Do you reember the one-hit wonder group called The Five Man Electrical Band?

They had only one hit that I can recall, “Signs”, released ~1971:

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery
Breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that
Can’t you read the sign?

I thought of this song as I have been building out a new photo gallery – Signs of the Time.

In other words, Signs in the Time of Coronavirus.

Stores, libraries, parks (parks!) closed until further notice.

Various venues listing limited hours.

Restaurants doing take-out only, and usually for limited hours.

Retail outlets posting rules about in-store population density, accepting no returns, and often offering hours dedicated to the elderly (the most susceptible to respitory illnesses, like coronavisurs).

Many signs have a “Stay Safe/Stay Home” message (often churches).

These are all good messages for a good reason: To flatten the curve and save as many lives as possible, we need a concerted effort to stay home and reduce to a bare minimum anything close to human contact. While this will not solve the problem, to not take these painful but necessary steps would be foolish and inhumane. To greatly simplify, these social distancing measures are to help delay a rapid spread of this disease – for which there is currently no cure or vaccine. By keeping the disease from spiking, this allows hospitals to treat those afflicted with COVID-19 – or a heart attack – in a less rushed, better-supplied manner. This will lenghten the infection period, but this is balanced by better care for those adversely affected.

But it’s kinda a bummer. Both because we are (were) living in an age of instant gratification (“Let’s go out for Thai!”; “Let’s pick up a [book/movie/faucet]!”), and because the reason for the self-isolation/shelter in place is so serious and unlike anything the US has seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918 (and that kind of stayed below the radar due to the heart-wrenching death toll of World War I).

Which is why I spent the time capturing a handful (and will continue) of such signs. These are the reality of today, and – hopefully – they will just be a snapshot of this period tomorrow. A remember when? gallery.

It was inevitable: The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of unrequited love. [first lines]

There is a Chinese proverb/curse that goes something like the following:

May you live in interesting times.

Well, in many ways the last 20 years have been, in the USA, quite interesting.

There is the good, primarily the rise of the internet (which took off a few year before the 20-years back window) and the rise of personal devices, which goes back to the 2007 launch of Apple’s iPhone, which led to a torrent of other (mostly) good – and interesting – things: apps, remote work (as I’m doing today!), entirely new disruptive industries that would be difficult to conceive before the rise of devices: Uber, Lyft, DoorDash to name but a few.

But thre has been a lot of bad, including the following:

• Hanging Chads – Yes, the 2002 elections, which came down to Florida, a recount and determination of “valid” votes (and for whom) that was ultimately decided for George W. Bush (over Al Gore) by the Supreme Court. Like the decision or not, one branch of government (Judicial) deciding who is in charge of another branch (the Executive) – instead of the people – is a troubling precedent.
• 9/11, 2001 – Probably the darkest day in our history. Sophisticated – yet unbelievably low-tech – and simultaneous attacks on our mainland killed more that 3,000 and forever changed the way we, and the rest of the world, traveled. And to some degree, changed (for the worse) how we view other countries or other citizens who are “not like us.” Who is “not like us” changes with the situation and whomever is making the determination. Not pretty. The attacks/American’s response have thrown us into a perpetual War on Terror in which we are still mired. Also exceedingly unpretty (sic).
• Hurricane Katrina – I’ve only been to New Orleans once, but watching the terrible devastation to the city and entire Gulf area was difficult to see. Watching and reading about the bungled response to this tragedy was infuriating. If we had not been up to our necks in Middle East wars (“never change horses midstream”), I don’t think Bush II would have been re-elected, but…
• The Middle East wars – SIGH. The US’ first major response to the 9/11 attacks was to go into northern Afghanistan – with the Afghan government’s approval – and try to root out the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and any potential new threats. An accurate and justified response. But then the White House took its eye off the ball and decided that, somehow, Iraq was involved (it wasn’t). Troops poured into Iraq, “shock and awe” was deployed, and the efforts in Afghanistan were shifted to Iraq, which didn’t help the efforts in either country. Basically, America was lied to by the government. The country, just beginning to get over the corruption of Watergate 30 years earlier, was again reminded that with great power comes…the potential for great abuse.
• The Market Crash of 2008 – Remember bundled derivatives? Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs)? Remember how the near-collapse of the banking industry (bailed out by Bush II) was the start of the dominoes that led to an auto-industry bailout and stimulus package (the later two under Obama)? Remember how these government interventions helped prevent precarious times from turning into a depression? Sure you do. Have we – especially the financial industry – learned the lessons of 2008? Nah.
• Hurricane Sandy (upper Atlantic states) and Hurricane Maria (that crippled Puerto Rico) – The first was devastating for no other reason that it hit very densely populated areas: New Jersey was especially hard hit, and the tunnels connecting New York with New Jersey compounded the scope of the storm’s effects. FEMA (under Obama) did a fairly good job getting food/water to affected individuals and federal funds to the states. In Puerto Rico, President Trump took a different approach, by escalating Twitter attacks on the female Mayor of San Juan (who was begging for federal help) and declaring – upon a visit to the territory – that only 14-16 deaths (official number at the time) wasn’t so bad. What a fount of empathy. The direct and indirect (road closures prevented medicine to get to patients, no running water led to disease etc.) death toll is now estimated to be at around 3,000.

All the bad things listed above have one thing in common: None really directly affect/affected me. Yes, we all have to go through enhanced security when traveling (especially flying). We all have to deal with a country which seems a little too willing, at times, to paint all Muslims as terrorists, which is disheartening.

But my house wasn’t washed away to sea, I didn’t lose a job in the Recession of 2008.

Yes, I’ve been lucky.

But now, with the rise of the coroonavisus, I am directly impacted.

There is a shelter-in-place decree from Governor Pritzker, which lays out the following:

• Don’t go to work if you can go work from home.
• Only essential stores/businesses are to be open: Health care, pharmacies, grocery stores, gas stations and so on (my eye doctor is closed; emergencies only).
• Keep any and all gatherings to a minimum – 10 persons or less. Better yet, just skip any events for the next couple of weeks.
• Restaurants and bars are take-out only (I wonder if my Starbucks will be open – last week they were open to “grab and go” [their term], but I’ll bet they are closed for the next couple of weeks. Few customers.)
• We have a small office staff, and we are rotating so only one person is in each day (we rotate). Otherwise, work from home (we were already set up for this; Romy’s company had to scramble).
• People are panicking; buying dozen of rolls of toilet paper at a time

Now, for a lot of people this – altogether – is a pain in the ass.

Agreed.

But it’s for the best reasons: Let’s keep the impacts – economic & heath (sickness and death) – to a minimum. For a disease with no cure nor vaccine, keeping as few people infected/infectious is the only way to keep our health care system from melting down – look at Italy. Shelter-in-place rules don’t cure. anything, but they do slow the rate of infection. That allows us to test for those who may be sick and give quality care to those who are infected.

And it’s temporary (hopefully – it could be like the flu with a new flavor [COVID-45!] every X months/years).

Fortunately – for me – the impact on me is less than on others, simply because I’m so boring.

My reading/watching TV at home is not interrupted.

My going out to eat infrequently isn’t impacted like those who eat out a few times a week.

We rarely go to plays/concerts and other such events that are now on hold due to crowd size.

Finally, the bright side of being boring!

Final Note:

I an not in any way making light of the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic – it’s devastating for our world’s economies, social fabrics and overall well being. And it’s going to take some time to recover from this event. Maybe, like 9/11, it will change some things (what?) forever, even in a subtle manner. But in the meantime, there is going to be a lot of confusion, physical and financial pain, topped with a dumpster full of political rhetoric, some helpful, the vast majority missing the point (helping people, not your re-election campaign or the donor class).

I’m just noting that of the bad events of the last 20 years, I’ve pretty much been an observer, not a participant. With the coronavirus, I’m directly in the line of fire, but thus far have only been grazed.

In other words, I’ve been lucky.

And to paraphrase Joe Biden (speaking on hot mic during the ACA announcement), coronavirus is a big fucking deal. And not in a good way.

In the past, I’ve indicated some great Amazon Prime Originals (made-for TV or movies) I’ve enjoyed. These include the tremendous BBC series Catastrophe and the uber-impressive Fleabag (Season One: brilliant/eccentric; Season Two: perfect [drops microphone] ).

And I haven’t even weighed in on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – two seasons of sheer exhilaration, and Season Three drops next week – there goes that weekend….

However, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns on Amazon Prime – there are some other shows I’ve watched that have disappointed:

• Absentia – Starring Stana Katic (of Castle fame – Detective Kate Beckett). In this show, she’s an FBI agaent who has been missing for years and declared dead in absentia. From IMDB:
  

  She disappeared. No one heard from her for six years. No one knows what happened to her, not even her [FBI agent husband]. An FBI Agent tracking a Boston serial killer vanishes, and is declared dead. Six years later, she is found in a cabin in the woods, with no memory of what happened during the time she went missing. She comes back to a husband who has remarried, and whose wife is raising her son. She will have to navigate in her new reality, and she will soon find herself implicated in a new series of murders.

  Sounds like an interesting premise – and it is. But the show is just a dud. I watched all 10 episodes of Season One (it was a slough), and even watched a couple of episodes of Season Two. Sometimes a show does a reset after a first year, jettison this or that character/story line to make it more compelling. Nope, not here. I bailed after a few S2 episodes. As I understand it, it was renewed for Season 3, because, what else is there?? Very disappointing.

• Manhattan – A period piece that documents – in fictional form but with a few real-life characters (Oppenheimer etc.) – the Manhattan Project: The secretive project to produce the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II. The cast is exceptional (a pre-Mrs. Maisel Rachel Brosnahan highlights as one of the top scientist’s wife), and the plot has enough twists to keep you mildly engaged. But I just couldn’t get through the two season (23 episodes). I wanted to see more science and character development; instead, the show focused on constantly adding/rotating characters with a firm emphasis on the secrecy – everywhere, every episode: who’s the spy? That’s valid for a show about such a secretive project, but not for me. Like when legal shows focus on office politics (who gets to be partner, will they merge with a larger firm?) I lose interest – it’s more fun to see the approaches they take when trying to defend impossible cases.

  Again, just my taste.

• Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan – Seasons 1 & 2 – I watched both seasons, one recently, and I cannot really recall anything of interest about either season. I’ve seen many the Tom Clancy movies, including The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, A Clear and Present Danger, and I’ve enjoyed them. This TV series is just kinda “meh.” John Krasinski – as Jack Ryan – is an ill fit for the role, and even Wendell Pierce – who is usually great in everything – is just going through the motions here. Other characters help make the show interesting, especially in Season Two (the Black Ops squad, Michael Kelly as a CIA station chief), but I was just never really engaged. High production value, but I put it in the “never going to watch again” bucket.
  
  Thinking about it, one of my issues with this Jack Ryan is that he’s such a departure from the books/movies – that Jack Ryan was just a CIA intelligence Analyst who finds himself in situations where he has to be the hero, thwart the bad guys. This Jack Ryan is more Jack Bauer (from 24): No desk for him, actively seeking out the bad guys and is perpetually locked and loaded.

I think that is all the Amazon Prime Original Videos I’ve watched, so three good and three not-so-good. Not a bad percentage, especially considering the good was so good, and even the bad – in the case of Jack Ryan – was at least mildly entertaining.

Robert Frank died September 9, 2019 at 94.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, the photographer emigrated to New York City in 1947. He quickly fell in with an influential – somewhat bohemian – crowd, including the renowned photographer Walker Evans, beat poet Allen Ginsberg (“Howl”) and abstract impressionist Willem de Kooning.

Unlike Evans, Frank was a street shooter, who would mill around the city with his Leica and just document what he saw. And unlike Frank’s European contemporary – Henri Cartier-Bresson – Frank’s emphasis was, well, more frank than Cartier-Bresson’s artsy “decisive moment” street shots.

With the help of Evans, Frank (somehow/how?) got a Guggenheim Foundation grant in 1955, and used the money to get out of NYC and see – and photograph – other parts of the US.

While Frank’s photographs are never political in nature – he’s just observing – the segregation in the South troubled Frank. Frank and his family were Jewish, and his father lost his German citizenship due to his religion when the Nazis came into power. So – while safe in Switzerland during the war – Frank understood institutionalized racism. Many American critics saw his photographs as accusations, and – while in a way some were – it was just Frank showing us what he saw. See the cover photo – a trolley in New Orleans: Whites in the front, blacks in the back. Frank didn’t stage the shot. He just shot what he saw.

The photos he took during this period resulted in a book that is part of the photographic canon: The Americans. An unflinching look at American – through the eyes of an immigrant – the book struck a chord with many (often in a negative way), and influenced an entire generation of photographers, including Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander.

The Americans, published in the US in 1959, is also noteable for its introduction, written by the patron saint of the Beats, Jack Kerouac. It’s a weird pairing, but it works (Note – errors in the original):

Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see? Anybody dont like potry go home see Television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.

Frank was also a fashion photographer and worked with the Rolling Stones on various projects, but his legacy is The Americans.

OK, one of the best books I’ve read recently. Here’s the review of it that I wrote back in 2016:

This non-fiction book – released in 2016 – is the memoir of Jahren’s life as a woman scientist.

But it’s so much more – it’s about her upbringing, education, her battles with depression and misogyny.

It’s also about plants – written with passion and clarity. You’ll never look at a seed the same way again; ditto for trees.

And it’s also about her long, platonic relationship with her, well, “work husband,” a strange but compelling character called Bill. She writes of him with empathy, affection, and an almost maternal love.

If you like botany, or even if you just like science, give it a spin. Hell, if you just enjoy a well-written book, this is just that. Pick up the book at a store or the library, and if the forward impresses, you’ll like the rest.

And now, President Obama has selected this book as part of his 2019 Summer Reading List (it’s a Facebook post, so I won’t link to it).

He’s what he had to say about the book:

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren is a beautifully written memoir about the life of a woman in science, a brilliant friendship, and the profundity of trees. Terrific.

I hope Obama’s endorsement gets more people to read a book that’s well worth reading for many reasons: The clean prose, the science, the love of science, and the vagaries of friendship, romantic entanglements and the rest of the human experience.

Again, read the the book’s forward – if you enjoy, the rest of the book will be a winner.

Highly recommended.

Three years ago, Amazon purchased the rights to the BBC comedic TV series “Fleabag.”

Based on her one-woman show, Phoebe Waller-Bridge brings her joke-shotgunning, eclectic, eccentric (and decidedly British) tale to television.

IMDB describes the show as the following:

A comedy series adapted from the award-winning play about a young woman trying to cope with life in London whilst coming to terms with a recent tragedy.

This is accurate, but there is so much more. And on May 17, 2019 – three years after the first season, the second and final season of “Fleabag” dropped. I had heard a lot of good things about “Fleabag” when it first came out; the reviews for the second season were basically saying the new season out-Fleabagged the outstanding first season.

Time to binge.

Each season has only six episodes of approximately 25 minutes each: I watched Season One last Saturday, Season Two the next day.

Six hours of incredible genius, brilliant writing, pathos and (overwhelmingly) oh-so-sly and did she really do that? humor.

We are introduced to Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (listed in the credits as her character’s name, not that it – or any other name – is ever uttered in reference to her) as a damaged woman, trying to get past some grief with random, manic sexual hookups and generally odd behavior. The reasons for her grief are soon shown – the early death of her mother (never seen) and grief and guilt over the death of her closest friend, Boo, whom she has opened a cafe with (and whom we only see in flashbacks throughout the series).

Fleabag is not the only character that really isn’t named. Her father is Dad, her wicked Godmother (Olivia Colman, relishing every one of her evil utterances), and – in Season Two – a Catholic priest is just Priest (“What has gotten into your Priest,” instead of “What has gotten into Father O’Brian”). There’s also Arsehole Guy, Bus Rodent, Bank Manager and Hot Misogynist. Names are not needed; the characters just help fill Fleabag’s void.

In a touch of theater – this does all come out of Waller-Bridge’s play – Fleabag frequently breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses us, the audience. This happens more in the early episodes of Season One, where it’s often used as a set-up device (short episodes, so a direct comment to us about what a sleaze her brother-in-law is quickly gets us up to speed). This is a staple of the show, however, and actually how Fleabag wraps up – she walks away from the camera and at some distance away turns slightly back toward us and waves good-bye. Yes she – and the show – are (sadly) forever leaving us.

At bottom, this is a series – an utterly dense, bonkers series – about friendship, love and loss, mainly centered around Fleabag, her sister (Claire – a name!) her Dad and Godmother. In Season Two, the show ups the ante, and Fleabag fall in lust, and then love, for the very unorthodox Priest (often referred to “the hot priest”), who shares the same feelings – and no good can come of this.

I don’t know what to compare this to – the closest I can come is the British/American show “Catastrophe,” which also takes place in London. Different stories (“Catastrophe” is more about how to survive marriage and parenting), but both are brutally honest about real-world truths (Claire to Fleabag: “I’m not your friend; I’m your sister. Find your own friends.”), both are verbally profane and unafraid to show sexual activity, and both come at their issues from a different direction from what an American comedy might take.

“Catastrophe” – Whenever the American husband (Rob Delaney) gets a call from his wife (Sharon Horgan, met through an extended business-trip hookup), the caller ID is “Sharon London Sex” – they didn’t even know each other’s last names until he came back to London (Norris and Morris, respectively).

“Fleabag” – The Second Season premier (after “previously on ‘Fleabag'”) has Fleabag in a non-residential bathroom in an elegant black dress, attending to her bloody nose. Someone unknown knocks on the door and says, “They’re all gone; are you alright?” She says she’s fine, and then hands the paper towels she’s been using to an unknown woman kneeling on the floor, also with a bloody nose. What’s going on?

I’m glad I waited until the Second Season dropped to watch; that way I didn’t have to wait three years for the next. I did the same for “Catastrophe” (four seasons of six half-hour episodes), and that worked out well, for the same reason.

Waller-Bridge is in high demand these days – she was a writer on Season One of “Killing Eve,” is writing for the new Bond movie, and voiced a droid in Solo: A Star Wars Story. I hope she makes time for other small projects like “Fleabag,” because it is one of the biggest things I’ve watched in some time.

Beginning with a preliminary planning trip in 2012 and ending with a cross-country flight in 2017, Jim (James) and Deb (Deborah) Fallows spent more than four years crisscrossing the United States, trying to take the pulse of the country.

The husband and wife team are both highly respected journalists/writers, and are veteran travelers. In all, their inspection of American took them on a 100,000 mile journey. Three items make their travels different than you might expect:

• They flew: Jim Fellows is an experienced pilot, and they flew their two-seater Cirrus from coast to coast for all those trips.
• The focused on community: Even through the madness of the 2014 midterms and the crazy election of 2016 might tempt a journalist to pry about national news, the Fallows’ focus was on “How is your community doing today?” and not “Should Hillary be locked up/Is Trump even qualified?”
• They emphasized the so-called fly-over states: Presidential elections have candidates focused on the population-rich East and West Coasts, with visits to large cities in swing state. Small town visits are mainly for show, to get the “man of the people” photo op or to highlight a small-town virtue that aligns with the candidate’s platform (Wind power! Business with in-company day care! Small manufacturing making a difference!). The Fallows stuck to small towns in often out-of-the-way places: Ajo, AZ – right near the Mexican border and adjacent to an Indian reservation; three worlds in the middle of nowhere; Eastport, ME – right across the Bay of Fundy from Nova Scotia and next to New Brunswick; Dodge City, KS – a historic town smack in the middle of the country. The largest city they visited was Columbus, OH (raise your hand if you knew it was the 14th most populous city in the US. Didn’t think so…).

In all cities, the Fallows gave an overview of where the city had been, and then spoke with civic leaders, local influencers and business people to find out where the city was today and where it was headed (up? down? steady?).

The remarkable subtext of the book, to me, is how virtually every city viewed their city, at the very least, as on the way up – they were moving the right direction, even if the break from the past had been difficult (think of one-factory towns when that monolithic factory closes). One hears over and over on the news and reads in articles that America is at a tipping point where one wrong move will push us over a cliff; these cities, overall, felt very optimistic. They had plans for today and the future.

Some set-in-concrete “truisms” that didn’t really appear in this book are the constant wailing over political gridlock, fears of immigrants and how both major political parties are unwilling to step outside their circle of core beliefs to accomplish what is desperately needed.

While I’m sure these and other truisms do affect the towns the Fallows visited to some degree, the opposite was the big story: Business and government worked together, most towns thought immigration was not just a reality but something encourage and embrace. Deb Fallows usually visited the schools and other community facilities, and the stories of immigrants and their families – and their role in the civic fabric – are some of the most though-provoking parts of the book.

And take the very red (Republican) city in a very red state: Dodge City, KS. The lore is that virtually zero Republicans in Washington, DC will ever vote to raise any tax for whatever reason. In Dodge City, they decided they needed a modest sales tax that would go directly to city infrastructure and schools’ needs. So they put it up for a vote.

It passed easily. It even had the support of the downtown businesses, which probably had the most to lose.

The book was a bit long – approximately 400 pages – and, by the end, it was tough to keep the cities straight (“…unlike in Greenville, SC…” Which one was that?), but a pleasant and informative read.

The book ends with a summary of what the Fallows learned about what makes a town succeed – I won’t give many spoilers, but some of the success indicators involve bike paths and brew pubs.

This is your America.

I watched Amazon Prime’s Catastrophe this past weekend.

I had heard about the show over the years, but it just seemed to pop up a lot by the end of last week (turns out the fourth and final season dropped on Friday, March 15).

The basic premise for the show flips the rom-com script on its head. The typical rom-com keeps the characters apart for as long as possible for whatever reasons, before they realize that they love each other and can’t live without the other blah blah.

Here, Rob (Rob Delany) plays an American advertising exec who goes to London for a sales conference. He meets and has a one-week stand with Sharon (Sharon Horgan), an Irish-born elementary school teacher living in London. They part on good terms, but then – 32 days later – Rob gets a call from Sharon, who tells him she’s pregnant.

Rob flies to London, and they try to figure out what to do next.

And this is in like the first 15 minutes of the show.

The series – while much more – is about marriage and children, so that’s nothing I can personally identify with. (Note – the kids are largely seen but not heard, or just mentioned in the context of how having kids affects the adults. No “kids say the dardest things..”)

I almost passed on watching it, until I looked up the show’s episode guide: Four seasons, six episodes each, each episode under 30 minutes,

So I thought that I could give it a shot; could always bail if it wasn’t for me.

Watched about 10 hours on Saturday and finished on Sunday.

The last episode (no spoilers) – a funny, heartfelt half-hour – kind of spelled out, as Rob and Sharon are talking at the very end, what the entire four seasons were about: Hey, life – work, kids, spouses, relatives, friends – is a lot of work and stress. And one way to approach all of this overwhelming life is to do it with someone who’s always got your back (Rob & Sharon), and to just take it one day at a time. Plans are great, but just get through the day.

Delany and Horgan (both use their real first names as character names) wrote the entire show together, and it is tight. Dialogues just work: passive-aggressive parrying gives way to laughter, profane truths are acknowledged.

Nothing is off-limits: For a relatively short run (12 hours total), this show tackles a vast range of issues. Cancer, loss of family, alcoholism, infidelity, work realities, strange friends and family.

And while there is a lot of sex in the show, there’s not a lot of talk about sex – just as in real life, people just do it when they both want to.

The supporting cast is exemplary – both rock-solid and bizarre. The evolution of their close friends and family over the series is almost as interesting as the main characters’ change over the same period. This is decidedly different from most sitcoms, where the whiny sister or horn-dog cousin supporting characters never really change.

And anyone reviewing this show is legally required to note the brilliant eccentricity Carrie Fisher, as Rob’s mom, brings to her role. Fisher died between the thrid and fourth season, and the show deals with this in an extremely touching, yet hilarious way.

At the end of the day, this is all about Delaney and Horgan: Their on-screne relationship and the brilliant, coming at issues sideways dialogue for all characters, but particularly for Rob and Sharon when they are alone together.

One thing that stood out for me was the way, like in the sitcom Mad About You, each of the two main characters could be the idiot or the voice of reason. A lot of shows – especially sitcoms – lock characters into a certain role, much like they do with supporting characters (see above).

All in all, this is a great series – and I’m glad I discovered it at this time, when I didn’t have to wait a year for the next six episodes.

I came, I watched, I liked.

But sad to see it go.

It’s cold outside right now (12° up from -6° earlier today), but look at the forecast for Wednesday.

This is Vladivostok cold; battery-freezing cold.

Yikes.

TV ornament from Jade – a former co-worker

As just about every TV reviewer has noted at some point in the past few years, this is “peak TV” or “TV’s Golden Age” (or something similar).

Riding on the rising tide of cable with non-network offerings such as HBO and Showtime, the amount of quality television has accelerated with the streaming services – Netflix, Amazon Prime, HULU, CBS Direct – offering original content of their own. And more often than not, this original content actually is original – not another Law and Order knockoff or a stale sitcom. Think Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Veep (The West Wing is what [liberals] want politics to be like; Veep is probably closer to reality. *shudder*).

Over the past few weeks, I read many “best of 2018” articles (books, movies, TV etc.), and one thing most TV critics had in common was a list of shows they hadn’t kept up with (season 7 of a long running show) or just hadn’t around to even starting (usually for a show in it’s first or second season). In most cases, the shows listed could be seen on other reviewers’ Top 10 lists – TV shows are so expansive yet impressive that those who get paid to watch TV couldn’t get around to watching highly regarded shows.

Says something.

Now, I like binging on TV shows – I have a lot of DVD seasons and I currently stream off Amazon Prime. And our library, Mount Prospect, IL, has a pretty good collection of DVDs to rent, both movies and TV shows (I burned through all of Boston Legal from library rentals a year or so ago).

Over this period, I have watched some magnificent TV – Mad Men, The Americans (I still haven’t finished this), and the afore-mentioned Veep.

However, I wan to focus on a few shows that I keep coming back to, watching over and over. For the most part they are just “OK” fare, and I could see someone not liking them.

In no particular order:

• Friends – Yes, lightweight but so popular. Some seasons/show arcs are better than others, but good clean fun. Hey, Netflix just ponied up $100 million to keep it for another year; it’s not just me watching…
• Monk – Tony Shaloub as an obsessive compulsive brilliant former San Francisco detective. There is an arc to the show – the one case he cannot solve is who killed his journalist wife – but each show is self-contained with a Colombo-like ending: “Here’s what happened…” Good cast of characters surround him that play (mainly) straight to his neurotic self, yet have quirks of their own. No life lessons or great art; just crime solving with brains instead of guns.
• White Collar – Premise: Master forger/thief/con man is let out of jail (on an ankle tracker) to help FBI find and arrest criminals…like him. Some good supporting characters, especially Mozzie (Willie Garson), and – like Monk – just fun, intellectual crime-solving. Downside: There’s some really bad acting in this show, in my opinion.
• Covert Affairs – Premise: Sexy (Piper Perabo; not really my type) Army brat who has great language skills joins the CIA in DC and becomes a covert agent. Lots of spy vs. spy hi-jinks. Fun, and set (maybe not shot) in locales around the world, from Italy to Thailand to Mexico.
• Suits – Premise: Brilliant, photographic memory guy who is not a lawyer hired by hotshot lawyer to work at his firm as a lawyer – with the full knowledge that he’s a fraud. The first few seasons were the best; Meghan Markle left the show to become UK royalty, and her brainiac husband left at the same time. From what I’ve read, the show went off a cliff after that. This show is a mixed bag; I didn’t purchase it, just rented from the library. I liked the shows where there were interesting cases and how they were resolved; there was too much of an emphasis at times of office politics/mergers etc. for my taste.
• Castle – Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) is a rich and famous mystery writer (think Michael Connelly or James Patterson – both of whom appear in the show as themselves, at a periodic poker game). Stanford graduate (smart) and beautiful NYC homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) notices similarities between her crime scene and a Castle book murder and asks for his input. Castle is both smitten by Beckett and real-life crime solving, and they become partners of sorts. Some goofy supporting characters, especially the other detectives. Like Monk, there is an arc around a murder (Beckett’s lawyer mother), but it’s more clunky than interesting.
• Burn Notice – CIA spy burned and returns home (Miami, FL) where, with the help of an old girlfriend (ex-IRA gunrunner) and old friend Sam, an ex-Navy Seal, he tries to figure out who burned him. Along the way – and this is the fun part – the trio use their spy/commando skills to help regular people who were scammed, getting threatened and so on. For some reason, they fire weapons, have high-speed car chases and blow up (stuff) more often than Bobby Knight did with a near-sighted ref, yet they never get arrested. And the Burn Notice guy has a great car – and old Dodge Charger – that has been blown up, hit, had stuff crush it, shot at countless times. It should look like a pile of metal shavings. But it keeps coming back, the paint on the car glistening like polished obsidian. Hey – it’s a TV show! Sharon Gless plays the Burn Notice’s chain-smoking mom, and she is great. And gets better as the show goes on.

That’s the bulk of my favorite binges, at least the ones I can recall right now.