Pandemic or no pandemic – I’m always busy with television. Whether I’m working in it, breathing it, reading it, writing about it, or logging off of working for television and then watching television four to five hours a night for the sheer thrills, shits and giggles.
That’s The Coatney life in the fast lane. My mom used to tell you, ‘you were practically born with a TV Guide in your mouth. It was the first thing you ever learned how to read’ and now, I’ll probably die with a Roku remote in my hand, flipping through the Spectrum or Pluto TV guides trying to decide what to watch on television
I took three weeks too long to jot down my thoughts for my favorite top ten progressive rock releases this week when I should have done it in two. So what do I do to the meantime to fill out the rest of January with? I was thinking to myself – usually in February with sweeps coming up, why not just dedicate a blog to my rabid television viewing habits at night, since I have a whole different approach to it than most people. Plus, it’s a cakewalk for me to churn out in a few days time. I mean, I might as well, since I’m going to spend the month of February – a big Sweeps month – writing about the rage of cartoons during the stubborn quarantine months and maybe get a roundtable discussion about with a friend or two about their streaming habits
I get into little tiffs with my comic book artist/journalist friend over streaming platforms, particularly when it comes to the mega-giants HBO Max and Disney +. My rather high opinionated friend will bully anyone if you’re not throwing down with him in thinking that HBO Max is the best thing since the invention of matzi ball soup, (a very late boomer when it comes to the wicked wiles of the more adult-oriented Greg Berlanti DC Comics dramas) while I continue to press on singing the virtuous praises of Disney + with their Marvel and Star Wars genre shows.
But in all secretly – I try to utilize all of my seven subscribed streaming platforms.
So I’m providing you all with my very own watching diary of a typical five day watch week.
Mondays – I consider to be my streaming sampler plate night. Note: These are times approximate. Without commericals, I can probably shave a half hour to forty-five minutes and cut out to bed early.
8:00 PM Dickinson Season 2 AppleTV+
8:30 PM Servant Season 2 Apple TV+
9:00 PM Departure Season 1 Peacock
10:00 PM Gommorrah Season 1 HBO Max
11:00 PM Star Trek – CBS All Access. For just this Monday only I’m watching a old Star Trek episode because CBS All Access crashed on me for some reason the previous Thursday evening. So this is make up day from my usual classic tv two hour punch.
My rather high opinioned friend loves to pound on me for my support of practically everything Apple TV+. Apple is the only streamer I pay for that doesn’t have a enormous selection. They strictly abide by their own slate of originals of which there only exist but a handful. However these handful of originals look and sound superb in quality. I don’t know what kind of bandwidth they’re using to upload these shows, but they just look incredibly sharp and are practically suited for blasting on your 5.1 surround systems. Apple + earlier this month dropped 2nd seasons of Dickinson starring future Hawkeye protege Hailee Steinfeld (whenever Jeremy Renner surrenders the role to her on the upcoming Disney + series) as the famous historical poet Emily Dickinson also co-starring Parsippany, NJ’s very own Jane Krakowski as her constantly obnoxious overbearing mother. Creator Alana Smith has Dickinson taking place during Emily Dickinson‘s era, but speaks and acts with a modern sensibility and tone. So during a celebration scene, you might be witness to a little rap dancing here and there or some episodes they’ll go all bloated Hamilton on you. Servant, on the other hand is a dark gothic surrealist half hour horror series that gets you jumping out of your Covid 19 comfy coach. Six Feet Under‘s Lauren Ambrose heads the cast as a out of sorts television reporter who’s suffered a great deal of loss of losing her child and is so traumatic by that loss that she believes that her baby still lives in a form of a plastic doll and even goes out of the way to hire a nanny to watch over it while she’s at work. Co-stars Toby Kebbell as her television chef husband and Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint are there to simply play along with the ruse until events gets dangerously out of hand. The major selling point for me to faithfully follow along is that the series is produced by M. Night Shyamalan.
As far as I’m concerned, one the of weakest streamers is NBC’s Peacock and I’m deeply regretful that I led the charge in petitioning to get Peacock added to Roku, little knowing that they hardly have anything worth watching for me other than a Dreamworks animated series based on the Cleopatra in Space graphic novels. I originally felt left out when the platform debuted last summer and I was mad as shit that I was going to be clipped out of the new science fiction series based on the classic Aldous Huxley novel, Brave New World that was partly developed by The Invisibles creator, Grant Morrison. Well, I ended being severely disappointed by the result and eventally it got canceled after only nine episodes. Now there’s hardly anything to watch other than some imported British mystery series such as The Capture and Departure. Both series come across as intriguting, but they’re only that. Christopher Pummer has a co-star role in the Departure, but it’s a mystery that won’t reveal to you which actor he originally came in to replace.
What I’m really looking forward to seeing for the first time, after hearing a tremendous amount of good word of mouth through the trades is the Italian crime series, Gomorrah. The title of the show is a play on the name of the Neapolitan crime syndicate, Camorra. The 2008 film of the same name is loosely based on the same book, but unrelated to the TV series. It’s been a huge hit in Europe and finally, all four seasons is available on a US streaming platform, such as HBO Max. Apparently Gomorrah fever is sweeping the U.S. Before the 3rd season can officially debut on HBO Max, Gomorrah co-star Salvatore Esposito has already an landed American role as a imported Italian mobster seen on the fourth season of Fargo.
Update: I ended up watching only ten minutes of the fourth episode of Departure, once I found out that Apple TV+ had debuted a new Israeli series called Losing Alice. It’s a psychological thriller about a 48-year-old film director, Alice, whose career has slowed down while raising her three daughters, until she meets a young screenwriter, Sophie, who she quickly becomes obsessed with. I recognize the lead actress Ayelet Zurer from her many appearances on Netflix Marvel’s Daredevil as Vanessa Fisk. Other than the quirky hotel room suicide opening scene that maps out the course of the series, it was rather a slow burn, strictly relying on the setting up of lead characters.
Tuesdays is my Criterion Library nights.
This was the movie I chose to watch and to share with a small group of mostly Los Angeles area friends on facebook that used to utilize my employer’s state of the art movie theater for arranged free screenings before the pandemic became such a rageoholic and forced it to shut down.
I start off with this little reminscene in a facebook post and then add in wikipedia fed facts and spec information about the time of the film’s release. It’s the most fun I have on facebook writing these little time capsules pertaining to these films and the twenty-five people or so who have previously embarked with me on these screenings get as much a kick out of them as much as I do.
So here’s what I posted on facebook on the 1963 release, The Great Escape:
Did you ever see one of those movies as a kid that immediately after you finish watching it that you have to call up a group of your friends and ask them ‘hey, you want to come out and play army?’ Well, that was what it was like growing up as a tyke attending Northvail School out in Parsippany, NJ when you would come home after school and you would switch the television on to WABC Channel 7 out in New York and watch The Great Escape on the 4:30 Afternoon Movie. The Great Escape would be one of the films on a regular rotation, always split across 2 days. I remember seeing other classics such as “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” or “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte” both starring Bette Davis, both Beatles movies “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!” and the John Lennon solo starrer “How I Won The War” through that same chopped up syndicated package- but with “The Great Escape” you realize, THAT’s the one you need to go act out and get your sugar rush adrenaline on and knock a few heads around on top of the hill that was sandwiched inbetween two apartments complexes (Vail Gardens and Lakeside Apartments) that I spent the majority of my childhood in, because you know – Steve McQueen was the shit back when I was growing up. So, usually after school, I would meet up with my elementary school best friends Martin Nielsen, David Puskar, David Ben-Shimer, and Todd Glickson and would just go up that hill and knock each other around like a bunch of Chips Ahoy or Charlie Chips doped up crazies usually dolled up in camoflague fatigues and carrying around toy machine guns each pretending we were Captain Virgil Hilts, Combat Kelly or Sgt. Fury (sometimes we would switch over to playing Planet of The Apes during the television craze) and just go nuts hiding out in blackberry bushes and forest trees ambushing each other on sand hills and tackling and tumbling down the same downward hill that we would later utilize as the same hill that we would all go sledding down during our snow days off from school. We had pretty much the perfect play ground for a bunch of kids who couldn’t afford to live in multi-bedroom houses like the majority of the kids that we went to school with. And I’m pretty sure that after we finished, we must have made the stockholders of Tide Laundry Detergent very *ahem* tidy sums due to all the dirt we tracked in our apartmentsThe only difference between watching The Great Escape and re-enacting the film outside for playdates is that we didn’t pause for any commerical breaks.So with those pleasant days of yesteryears behind us, here I will be watching this entire nearly three hour opus for the first time in my entire life – WITHOUT commercial interruption.And you couldn’t ask for a better cast to admire: Death Wish’s Charles Bronson, The Man From U.N.C.L.E’s David McCallum (who once rented a house in Parsippany to work on a theater gig at the Paper Mill Playhouse), The Rockford Files’ James Garner, evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld Donald Pleasence and McQueen himself is just a smattering of the all star cast and already were household names to me as a kid in grade school.
Then I cap the evening off with classic episodes of Star Trek and Mission Impossible.
Wednesdays is Hulu night – with commericals (unfortunately).
8:00 PM Future Man – I’m not big on comedies, even the ones bordering on science fiction themes, but I merely flip through these Seth Rogan produced episodes to just to see the location shots of areas around near where I work that are utilized throughout the show such as Cantor’s Deli and Farmer’s Market. In fact, I remember quite vividly Fairfax Avenue being closed and my bus being re-routed due to production of the pilot episode.
8:30 PM A Teacher. – As of posting today, The FX Network in collaboration with Hulu in producing original content such as Mrs. America and the Alexander Garland science fiction mini-series, Devs; have officially declared the Kate Mara starring sexual charged mini-series A Teacher to be their highest watched program ever. Hey, any series that depicts seeing Kate Mara getting munched on – EVEN if it’s by co-star Kevin Spacey, is worth tuning into.
9:00 PM Wu-Tang: An American Saga – usually any avid snobbish progressive rock fan will turn their noses upward at the mere mention of any rap band, but for the sheer heck of it, I sampled the first episode and ended up kind of liking it. It has that similar simmering flavor of urban savior faire that used to entrall me with from shows such as The Wire or The Chi. It’s nice to see The Sopranos’s Vincent Pastore take a active role in work again, even if it’s only a supporting role.
10:00 PM Fosse/Vernon – One of Hulu’s biggest perks ever since Disney bought out Fox is throwing up all of FX’s Network entire catalog up on the service. Every FX tv show you could ever think of is now easily accessible with the touch of a remote going way back to the early primitive runs of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Shield, or Rescue Me. Even the cancelled ones such as Bastard Executioner, Tyrant, or Terriers can live on in cancelled culture infinity on Hulu – at no extra charge.
So as I was flipping through the list of content – I had totally forgotten about the very last industry event I was invited to attend, pre-pandemic. Perks of being employed in the entertainment industry is having carte blance in going out to smooze with some of the stars, producers, writers, directors; etc;etc. Deadline: Hollywood sent me an invite to go down to 20th Century Fox Studios and check their Emmy Contender presentation of the Fosse/Verdon mini-series.
So I got to check out a riveting Q & A with lead actors Michelle Williams and Sam Rockwell that was moderated by Deadline Hollywood film reviewer Peter Hammond, but later I went outside to a free catered buffet and was dismayed to find out that all the cupcakes were already devoured by all the locusts by the time I got on line. It was great to wander around my favorite all time movie studio again where I was briefly employed during 2006 for a short stint at Fox Sports.
I think they may screened the 8th and final episode, so Hulu is here once more for me in giving me a chance to catch up on what I missed.
11:00 PM Star Trek & 12:00 Mission: Impossible. Despite the demise of DC Universe, with practually all their video content being absorbed by HBO Max, I was clipped out of stream finishing the final 6 episodes of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures on weeknights. After that, I realize I would’ve exhausted the entire library of video content altogether – so in order to endulge in my television watching roots on a nightly basis – I settled on resuscitating my taste for nostalgia by utilizing my newly acquired subscription to CBS All Access for something other than The Stand mini-series.
So I chose Star Trek for the sole reason that I’ve been meaning to buy all the blu ray season sets that has each episode digitally remastered, with added 5.1 sound remix and digitally reshot title sequences and exterior shots of Klingon vessels at war with the Enterprise and alien new worlds all redesigned. So I figure I’d save a few sheckels and watch them on this service.
I wasn’t entirely a big fan of Mission: Impossible as a kid, but I do remember certain episodes like the one where the IMF team had a capture a tough nut foreign diplomat that hidden away some codes to access some nuclear weapons that are merely days ready to launch and the only way to crack him was to torture him in a prision cell. Once the dude finally cracked and was drugged, he found himself waking up in a movie studio set design to specifically resemble a prison cell as the IMF were long off on their way to dismantle the nuclear codes.
So on Thurdays:
Thursday are more contemporary and current movies in a 4K format. Got to feed the blu ray player beast , you know.
Friday – life is nothing but a stream. Usually reserved for small COVID – 19 coach gatherings.
People like to watch things in groups and I’m no exception, so sometimes on Friday, I’m joined by the Zullo clan to check out the latest the Marvel or Star Wars universe related episode.
While they’re settling down with their carne asada burritos and after they have smoked all the blueberry kush that’s ever been in existence, I’ll usually check out a episode of the HBO anthology series Room 104 as a warm up exercise since most of the shows I watch on Friday evening are of a sci-fi or escapist nature. Roughly @ 6:30PM we’ll then commence with the latest episode of Wandavision – and then delve into the few ebbing episodes left of The Stand on CBS All Access.
Friends and family usually say that it’s mandatory viewing to view a Marvel show with me – since I’m only one around who’s very well versed in Marvel lore. Like last week, when the Scarlet Witch gave birth to twins, it was only I who knew that one of the twins that Viz and Wanda named Billy grows up to be a male sorcerer himself called Wiccan, who had a supporting role in the recently cancelled Strikeforce comic book series (he’ll be turning up again as a upcoming member of the new Guardians of The Galaxy) and that the black woman who got ousted and cast out of Marvel’s version of Pleasantville) as one of Viz & Wanda’s snooping neighbors is secretly none other than the second female Captain Marvel who currently goes by the name of Spectrum. The hark back to family sitcoms throughout the ages is a nice touch and under its’ veneer, it seems as if I’m the only one in the room that knows what the heck is going on behind the scenes. And that’s a wonderful feeling.
Despite having a rotten experience having to sign up with CBS All Access around five years ago in order to watch the first season of Supergirl due to my cable having shut off, I got shanghaied in subscribing again due to the Zullo brothers insistence of not wanting to miss out on the remake of Stephen King’s The Stand and it didn’t take me long to comply with that request once I heard that King himself was going to be rewriting the ending specfically for this mini-series event. As of tonight, I have only two episodes to go in order to reach that much anticipated series finale. I have to admit, I like seeing the compassion in debating these episodes, since it’s sort of following the original best selling novel almost by verbatim, even as the producers take liberties in shuffling the order of the series of events that take place. Some of the actors are better and some are not as compared to the original 1980’s mini-series. I certainly think that Brad William Henke does a more realistic portrayal of Tom Cullen than Bill Fagerbakke ever did in the eighties. Owen Teague who first exploded on the scene with the Emmy winning Netflix series Bloodline is just over the top brilliant in his bombastic portrayal of Harold Lauder, so brilliant that it’s also equally Emmy worthy. On the other hand James Marsden and Odessa Young are no certainly Stu Redman and Frannie Goldsmith like Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald were before and I’m sorry if this stings: but Whoppi Goldberg can’t even hold a candle to the legendary Ruby Dee. She just plain sucks. In fact, I don’t consider Whoopi as an viable actress anymore since most of her time is spent being a yenta on The View. When the series does fatally conclude, then I’ll make my determination of to at least flip a coin to decide who is the most devious Randall Flagg: Jamey Sheridan or Alexander Skarsgard – because I can barely tell the two apart.
Fridays – I don’t pause for anything since the length of most Netflix, Amazon, CBS All Access shows that I gorge on fluctuate from anywhere between 37 minutes to little over an hour. I had my young niece over to watch the first episode of the final batch of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina episodes , but got all uppity when I refused to watch the 2nd one – not really subscribing to my ‘savior the next episode for next week rule’ and went to finish off the rest of the season on her own at her house (I’m certain we’ll both equally miss seeing the lovely infectious Kiernan Shipka on a weekly basis and wish her luck in all her future endeavors). I suppose you can compare my anti-bingeing stance to that of a crazed demented anti-vaxxer that you see frothing at the mouth that barracades your path at the entrance of Dodger Stadium from trying to get a COVID shot.
Whatever premiere showcase that’s on HBO Max and The penultimate 5th season of The Expanse – easily the best ever written Science fiction show since Babylon 5 – is what caps my Friday night off before hitting the wine cellar and delving into whatever prog CD comes delivered to my house that week.
So I hope I made that little ‘quickie’ last a bit longer for you than I initially intended – and be back in a couple of week’s for another covid edition of Cary Coatney‘s Cartoon ala Carte.
PPGuru 