away. One watch I got from Vine half the watch band came off when I was trying to get it out of the box.
Others are just bad by design. One watch has a traditional analog face, but there's also a digital box on the left side. The dumb thing about this design is the analog hands cover it up whenever it's 9:00 or X:45. It's such an obvious design flaw that I don't know why someone didn't notice it before they got to the phase of releasing it.
Another one I'm reminded of every year around this time. The apartment I've lived in for the last 5 years doesn't have central air, so when Vine offered an air conditioner that's not a window unit, I jumped at the chance. And it works, but there's one really obnoxious design flaw.
You have to connect the adjustable white hose between the unit and the vent that goes in the window. But they designed it so there's really nothing to actually keep the hose connected. There are no screws or brackets or glue or tape or anything. They basically seem to hope that gravity and a prayer will keep it connected. The obvious problem that usually happens at least once is the stupid hose will pop out one end or another and then if you're not in the room and paying attention it turns the room into a sauna from all the warm air spraying around.
Again you have to wonder why someone didn't notice this in the testing phase, if not earlier. I mean it should be pretty obvious that there's really nothing holding the hose in at either end and with the force of the air blowing out, it might not stay in by just wedging it in like those old Poploids toys from the '80s. That's what really gets frustrating about it: why didn't anyone notice how stupidly this was designed before it got to me?
So there you go, that's a bad product for you. Of course that could relate to books. If you don't plan your book and don't edit it and stuff then your book can turn out really bad before it ever gets to a reader. Just saying.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Soapbox Derby
Besides all the shit going on in this country thanks to COVID-19 and cops murdering unarmed black civilians, there are some other things I wanted to complain about.
First, though hardly anyone ever comments on this blog, you might have noticed I turned on the comment moderation. This is become some dipshit spammer kept sending me the same fucking bullshit comment over and over on different articles, "Wow amazing! Find out what your name means here..." blah blah blah some junk link that's probably just a phishing site. I deleted them the first few times but when they kept doing it again and again I finally had enough and turned the moderation on. Which for a blog that gets maybe one comment a week otherwise seems like a bullshit hassle to me.
Then on Facebook I had to deal with a similar hassle. Chinese jerkoffs kept going to my author page to send me messages that had nothing to do with my books. It was always some broken English about trying some product, which of course I'm not going to do. I mean that's like jerkoffs on eBay who try to get you to sell them something off the site; you know it's just a trap so they can get the product and not pay you or pay you with some counterfeit check or something. In this case they'd probably want me to pay for shipping whatever bullshit product so they can steal my credit card info.
After the first few times they did this I set up an away message to basically tell them to fuck off. And for a while it stopped. Then a couple of weeks ago it started again. So finally I realized that these jerkoffs saw my Vine reviews and were connecting my name to my Facebook page or were looking up my page on my Amazon profile. I went over to Amazon and changed the name it uses on my profile. Plus I deleted all the links to my blog, my Facebook page, and my Twitter. I even changed the picture from one of me to one of my Sims. Which sucks because what if someone actually wanted to read this blog? Or wanted to ask me something about my books? That's happened maybe twice in the last 11 years, but still!
Speaking of, a few weeks ago I got an email at my Eric Filler account from a fan. It was harmless enough...at first. Days later he asks about a book that Amazon had pulled a while back. I had put most of those books on Prolific Works, but I realized I hadn't put that one up. So I real quick found my files for that and loaded it to Prolific Works and sent him the link.
Then it takes a turn to the crazy when he emails me back and says he wants to send me one of his stories and he'll name a character after me if I want. I didn't want to get into a whole thing with that so I just ignored it and then for good measure set up a filter so any further emails should just go straight to the trash without me reading them. Let's hope that's it and he doesn't send me a tape about how he tied up his girlfriend and drove her off a bridge like in that Eminem song, "Stan."
I'm not a famous author, but I can see why published authors don't want unpublished authors sending them manuscripts and stuff. If I read it and say what needs work, then they'll just keep bothering me. Or if I say it's great they'll probably want to send me another one. And if I write anything vaguely similar then they might claim I stole it from them. There really aren't any good outcomes for the published author. So if you're an unpublished author and write your favorite author, just tell them good job and don't take any reply as anything more than courtesy. (That was pretty much what I did when I wrote John Irving and sent him a copy of Where You Belong.)
And the last one was some Twitter account for some dude making films on YouTube or some shit. He sent me like 4 private messages about watching whatever movie of his over the last 2 1/2 years. I never once watched any of them, commented on any of them, or showed any interest or participation in any way. When he sends me a fifth private message, I finally say, "I don't care." And he's like, "That's an odd response coming from a creator."
Like because I write books I have to give a shit about every dumbass "creator" who follows my Twitter. Especially for my official Twitter account, I barely read any of it. And they don't read my Tweets either.
Which more to the point, how many of my books has this dude read? Zero. How many blog posts did he read? Zero. But I'm supposed to do all sorts of favors for him because he's a "creator." Creating something entitles him to send me private messages despite that again I never signed up for anything.
The thing about "social media" is it's just everyone flogging their shit while doing nothing for everyone else. You should read my book because I'm special. Not like I'd go read your book or even a blog post or in any way, shape, or form do anything for anyone else. Nope, I'm way too busy for that. Yeah, right. Go fuck yourself and your high horse.
So anyway, even though in over two months I hardly left my apartment except maybe an hour a week to exercise the car and take out the garbage, somehow people still managed to annoy me. Bravo! That takes some real talent.
First, though hardly anyone ever comments on this blog, you might have noticed I turned on the comment moderation. This is become some dipshit spammer kept sending me the same fucking bullshit comment over and over on different articles, "Wow amazing! Find out what your name means here..." blah blah blah some junk link that's probably just a phishing site. I deleted them the first few times but when they kept doing it again and again I finally had enough and turned the moderation on. Which for a blog that gets maybe one comment a week otherwise seems like a bullshit hassle to me.
Then on Facebook I had to deal with a similar hassle. Chinese jerkoffs kept going to my author page to send me messages that had nothing to do with my books. It was always some broken English about trying some product, which of course I'm not going to do. I mean that's like jerkoffs on eBay who try to get you to sell them something off the site; you know it's just a trap so they can get the product and not pay you or pay you with some counterfeit check or something. In this case they'd probably want me to pay for shipping whatever bullshit product so they can steal my credit card info.
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| My new Amazon profile pic lol |
Speaking of, a few weeks ago I got an email at my Eric Filler account from a fan. It was harmless enough...at first. Days later he asks about a book that Amazon had pulled a while back. I had put most of those books on Prolific Works, but I realized I hadn't put that one up. So I real quick found my files for that and loaded it to Prolific Works and sent him the link.
Then it takes a turn to the crazy when he emails me back and says he wants to send me one of his stories and he'll name a character after me if I want. I didn't want to get into a whole thing with that so I just ignored it and then for good measure set up a filter so any further emails should just go straight to the trash without me reading them. Let's hope that's it and he doesn't send me a tape about how he tied up his girlfriend and drove her off a bridge like in that Eminem song, "Stan."
I'm not a famous author, but I can see why published authors don't want unpublished authors sending them manuscripts and stuff. If I read it and say what needs work, then they'll just keep bothering me. Or if I say it's great they'll probably want to send me another one. And if I write anything vaguely similar then they might claim I stole it from them. There really aren't any good outcomes for the published author. So if you're an unpublished author and write your favorite author, just tell them good job and don't take any reply as anything more than courtesy. (That was pretty much what I did when I wrote John Irving and sent him a copy of Where You Belong.)
And the last one was some Twitter account for some dude making films on YouTube or some shit. He sent me like 4 private messages about watching whatever movie of his over the last 2 1/2 years. I never once watched any of them, commented on any of them, or showed any interest or participation in any way. When he sends me a fifth private message, I finally say, "I don't care." And he's like, "That's an odd response coming from a creator."
Like because I write books I have to give a shit about every dumbass "creator" who follows my Twitter. Especially for my official Twitter account, I barely read any of it. And they don't read my Tweets either.
Which more to the point, how many of my books has this dude read? Zero. How many blog posts did he read? Zero. But I'm supposed to do all sorts of favors for him because he's a "creator." Creating something entitles him to send me private messages despite that again I never signed up for anything.
The thing about "social media" is it's just everyone flogging their shit while doing nothing for everyone else. You should read my book because I'm special. Not like I'd go read your book or even a blog post or in any way, shape, or form do anything for anyone else. Nope, I'm way too busy for that. Yeah, right. Go fuck yourself and your high horse.
So anyway, even though in over two months I hardly left my apartment except maybe an hour a week to exercise the car and take out the garbage, somehow people still managed to annoy me. Bravo! That takes some real talent.
Monday, June 8, 2020
Burning Bad Bridges With The Simpsons
A couple of posts ago I talked about how overrated The Simpsons has been for a while now. As I rewatch it on Disney+ there's one thing I really hate in some episodes: really poor bridges.
My definition of "the bridge" is what connects the start of the episode to the rest of the episode. Ideally it's some kind of inciting event that leads to the conflict of the rest of the episode. Let me break it down in a couple of episodes I like:
Otto crashes the bus, which leads to the school instituting a carpool, which leads to Homer torturing the kids with his 70s music, which leads to them complaining, which leads to Homer feeling uncool, which leads to Homer taking the kids to the "Hullabalooza" music festival, which leads to Homer becoming a freak getting hit with a cannonball in the stomach and becoming cool to Generation X kids until he quits to avoid being killed.
So from start to finish there's a certain amount of logic to the writing. One thing leads to another in a fairly organized way. The first act introduces the conflict that's built up and then addressed without really anything excess.
The next episode, my favorite one, also is pretty tightly plotted: It's the end of the school year and Lisa hands out the yearbooks, which she edited, but no one wants to sign hers. Flanders tells Homer that he has jury duty and so offers his beach house for the Simpsons to use. Lisa decides that since they're going to a new place she'll adopt a new persona to make friends. Instead of dressing and acting like a goody-goody nerd, she dresses and acts more like a slacker and makes friends with the local kids. Bart becomes jealous of Lisa's relationship with the kids and so sabotages her by showing them what a nerd she was in Springfield. Lisa and Bart briefly feud before she finds out that the kids actually don't care about what a nerd she is; they like her for who she is. And so all is forgiven as the Simpsons leave town.
See how everything pretty well naturally flows together? The only thing you could consider a jump is Flanders offering the house to Homer, but that's basically running concurrent with the thing at school. The point being that it all logically holds together with the conflict introduced at the beginning, then it's built up, and then everything is resolved.
A few seasons later in season 12 there was an episode that was really the first time I thought an episode had a weak bridge.
There's a talent show at the retirement home that Grampa wins by virtue of being the last one on stage. The prize is a free autopsy so they go to the funeral home, during which the funeral director offhandly mentions that a mausoleum has enough cement for a tennis court. So Homer randomly decides to build a tennis court that leads to Homer and Marge entertaining the local couples, who love playing them because Homer is terrible. Marge, embarrassed, confronts Homer, who signs them up for a local tournament that winds up having professional players replacing everyone.
The thing is, the start didn't really connect to the rest of the episode. The extremely weak connection was someone mentioned a tennis court and so he builds a tennis court. The first 7 minutes of the episode then winds up essentially being useless filler.
Another time was an episode where Homer is pissed because the electric bill is too high. Lisa convinces him to buy a wind turbine to run their house. When there's no wind to power the house, Homer has Bart go up on the turbine to spin it manually. During that Bart prays for a storm. There's a storm, during which a whale washes up on the beach. Lisa tries to save the whale, but it dies and she's bummed before eventually she's cheered up.
The extremely weak bridge between the beginning and rest of the episode is Bart prays for a storm. You don't really need Bart praying for a storm, though; you could just start the episode with the whale getting beached. I mean are we really supposed to believe Bart's praying caused the storm that caused the whale to end up on the beach? The rest of it flows naturally from there but again the first 8 minutes wind up as filler.
One I watched just before writing this entry starts with Bart and Lisa watching a show called Ki-Ya Monsters. Marge gets tired of them talking about it constantly and so decides to take them to a museum. At the museum they see a display on probability saying how terrible the odds of winning the lottery are. But Homer still buys the weekly lottery ticket with Moe, Lenny, and Carl only this time they win. Carl takes the ticket but instead of splitting the money absconds to his native Iceland. His friends follow and find out he used the money to buy a page of an ancient saga that was supposed to clear his family of an old shame but actually did the opposite. Homer, Moe, and Lenny convince Iceland that Carl is a good guy because of nice things he did for them and so that should clear his family's name.
The whole Ki-Ya Monsters thing is never mentioned again after they get to the museum. In fact the kids are barely in the rest of the episode. Again it's just filler. The only bridge is there's a mention of the lottery. They could easily have started with the lottery drawing. That's where the actual conflict begins.
So anyone reading this, maybe you can see the difference between a good bridge and a bad bridge. A good bridge is strong because it logically follows from beginning to middle to end. It introduces the conflict that's then built up and resolved.
A weak bridge has 6-8 minutes that wind up being filler because there's only a tangential connection between the beginning and end. The same virtue from a long-running animated TV show also applies to books or really any story. If your beginning doesn't really connect to the middle and end, then it's a lot of filler.
You need to have a strong bridge if you're going to get where you're going.
My definition of "the bridge" is what connects the start of the episode to the rest of the episode. Ideally it's some kind of inciting event that leads to the conflict of the rest of the episode. Let me break it down in a couple of episodes I like:
Otto crashes the bus, which leads to the school instituting a carpool, which leads to Homer torturing the kids with his 70s music, which leads to them complaining, which leads to Homer feeling uncool, which leads to Homer taking the kids to the "Hullabalooza" music festival, which leads to Homer becoming a freak getting hit with a cannonball in the stomach and becoming cool to Generation X kids until he quits to avoid being killed.
So from start to finish there's a certain amount of logic to the writing. One thing leads to another in a fairly organized way. The first act introduces the conflict that's built up and then addressed without really anything excess.
The next episode, my favorite one, also is pretty tightly plotted: It's the end of the school year and Lisa hands out the yearbooks, which she edited, but no one wants to sign hers. Flanders tells Homer that he has jury duty and so offers his beach house for the Simpsons to use. Lisa decides that since they're going to a new place she'll adopt a new persona to make friends. Instead of dressing and acting like a goody-goody nerd, she dresses and acts more like a slacker and makes friends with the local kids. Bart becomes jealous of Lisa's relationship with the kids and so sabotages her by showing them what a nerd she was in Springfield. Lisa and Bart briefly feud before she finds out that the kids actually don't care about what a nerd she is; they like her for who she is. And so all is forgiven as the Simpsons leave town.
See how everything pretty well naturally flows together? The only thing you could consider a jump is Flanders offering the house to Homer, but that's basically running concurrent with the thing at school. The point being that it all logically holds together with the conflict introduced at the beginning, then it's built up, and then everything is resolved.
A few seasons later in season 12 there was an episode that was really the first time I thought an episode had a weak bridge.
There's a talent show at the retirement home that Grampa wins by virtue of being the last one on stage. The prize is a free autopsy so they go to the funeral home, during which the funeral director offhandly mentions that a mausoleum has enough cement for a tennis court. So Homer randomly decides to build a tennis court that leads to Homer and Marge entertaining the local couples, who love playing them because Homer is terrible. Marge, embarrassed, confronts Homer, who signs them up for a local tournament that winds up having professional players replacing everyone.
The thing is, the start didn't really connect to the rest of the episode. The extremely weak connection was someone mentioned a tennis court and so he builds a tennis court. The first 7 minutes of the episode then winds up essentially being useless filler.
Another time was an episode where Homer is pissed because the electric bill is too high. Lisa convinces him to buy a wind turbine to run their house. When there's no wind to power the house, Homer has Bart go up on the turbine to spin it manually. During that Bart prays for a storm. There's a storm, during which a whale washes up on the beach. Lisa tries to save the whale, but it dies and she's bummed before eventually she's cheered up.
The extremely weak bridge between the beginning and rest of the episode is Bart prays for a storm. You don't really need Bart praying for a storm, though; you could just start the episode with the whale getting beached. I mean are we really supposed to believe Bart's praying caused the storm that caused the whale to end up on the beach? The rest of it flows naturally from there but again the first 8 minutes wind up as filler.
One I watched just before writing this entry starts with Bart and Lisa watching a show called Ki-Ya Monsters. Marge gets tired of them talking about it constantly and so decides to take them to a museum. At the museum they see a display on probability saying how terrible the odds of winning the lottery are. But Homer still buys the weekly lottery ticket with Moe, Lenny, and Carl only this time they win. Carl takes the ticket but instead of splitting the money absconds to his native Iceland. His friends follow and find out he used the money to buy a page of an ancient saga that was supposed to clear his family of an old shame but actually did the opposite. Homer, Moe, and Lenny convince Iceland that Carl is a good guy because of nice things he did for them and so that should clear his family's name.
The whole Ki-Ya Monsters thing is never mentioned again after they get to the museum. In fact the kids are barely in the rest of the episode. Again it's just filler. The only bridge is there's a mention of the lottery. They could easily have started with the lottery drawing. That's where the actual conflict begins.
So anyone reading this, maybe you can see the difference between a good bridge and a bad bridge. A good bridge is strong because it logically follows from beginning to middle to end. It introduces the conflict that's then built up and resolved.
A weak bridge has 6-8 minutes that wind up being filler because there's only a tangential connection between the beginning and end. The same virtue from a long-running animated TV show also applies to books or really any story. If your beginning doesn't really connect to the middle and end, then it's a lot of filler.
You need to have a strong bridge if you're going to get where you're going.
Friday, June 5, 2020
Leverage Buy-In
Though from 2008-2013 I had AMC most of the time, I never really watched Leverage when it was new. Or even when they probably showed reruns. Or on-demand. Really it wasn't until a couple years ago that I watched a few episodes on ION when they ran marathons on some Sundays. But the problem with that was it was hard to watch them in order and you might end up seeing some of the same ones from week to week. It was the same when Pluto TV added a Leverage channel that showed it 24/7. Hulu didn't have it and it wasn't on Amazon Prime either.
Finally I found out it was on the Tubi TV streaming service so I could binge the show from start to finish. There are some commercials, but probably not as many as watching it on Pluto TV.
Anyway, I liked the show. The basic premise is kind of a mix of Suicide Squad and Mission: Impossible or The A-Team. It's about a team of "bad guys" who help people, most of whom have been screwed over by big corporations.
The pilot episode establishes the premise and the team. An airline executive contacts former insurance investigator Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) to ask him to supervise a team of three criminals so they can steal back some plans for an engine or something. The team is:
Hitter: Eliot Spencer is a former Special Forces soldier (it's not clear which unit really) who wound up working as muscle-for-hire. He doesn't use guns, but makes up for it with speed and skill--sort of like Batman without the costume or Batarangs. He's also a good cook and ladies man.
Hacker: Alec Hardison is a young black man who's one of the best hackers in the world. Like all TV/movie hackers, he can basically do whatever the plot calls for in a few keystrokes. Disable security? Research a target? Create fake IDs? Plant fake stories on newspaper sites, blogs, and so on? Just clickity, clickity, click and it's done. He and Eliot have a sort of Odo and Quark relationship through the series in that on the surface they act like they hate each other, but they really don't.
Thief: Parker is like a far less annoying Harley Quinn in that she's hot and crazy. But also she's an exceptionally nimble thief who can tumble through a bunch of lasers without setting them off or dive from twenty stories into a building or to escape one. She didn't have a normal childhood and so is emotionally stunted and doesn't really get along with others.
The first job seems to go off pretty well. Nate comes up with the plan and the other three execute it well enough. But their employer double-crosses them and tries to blow them up. That's when they realize that the plans they were stealing were actually the property of that company and they were inadvertently giving them to a rival company.
To get back at their treacherous employer, the team bands together to steal the plans a second time, this time from the guy who paid them to steal them the first time. But to pull off the heist, they add another member to the team:
Grifter: Sophie Devereaux is a British woman who's a tremendously bad theater actor and also an art thief. She and Nate have had a cat-and-mouse game going from when he was an insurance investigator and would chase her around the world to try to recover paintings she stole. Which is why when they need a con artist to help get the plans back, he calls on her.
So the team is able to get the plans back and destroy the guy who double-crossed them. Then they decide to stay together and help people who are being screwed over by big corporations and such. They call themselves Leverage Consulting because they provide leverage for those who otherwise would be crushed by the system. Get it?
The pilot takes place in Chicago, but the rest of the first season moves to Los Angeles. The basic formula is the team takes a case, they come up with a plan, that initial plan falls apart, things get complicated, and then in the end they pull off some clever con or heist (or both) to defeat the bad guys. Most of the stories take place near their home city, but sometimes they'll go off to a small town somewhere or a couple of times even to other countries.
At the end of the first season their LA office is blown up, so the show moves to Boston for the next three seasons. Nate is from Boston and moves into a local tavern where his bookie father used to hold court. Later in the third season he has to thwart a scheme hatched by his father, played by Tom Skerritt.
According to IMDB while it was supposed to be Boston, they were actually filming in Portland. Then in the fifth season, after their office is raided again, the show moves to Portland for real. In the last episode a reason for choosing Portand is given.
Anyway, the show has the same five people all the way through except in the second season the lady playing Sophie must have been pregnant because she spends most of that season in London or traveling to other countries so they only show her on computer or phone screens from the shoulders up. I just assume it was so they didn't have to show her baby bump because they didn't want to work it into the show. (And hey I looked it up on IMDB and I was right! Yay me!)
For most of that season there was a substitute grifter friend of hers played by Jeri Ryan. Which a Fun Fact about the show is there are a lot of Star Trek actors involved in the series. Jonathan Frakes directed a number of episodes and appeared in a non-speaking role in one. One episode features Brent Spiner as a bad guy and Armin Shimmerman as a crooked witness in a trial. Wil Wheaton appears in three episodes as a hacker rival of Hardison who goes by the name "Chaos." There may have been a couple of others I didn't notice or don't remember. I'm not sure what the reason for that is.
I really liked the show for the most part. Even though most of the stories aren't that believable, it's like any heist/con artist movie where it's fun just to see how they're going to pull it off. Heist/con artist movies they're really like magic shows in that you're watching to see if the magician can pull off the trick he/she claims. And like a mystery story there's often the fun of trying to see if you can figure out how they did it before the show reveals it. Because most of the time they'll show you most everything as it happens, but they might omit a few details for the big reveal at the end. From a logical standpoint you know that most of the stuff they do could never work in the real world, especially all the hacking stuff, so you have to suspend disbelief.
It was also a show that didn't usually take itself too seriously. There were some serious episodes (usually near the end of a season) but there were also some goofier episodes like when they derail a Walmart-type store from opening or steal a minor league baseball team or convince Cary Elwes he was stealing the Spruce Goose or convincing a CEO he was making first contact with aliens or steal a bunch of failed toys to create a Furby/Tickle-Me-Elmo-type sensation during the holiday season. Then there was Nate's fun catchphrase, "Let's go steal a [whatever]." Like, Let's go steal a mountain. Or a movie. Or even a country when they rigged an election in a tiny country to stop an arms dealer. It's always good when a series can walk that line between comedy and drama so it doesn't get too grim and gritty.
During the series four of the team end up hooking up. Nate and Sophie become a couple and while they try to hide it, eventually everyone finds out about it. The problem for them is Nate puts the work before everything else and most of the series he has a drinking problem. During the third or fourth season Hardison and Parker also start going out, which is a new thing for Parker while for Hardison it's hard to keep up with her and to get through her emotional walls. Eliot is the only one who doesn't get to partner up since there are only 5 people, but he gets plenty of random tail, so maybe he's better off. Or not. The good thing is they never really made these relationships the centerpiece of the show. There was no will they-won't they crap like an NBC sitcom or CW superhero show. So it provided added character depth without distracting from the overall stories. Which is really how that should work unless you're doing a soap opera.
The one main thing to complain about is the effects budget was not great. A lot of obvious green screen effects for instance when they're infiltrating buildings or a lot of times even driving. But then this didn't have the budget of Game of Thrones, I'm sure.
There were 77 episodes of the show in total. I suppose the problem for this was the time it aired on AMC. It was always overshadowed by the more popular shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. Those got a lot more attention and I'm sure a lot more money behind them. But if you like heist/con artist movies like Ocean's Eleven or Matchstick Men or whatever then this is fun to watch and it's free on Tubi TV and Pluto TV and if they still show it on ION, which makes it a good option if you're still in quarantine or just burned through everything else you wanted to watch while you were in quarantine.
Since I doubt anyone will read the whole entry, I'll spoil the ending. In the last episode the team pulls off a job to steal a secret Interpol file that details crimes of all the big companies during the financial meltdown of 2008. They put that file out on the "Dark Web" for any other white hat types to use against the bad guys. Afterwards, Nate proposes to Sophie and she accepts, so they go off to start a new life. Parker takes over the team and it ends with her repeating Nate's speech from the first episode about how they provide...Leverage. Ha.
Finally I found out it was on the Tubi TV streaming service so I could binge the show from start to finish. There are some commercials, but probably not as many as watching it on Pluto TV.
Anyway, I liked the show. The basic premise is kind of a mix of Suicide Squad and Mission: Impossible or The A-Team. It's about a team of "bad guys" who help people, most of whom have been screwed over by big corporations.
The pilot episode establishes the premise and the team. An airline executive contacts former insurance investigator Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) to ask him to supervise a team of three criminals so they can steal back some plans for an engine or something. The team is:
Hitter: Eliot Spencer is a former Special Forces soldier (it's not clear which unit really) who wound up working as muscle-for-hire. He doesn't use guns, but makes up for it with speed and skill--sort of like Batman without the costume or Batarangs. He's also a good cook and ladies man.
Hacker: Alec Hardison is a young black man who's one of the best hackers in the world. Like all TV/movie hackers, he can basically do whatever the plot calls for in a few keystrokes. Disable security? Research a target? Create fake IDs? Plant fake stories on newspaper sites, blogs, and so on? Just clickity, clickity, click and it's done. He and Eliot have a sort of Odo and Quark relationship through the series in that on the surface they act like they hate each other, but they really don't.
Thief: Parker is like a far less annoying Harley Quinn in that she's hot and crazy. But also she's an exceptionally nimble thief who can tumble through a bunch of lasers without setting them off or dive from twenty stories into a building or to escape one. She didn't have a normal childhood and so is emotionally stunted and doesn't really get along with others.
The first job seems to go off pretty well. Nate comes up with the plan and the other three execute it well enough. But their employer double-crosses them and tries to blow them up. That's when they realize that the plans they were stealing were actually the property of that company and they were inadvertently giving them to a rival company.
To get back at their treacherous employer, the team bands together to steal the plans a second time, this time from the guy who paid them to steal them the first time. But to pull off the heist, they add another member to the team:
Grifter: Sophie Devereaux is a British woman who's a tremendously bad theater actor and also an art thief. She and Nate have had a cat-and-mouse game going from when he was an insurance investigator and would chase her around the world to try to recover paintings she stole. Which is why when they need a con artist to help get the plans back, he calls on her.
So the team is able to get the plans back and destroy the guy who double-crossed them. Then they decide to stay together and help people who are being screwed over by big corporations and such. They call themselves Leverage Consulting because they provide leverage for those who otherwise would be crushed by the system. Get it?
The pilot takes place in Chicago, but the rest of the first season moves to Los Angeles. The basic formula is the team takes a case, they come up with a plan, that initial plan falls apart, things get complicated, and then in the end they pull off some clever con or heist (or both) to defeat the bad guys. Most of the stories take place near their home city, but sometimes they'll go off to a small town somewhere or a couple of times even to other countries.
At the end of the first season their LA office is blown up, so the show moves to Boston for the next three seasons. Nate is from Boston and moves into a local tavern where his bookie father used to hold court. Later in the third season he has to thwart a scheme hatched by his father, played by Tom Skerritt.
According to IMDB while it was supposed to be Boston, they were actually filming in Portland. Then in the fifth season, after their office is raided again, the show moves to Portland for real. In the last episode a reason for choosing Portand is given.
Anyway, the show has the same five people all the way through except in the second season the lady playing Sophie must have been pregnant because she spends most of that season in London or traveling to other countries so they only show her on computer or phone screens from the shoulders up. I just assume it was so they didn't have to show her baby bump because they didn't want to work it into the show. (And hey I looked it up on IMDB and I was right! Yay me!)
For most of that season there was a substitute grifter friend of hers played by Jeri Ryan. Which a Fun Fact about the show is there are a lot of Star Trek actors involved in the series. Jonathan Frakes directed a number of episodes and appeared in a non-speaking role in one. One episode features Brent Spiner as a bad guy and Armin Shimmerman as a crooked witness in a trial. Wil Wheaton appears in three episodes as a hacker rival of Hardison who goes by the name "Chaos." There may have been a couple of others I didn't notice or don't remember. I'm not sure what the reason for that is.
I really liked the show for the most part. Even though most of the stories aren't that believable, it's like any heist/con artist movie where it's fun just to see how they're going to pull it off. Heist/con artist movies they're really like magic shows in that you're watching to see if the magician can pull off the trick he/she claims. And like a mystery story there's often the fun of trying to see if you can figure out how they did it before the show reveals it. Because most of the time they'll show you most everything as it happens, but they might omit a few details for the big reveal at the end. From a logical standpoint you know that most of the stuff they do could never work in the real world, especially all the hacking stuff, so you have to suspend disbelief.
It was also a show that didn't usually take itself too seriously. There were some serious episodes (usually near the end of a season) but there were also some goofier episodes like when they derail a Walmart-type store from opening or steal a minor league baseball team or convince Cary Elwes he was stealing the Spruce Goose or convincing a CEO he was making first contact with aliens or steal a bunch of failed toys to create a Furby/Tickle-Me-Elmo-type sensation during the holiday season. Then there was Nate's fun catchphrase, "Let's go steal a [whatever]." Like, Let's go steal a mountain. Or a movie. Or even a country when they rigged an election in a tiny country to stop an arms dealer. It's always good when a series can walk that line between comedy and drama so it doesn't get too grim and gritty.
During the series four of the team end up hooking up. Nate and Sophie become a couple and while they try to hide it, eventually everyone finds out about it. The problem for them is Nate puts the work before everything else and most of the series he has a drinking problem. During the third or fourth season Hardison and Parker also start going out, which is a new thing for Parker while for Hardison it's hard to keep up with her and to get through her emotional walls. Eliot is the only one who doesn't get to partner up since there are only 5 people, but he gets plenty of random tail, so maybe he's better off. Or not. The good thing is they never really made these relationships the centerpiece of the show. There was no will they-won't they crap like an NBC sitcom or CW superhero show. So it provided added character depth without distracting from the overall stories. Which is really how that should work unless you're doing a soap opera.
The one main thing to complain about is the effects budget was not great. A lot of obvious green screen effects for instance when they're infiltrating buildings or a lot of times even driving. But then this didn't have the budget of Game of Thrones, I'm sure.
There were 77 episodes of the show in total. I suppose the problem for this was the time it aired on AMC. It was always overshadowed by the more popular shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead. Those got a lot more attention and I'm sure a lot more money behind them. But if you like heist/con artist movies like Ocean's Eleven or Matchstick Men or whatever then this is fun to watch and it's free on Tubi TV and Pluto TV and if they still show it on ION, which makes it a good option if you're still in quarantine or just burned through everything else you wanted to watch while you were in quarantine.
Since I doubt anyone will read the whole entry, I'll spoil the ending. In the last episode the team pulls off a job to steal a secret Interpol file that details crimes of all the big companies during the financial meltdown of 2008. They put that file out on the "Dark Web" for any other white hat types to use against the bad guys. Afterwards, Nate proposes to Sophie and she accepts, so they go off to start a new life. Parker takes over the team and it ends with her repeating Nate's speech from the first episode about how they provide...Leverage. Ha.
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Prompt Service #4: Online Shopping
The third installment picked from my book of writing prompts. Do you prefer online shopping or in-person shopping? Since the lockdown, I've done pretty much all my shopping online for obvious reasons. Do I miss in-person shopping? Not all that much.
A couple of times I've used the Kroger app to buy groceries I can't easily get shipped like milk or cheese or frozen stuff. There are some downsides to this as you can't necessarily find the cheapest brands of things and it can be hard to find some specific things. Shopping the Kroger app, which uses Instacart, there's like a $9.99 fee plus unless you're a jerk you have to put a tip on there. I heard that some assholes put a tip on there but then the app for Instacart lets you pull the tip later on, so some people change it to $0 once they get their shit. That's a really shitty thing to do, especially since these shoppers are risking catching a deadly plague primarily for the tips they get. Anyway, between the fee and tip, you can wind up paying $30 more for your groceries.
Besides Kroger, I've cobbled together supplies from a variety of sources: Amazon, Big Lots, and Target mostly. Usually in online shopping Amazon is the way to go, but as cities locked down, people rushed online to Amazon to buy stuff, so they ran out of some things. But also, Amazon has all those third-party sellers that can make things really confusing. You don't always know where those third-party sellers are (many of them could be all the way in China even) or how long it might take them to ship stuff. And if you're ordering a bunch of stuff it can be annoying because your 56 things might come in 52 orders, so mostly I use it to order one or two things at a time like cough drops, sausage gravy, and Sparkling Ice carbonated flavored water because you can't really get Diet Pepsi shipped from anywhere, so that helps to stretch out what I do have.
Big Lots I only used once because they sent me a $5 off coupon. I got some sheets on clearance but then also some groceries like fruit cups and instant coffee. The problem with their site was they didn't have a lot of stuff to ship. Most of it was like, "You can pick it up in store." Um, genius, the stores are the problem! Whether you go in the store two minutes or ten minutes you're still potentially exposing yourself to the virus. So that kind of limited what I could order. You couldn't get tuna, but you could get sardines! And something called "kipper snacks." I only got 1 of the latter and 2 tins of sardines that I haven't eaten yet. I figure if it gets to the point where I am eating those, it's one step above killing and eating my neighbors. I might have ordered some stuff from them again, but the next time I checked their site, they didn't have most of the stuff I ordered the first time for shipping.
Target became the mainstay for my pantry purchases. They had an OK selection of things like tuna, mayo, ketchup, syrup, and Spam. One thing I was kinda missing was Chinese food. I think the only restaurant in my immediate area closed down and I haven't felt like going to Panda Express. You couldn't get stuff like LaChoy chow mein or anything, but I did get Thai rice noodles and some teriyaki and ginger sauce to make a quasi-Asian dish. I got some comfort food too in spray cheese and Pringles. Plus I got some Atkins bars and shakes and some medical stuff like famotidine (Pepcid AC), Imodium AD, Nexium, and antacid. The only thing that sucks with Target is they tend to just throw shit willy-nilly into a box without really putting any padding in there. I had a cup of peaches and oatmeal that burst open because they didn't pad the box and it was shipping from Washington state to Michigan. But I did get the money back for that and one of the cups was salvageable, so it wasn't a total loss.
I do miss browsing the Walmart/Meijer/Target clearance bins a little and looking for interesting bargains at Ollie's, Five Below, or Big Lots. But I don't miss the crowds or parking or idiots leaving carts willy-nilly in aisles and the parking lot. Like a lot of things, you don't really miss in-person shopping that much when you can't or just don't want to take the risk of doing it.
A couple of times I've used the Kroger app to buy groceries I can't easily get shipped like milk or cheese or frozen stuff. There are some downsides to this as you can't necessarily find the cheapest brands of things and it can be hard to find some specific things. Shopping the Kroger app, which uses Instacart, there's like a $9.99 fee plus unless you're a jerk you have to put a tip on there. I heard that some assholes put a tip on there but then the app for Instacart lets you pull the tip later on, so some people change it to $0 once they get their shit. That's a really shitty thing to do, especially since these shoppers are risking catching a deadly plague primarily for the tips they get. Anyway, between the fee and tip, you can wind up paying $30 more for your groceries.
Besides Kroger, I've cobbled together supplies from a variety of sources: Amazon, Big Lots, and Target mostly. Usually in online shopping Amazon is the way to go, but as cities locked down, people rushed online to Amazon to buy stuff, so they ran out of some things. But also, Amazon has all those third-party sellers that can make things really confusing. You don't always know where those third-party sellers are (many of them could be all the way in China even) or how long it might take them to ship stuff. And if you're ordering a bunch of stuff it can be annoying because your 56 things might come in 52 orders, so mostly I use it to order one or two things at a time like cough drops, sausage gravy, and Sparkling Ice carbonated flavored water because you can't really get Diet Pepsi shipped from anywhere, so that helps to stretch out what I do have.
Big Lots I only used once because they sent me a $5 off coupon. I got some sheets on clearance but then also some groceries like fruit cups and instant coffee. The problem with their site was they didn't have a lot of stuff to ship. Most of it was like, "You can pick it up in store." Um, genius, the stores are the problem! Whether you go in the store two minutes or ten minutes you're still potentially exposing yourself to the virus. So that kind of limited what I could order. You couldn't get tuna, but you could get sardines! And something called "kipper snacks." I only got 1 of the latter and 2 tins of sardines that I haven't eaten yet. I figure if it gets to the point where I am eating those, it's one step above killing and eating my neighbors. I might have ordered some stuff from them again, but the next time I checked their site, they didn't have most of the stuff I ordered the first time for shipping.
Target became the mainstay for my pantry purchases. They had an OK selection of things like tuna, mayo, ketchup, syrup, and Spam. One thing I was kinda missing was Chinese food. I think the only restaurant in my immediate area closed down and I haven't felt like going to Panda Express. You couldn't get stuff like LaChoy chow mein or anything, but I did get Thai rice noodles and some teriyaki and ginger sauce to make a quasi-Asian dish. I got some comfort food too in spray cheese and Pringles. Plus I got some Atkins bars and shakes and some medical stuff like famotidine (Pepcid AC), Imodium AD, Nexium, and antacid. The only thing that sucks with Target is they tend to just throw shit willy-nilly into a box without really putting any padding in there. I had a cup of peaches and oatmeal that burst open because they didn't pad the box and it was shipping from Washington state to Michigan. But I did get the money back for that and one of the cups was salvageable, so it wasn't a total loss.
I do miss browsing the Walmart/Meijer/Target clearance bins a little and looking for interesting bargains at Ollie's, Five Below, or Big Lots. But I don't miss the crowds or parking or idiots leaving carts willy-nilly in aisles and the parking lot. Like a lot of things, you don't really miss in-person shopping that much when you can't or just don't want to take the risk of doing it.
Monday, June 1, 2020
Prompt Service #3: Overrated
My book of writing prompts wants to know something popular that's overrated. As I was leafing through the book I had The Simpsons on Disney+ playing. Which really makes for a perfect answer.
After I ran through all the Star Wars on Disney+, about the only series they had I would be interested in was The Simpsons. I didn't watch the first season because it's so weird with the cruder animation, voices that aren't right, and black Smithers. So really it started with the second season. As I rewatched it, I sort of wondered at what point it would reach that threshhold of mediocrity.
The thing is that the show started to make jokes about being on too long by about the 7th season. And it's been on for 24 years since then! I think for myself, the show really just started coasting along about the 11th or 12th season. By then they'd rerun a lot of the basic plots a bunch of times: Homer gets a new job; Homer pisses off/wins back Marge; Lisa finds somewhere to fit in before blowing it; Bart plays a prank and is punished somehow; Selma gets married; and Sideshow Bob tries to kill Bart.
I watched the show live until about the 22nd or 23rd season. I always chalk it up to one moment: when I read on the description on my cable box that Selma was going to marry Fat Tony. And it's just like, "If you're not going to try, then why should I watch?" I mean by that point how many times had Selma been married? Ooh but this time she's marrying someone rich and famous! She already married Troy McClure and Sideshow Bob who were famous or at least infamous.
A lot of books are very similar to books already written but you have to put some kind of new spin on it. Marrying Fat Tony didn't even feel like much of a new spin. So that was the point where I reached, "Aw, fuck it." Plus by that point I had Netflix and maybe something else. Between that, cable, and sports there was really no reason to watch a show rehashing the same story for the ten or fifteenth time.
Yet despite that I gave up like 8 years ago, plenty of other people keep watching. Why? Is it just that they're so used to it that it's like an instinct? Or that they can't think of anything better to do or watch? Or maybe it's that a lot of younger viewers haven't seen the classic episodes when the stories were fresh or at least far less used. Even the syndicated reruns don't show the older episodes nearly as much as they did in the 90s and 2000s. Most of the people watching reruns on local TV or FXX or whatever may never even see the classic episodes I grew up with. Which to me seems like a pity. They're only get the bad copies of the original stories.
In a way I suppose it's like how it's hard for me to appreciate the Beatles the way older people do because I wasn't around then. By the same token newer viewers weren't around when a lot of these basic Simpsons plots were fresh so they can't really appreciate it properly.
Anyway, it kind of bugs me that Matt Groening and company seem determined to keep this going until everyone involved is dead--if then. That's really something that works with cartoons better than live action because you don't have to matter as much about actors--especially young ones--getting older. Still, you have to respect those like Jerry Seinfeld who quit when they could have kept it going for a few more years because they didn't want to keep grinding it down until there was nothing left. I wish Groening, Seth MacFarlane, and Trey Parker/Matt Stone had the same integrity about The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. I gave up on all of those shows but they just keep humming along. But it's not like Fox or Comedy Central is likely to find anything better.
A sadly funny thing when you rewatch the show now is the sheer number of guest stars who are dead now. You could create a whole Vietnam Memorial-style wall dedicated to all those who have died since recording a character or characters on The Simpsons.
Here's a wiki page dedicated to guest actors, recurring voice actors, and staff who have all died. Quite a few of them I hadn't realized because I hadn't been paying attention the last 8 years. It's kind of depressing to see just how many have died while the show somehow keeps chugging along. I guess it proves the old show biz adage: The show must go on.
But maybe it really shouldn't.
After I ran through all the Star Wars on Disney+, about the only series they had I would be interested in was The Simpsons. I didn't watch the first season because it's so weird with the cruder animation, voices that aren't right, and black Smithers. So really it started with the second season. As I rewatched it, I sort of wondered at what point it would reach that threshhold of mediocrity.
The thing is that the show started to make jokes about being on too long by about the 7th season. And it's been on for 24 years since then! I think for myself, the show really just started coasting along about the 11th or 12th season. By then they'd rerun a lot of the basic plots a bunch of times: Homer gets a new job; Homer pisses off/wins back Marge; Lisa finds somewhere to fit in before blowing it; Bart plays a prank and is punished somehow; Selma gets married; and Sideshow Bob tries to kill Bart.
I watched the show live until about the 22nd or 23rd season. I always chalk it up to one moment: when I read on the description on my cable box that Selma was going to marry Fat Tony. And it's just like, "If you're not going to try, then why should I watch?" I mean by that point how many times had Selma been married? Ooh but this time she's marrying someone rich and famous! She already married Troy McClure and Sideshow Bob who were famous or at least infamous.
A lot of books are very similar to books already written but you have to put some kind of new spin on it. Marrying Fat Tony didn't even feel like much of a new spin. So that was the point where I reached, "Aw, fuck it." Plus by that point I had Netflix and maybe something else. Between that, cable, and sports there was really no reason to watch a show rehashing the same story for the ten or fifteenth time.
Yet despite that I gave up like 8 years ago, plenty of other people keep watching. Why? Is it just that they're so used to it that it's like an instinct? Or that they can't think of anything better to do or watch? Or maybe it's that a lot of younger viewers haven't seen the classic episodes when the stories were fresh or at least far less used. Even the syndicated reruns don't show the older episodes nearly as much as they did in the 90s and 2000s. Most of the people watching reruns on local TV or FXX or whatever may never even see the classic episodes I grew up with. Which to me seems like a pity. They're only get the bad copies of the original stories.
In a way I suppose it's like how it's hard for me to appreciate the Beatles the way older people do because I wasn't around then. By the same token newer viewers weren't around when a lot of these basic Simpsons plots were fresh so they can't really appreciate it properly.
Anyway, it kind of bugs me that Matt Groening and company seem determined to keep this going until everyone involved is dead--if then. That's really something that works with cartoons better than live action because you don't have to matter as much about actors--especially young ones--getting older. Still, you have to respect those like Jerry Seinfeld who quit when they could have kept it going for a few more years because they didn't want to keep grinding it down until there was nothing left. I wish Groening, Seth MacFarlane, and Trey Parker/Matt Stone had the same integrity about The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. I gave up on all of those shows but they just keep humming along. But it's not like Fox or Comedy Central is likely to find anything better.
A sadly funny thing when you rewatch the show now is the sheer number of guest stars who are dead now. You could create a whole Vietnam Memorial-style wall dedicated to all those who have died since recording a character or characters on The Simpsons.
Here's a wiki page dedicated to guest actors, recurring voice actors, and staff who have all died. Quite a few of them I hadn't realized because I hadn't been paying attention the last 8 years. It's kind of depressing to see just how many have died while the show somehow keeps chugging along. I guess it proves the old show biz adage: The show must go on.
But maybe it really shouldn't.
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