Doom Patrol (2019) s03e06 – 1917 Patrol

The A-plot this episode is April Bowlby in the past. We get to see her trip in the time machine, which explains how time travelers lose their memories—it’s an intense, affecting sequence with narration from Matt Bomer (I think). Or maybe guest star Micah Joe Parker. Or neither of them. Either would also make sense.

But she gets to the past and pretty quickly finds herself in the custody of the Bureau of Normalcy, where she finds some answers to the questions Michelle Gomez is asking in the future. Only Bowlby can’t remember she knows Gomez in the future and isn’t trying to get back to the future, not when she finds good friends in everyone in the past and a love interest in Parker. Of course, Bowlby and her friends are meta-humans being exploited by the bigoted Bureau (not to mention held captive), but it could be a lot worse. Especially since her friends all have good escapism powers.

It seems like the show will eventually do an intricate time travel loop with the past informing the future informing the past. Wait, it already does. Add another couple of loops. The show’s having a good time with it, but also getting in some excellent character development. And it’s nice the guest star “villains” last episode, the Sisterhood of Dada (who Bowlby finds in the past), have a thoughtful backstory.

Meanwhile, in the present, Gomez is still trying to figure out what the Sisterhood wants with her, not to mention being pissed Bowlby stole her time machine. She can’t get any help from Robotman (Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan) because he’s busy being addicted to online pay-to-play gaming and cam girls as a way of avoiding problems. The episode places a hold on Fraser and Gomez this episode—Shanahan gets more than Fraser to do in the part this episode, which doesn’t often happen–while keeping the other team members’ arcs going.

So Diane Guerrero gets the B-plot. Little kid version Skye Roberts wants to drive the body and see the world for the first time in seventy years. Guerrero encourages her, the other personalities do not. It ends up being Guerrero doing a Roberts impression, and it works well enough. If only Guerrero were as compelling playing “herself” as when she’s playing other people controlling her body. The subplot is simultaneously rushed and truncated, but it keeps the arc going.

Similarly, Matt Bomer and Joivan Wade make some progress. Bomer with his estranged, old man son John Getz (who’s absolutely fantastic), Wade as he tries to work out his whole existence. On the sliding scale of episode investment, Wade comes in just above Fraser, but it’s really good stuff. “Doom Patrol”’s doing a great job making its characters the most compelling aspect.

Particularly great acting from Bowlby, Gomez, and Bomer.

Also, Omar Madha’s direction is excellent. It’s actually an uneven episode, but the peaks are so sky-high they easily compensate.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e03 – Dead Patrol

Let’s see how well I can couch and caveat the following statement: comics-based superhero shows have an advantage doing backdoor pilots. Superheroes have been guest-starring in each others’ comics since 1940; the guest spot has been baked into the medium, whether to bolster a series’s sales with Batman, Wolverine, or Spider-Man or to gin up interest in a B or C-list superhero in hopes of spinning them off on their own (someday).

But “Doom Patrol” quickly surpasses that inherent edge here. Half the episode is about most of the team in purgatory, half the episode is about Matt Bomer and Abi Monterey enlisting the aid of The Dead Boy Detectives to get their friends back. There are two ghost detectives—Ty Tennant and Sebastian Croft—and their psychic human partner Madalyn Horcher, and they solve crimes. They’re from the Sandman comics originally, and since the “Sandman” adaptation isn’t HBO Max, it’ll be interesting to see how they address shared characters if they go to series.

It rarely feels like a backdoor pilot because everything in the narrative serves the “Doom Patrol” plot. Even when Horcher is dumping exposition on Monterey as they bond over tragedies, it’s about Monterey finally having another teenage girl for a friend. While Tennant and Croft are very dry comic relief—they’re all British, after all—Bomer also has a great bonding moment with Tennant. It’s superbly done, and fingers crossed the real pilot goes well.

Meanwhile, Brendan Fraser (and, correspondingly, Riley Shanahan), April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, and Joivan Wade are all on their way towards the literal light, with some surprises along the way. Actually, not Bowlby, who for some reason doesn’t pass out when she gets across the River Styx. She ends up with the shortest arc, while Fraser, Guerrero, and Wade get much more salient ones. Especially Guerrero—who’s in the afterlife with little kid version Skye Roberts. It’s Guerrero’s best acting on the show. Or at least the best I can remember. Not sure if it’s because she’s speaking Spanish or because she’s not flexing hostile to everyone she’s acting with.

Fraser’s arc offers some quick character development—though, significant trauma, dying and all, so it works—while Wade just discovers he still doesn’t have all the answers to his own superhero origin story. But Guerrero’s section is the most affecting. And Roberts is excellent. The show really lucked out she’s so good when speaking (her part started non-verbal).

There’s some dark humor and bizarre scenes, some more mysteries for later on, and an excellent performance from Fraser. It’s another outstanding “Patrol.”

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e02 – Vacay Patrol

In this episode, there’s a scene where Diane Guerrero and April Bowlby are sitting in some lounge chairs on a pretty lake and talking about how they’re coping with the revelations of the traumas Timothy Dalton put them through. They’re at the pretty lake because Bowlby has an extended panic attack and has reverted into mostly liquid form. She’s in a large bag, tied together, on the chair. So Bowlby’s just voice acting. She’s great.

Guerrero’s not great in that particular “Doom Patrol” way where I try to will her acting to be better. It never works, but it felt good to have that sensation back again.

The episode opens in a flashback to the forties, very nonchalantly introducing the Brain and Monsieur Mallah. No CGI required for the Brain, just a trashcan and some lights, but Monsieur Mallah (a French ape) looks excellent. They’re plotting against Dalton, and their plan involves having alien mercenary Stephen Murphy assassinate a target at a resort. He’s just supposed to go there and wait for the target to arrive.

The target’s Bowlby, and she doesn’t arrive for decades. Not until she’s stressed out from Dalton giving her added responsibilities and then the disaster of the town play. But it also takes Joivan Wade getting in trouble with dad Phil Morris for giving his girlfriend another chance instead of having her arrested for terrorism; Morris has shut down most of Wade’s superpowers. So he’s bored and willing to take Bowlby on the trip.

Guerrero only goes because her little kid version (Skye Roberts) wants her to relax and thinks a trip would do her good. It’s a very interesting scene, with lots of foreshadowing for the character development. Roberts is better than Guerrero, which is actually surprising because Roberts’s part has been really nonverbal until now on the show. And Roberts gets emphasis later on, for a particularly affecting third act sequence.

They can’t bring Matt Bomer along because he’s out in space on a field trip with his alien symbiote. Last episode, it seemed like Bomer might be leaving the show or at least taking a timeout to keep the acting budget down, but he’s got a whole subplot.

But they can convince Brendan Fraser & Riley Shanahan’s Robotman to come along. Fraser’s been visiting his daughter (Bethany Anne Lind), her wife (Walnette Marie Santiago), and their new baby. He’s very amusingly annoying the hell out of them as the doting grandad. So they’re happy to send him off on a trip.

When they get to the resort, which is desolate and apparently only still in business because Murphy’s never checked out, they quickly start bickering and arguing. Wade’s trying to overcompensate, Fraser’s pissed, Guerrero’s confused, and Bowlby’s jello. It makes for a good “Doom Patrol” with a great cliffhanger.

Murphy’s a good guest war, with Billy Boyd stealing most of the scenes as his lackey. It’s a strong episode for Fraser in particular; he’s got a lot of different kinds of scenes. And, of course, Shanahan. Lots of good movement work from Shanahan.

This show’s a treasure.

The Longest Day (1962, Ken Annakin)

The Longest Day picks up when the Normandy beach invasion starts. It happens maybe ninety minutes into the three-hour film. There are the overnight paratrooper drops, which have such dull action scenes it seems like the film will never improve, but then it turns out the large-scale battle choreography is exceptional and could potentially make up for the rest. It doesn’t, however, because Robert Mitchum turns out to be terrible once he gets more to do—he’s playing the rah-rah American general who chews on stogies—and is the one who motivates the men to get off Omaha Beach, the only unsuccessful D-Day landing point. In the film, anyway. It’s been way too long since my World War II class in undergrad. I mean, I aced the blue book, but not a-plussed it. Not that one.

Anyway.

The actual history doesn’t matter. It should because Longest Day is an exhausting exposition dump through the first hour as actor after actor churns through facts and figures, but no one ever thinks to describe the plan. Even though it’s a war movie with a mission and working a plan description into it is literally the easiest thing in the world (Longest Day is great to see how subsequent war films succeeded its narrative failings). Instead, it’s just a variety of guest stars mugging through endless dialogue. The worst performances—for the dialogue dumps—Robert Ryan and Rod Steiger. John Wayne’s not good at them either, but he’s nowhere near as bad as those two. And Steiger’s just in it for a scene. Ryan’s at least got a briefing. There really aren’t many dialogue dumps from the Germans, except maybe Richard Münch. He gets to describe the D-Day invasion before it happens because it’s what he would do if he were Eisenhower, but Eisenhower’s got no stones.

According to The Longest Day, D-Day succeeded for a handful of simple reasons. First, Eisenhower manned up and acted recklessly with the invasion location and launching in lousy weather. Second, Adolf Hitler was a silly yelly milksop who needed his nap (his generals dismiss him as a “Bohemian corporal,” though that quote is from somewhere else). Third, a bunch of the German generals were just lazy or intentionally distracted. Again, I can’t remember my D-Day history, but it seems like if you’re doing a three-hour Army recruitment commercial, you should at least make the good guys deserve to win for something other than dumb luck. Because if it is just dumb luck….

There’s a nod to the futility of war, right at the very end, with Richard Burton acting opposite Richard Beymer. Burton’s bad in the movie but not risible. Beymer’s middling in the film but never better. Get them together, however, and they’re just godawful together. Especially with the dialogue. Especially since it takes place at sunset on June 6, after the film’s skipped ahead not a few hours, but something like ten. Because ten p.m. sunset on June 6, 1944. Thanks, Google. I’d have used military time, except the movie doesn’t for the first hour, so I kept wondering how Eisenhower was going to hold a meeting at 9:30 in the morning on June 6 when the invasion boats left already.

The invasion boat arrival scene with Hans Christian Blech is one of the best, not large-scale scenes. The film’s never good with its composite shots, from the second or third scene, and you think it’ll somehow not matter because of the gravitas, but it matters every single time, especially with Mitchum, who doesn’t need any more excuses to be checked out. At least Wayne’s engaged. Wayne’s not good, not at all, but he’s engaged in the film. Mitchum is phoning it in. Eddie Albert holds up their scenes together, which is concerning.

The film’s got three credited directors, but there are at least two more uncredited contributors, and then whoever orchestrated the battle sequences, which were shot from helicopters, it looks like. Those sequences are about the only time the lousy sound effects are okay. Otherwise, Longest Day’s editing, visually and aurally, is never impressive. Some of it's obvious lack of coverage and continuity—neither Annakin nor Marton establish their battle scenes well. Wicki doesn’t get any battle scenes. Maybe the marching scene, which ends up being better than the paratrooper stuff. And then the landing. Okay, so for actual action, Wicki does best. Then whoever did the French commando scene, which has some of the film’s best-acting courtesy Georges Rivière.

Longest Day has over a hundred speaking parts. It’s got a big name American, British, French, and German movie stars. It’s got like six good performances, a whole bunch of middling ones, then a dozen terrible ones. Best performances are—in alphabetical order—Blech, Münch, Edmond O'Brien, Wolfgang Preiss, Rivière, Robert Wagner. I’m not going through the worst, but Peter Lawford and Nicholas Stuart are on the list; Stuart doesn’t even have any lines. There are a handful of senseless cameos—Steiger, O’Brien, Henry Fonda—because no one can really figure out how to write the characters. They’re just star cameos, not people, not even caricatures. Jeffrey Hunter gets a big part in the last hour, but Marton directs him poorly. Red Buttons is better than most of the other guys he’s around. Mel Ferrer’s fine in his brief appearances. Sean Connery’s dull but better than some of the other Scots, particularly Kenneth More, who seems to have been churned out by the War Office.

If Mitchum or Wayne were good, Day’d have something. Or if Beymer were good. Or Sal Mineo. Burton’s not in it enough to matter. But the direction would still be wanting. The script—only five screenwriters—is a mess. The helicopter sequences are fantastic, though. Shame it’s profoundly shallow.

Even before you get to the Paul Anka theme song.

Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s06e11 – The Final Frame

It’s a team-building episode with some big-scale wackiness—big scale—and a little romance thrown in. Plus, Jes Macallan (who also directed) and Adam Tsekhman trying on wedding dresses. The episode doesn’t spend much time on any one set of characters—they’re either paired off or grouped together—and while it’d be nicer to have more time with, say, Tala Ashe and Nick Zano, it works. Especially since the main action revolves around a round of bowling.

Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Olivia Swann, and Lisseth Chavez end up in an intergalactic bowling alley where they have to play the league champions (and possible New Gods) for the fate of the human race. Except everyone in the place appears human because alien bowling alley owner Alvin Sanders, who’s supposed to be adorable and is enough, just loves the bowling alleys of Earth and the aesthetic.

After fumbling around Sanders as a wise character for a while, he eventually gives Lotz a pep-talk, and it captures bowling well. The episode’s about minor problems with major consequences. Purcell’s mad at Chavez because she likes bowling and he doesn’t, while Swann’s a pissy tween (I really hope it’s intentional on her part because she’s great doing it) who’s never been bowling before. Lotz is a great bowler and isn’t sweating it.

On its own, it’s okay but not really enough. But with Ashe and Zano feeling the real-world repercussions of the game while on a romantic camping trip gone wrong, it gets there. Ditto Macallan and Teskhman’s dress subplot. The only lacking story is Matt Ryan and Shayan Sobhian; it’s all about Ryan doing evil magic drugs and lying to Sobhian, who’s happy to hang out with his sister’s boyfriend. If they’re played it straight, the awkward hangout, it’d have been fine. But Ryan on the evil magic juice—and only thinking of hiding it in his flask in the last fifteen minutes—it’s not great. Ryan’s not doing the bad thing well. Hopefully, he improves since it’s the only rising drama for the rest of the season; Lotz and crew were tracking down the last rogue alien, which is probably resolved thanks to the bowling thing too.

Zano and Ashe’s arc involves them trying to reconnect after their time apart—this version of Ashe, who gets the phenomenal nickname “Flannel Zari,” usually lives in a, well, kind of a genie bottle situation. It’s all going well until the next campsite over is glamping Chad and Becky (Gavin Langelo and Jenna Romanin, respectively), who provide comic relief and dramatic impetus. There’s some excellent acting from Ashe and better Zano than we’ve had all season. Though… as always, am I the only one who remembers Zano grew up immunocompromised? Did it get ret-conned away at some point, and I missed it?

Anyway. Good episode. Hopefully, the Ryan stuff works out, and Macallan’s directing debut is fine work.

Also great “Star Trek” joke.

All About Eve (1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

All About Eve is incredibly ambitious work from writer and director Mankiewicz. From the first scene, from the epic Alfred Newman score over the opening titles (which are just the standard late forties, early fifties Fox title cards), it’s clear All About Eve is going for something. But it takes over an hour to even reveal where it’s going, instead concentrating on entirely different aspects of the relatively simple plot. The film doesn’t have a tangled narrative—it’s mostly in flashback, with occasional narration (Mankiewicz’s success at toggling flashback narrators without having to break the flashback is an early stunning feat)—but it’s an extremely rare case of a twist (and directing through misdirecting regarding that twist) works out perfectly.

Most of All About Eve is a character study of top-billed Bette Davis. She’s an aging Broadway diva (forty-two playing forty), who’s in a career renaissance thanks to boyfriend director Gary Merrill and their good friends, playwright Hugh Marlowe and his wife, Celeste Holm. In some ways, Holm’s always the protagonist of the film. Mankiewicz’s centering on her—and using her to center or stabilize the film—is another of Eve’s great accomplishments. She provides a touchstone for everyone—audience included—involved.

Everything changes when Holm brings Anne Baxter into their world (specifically into Davis’s dressing room for a meet and greet). Baxter’s a devoted fan, having seen every performance of the play. She’s got a tragic backstory and a love of the theater (and, possibly, a desire for applause) and everyone feels empathy for her situation, especially Davis. Baxter’s too good for the theatrical world, so Davis gives her a job and a place to live, which encroaches on Thelma Ritter’s position. Ritter’s still unmarried Davis’s live-in best friend, who also happens to do light maid tasks and so on. Ritter’s great; she’s hilarious but able to pivot immediately to sincere. It’s too bad she doesn’t get more to do; she and Davis are wonderful together.

And Ritter’s not going to like Baxter after a little while working together, something Mankiewicz and editor Barbara McLean do a fantastic job conveying in montages. But when Ritter complains to Davis about Baxter maybe being strange, Davis doesn’t see it. Until she then does see it and she can’t stop unseeing it. Especially not after boyfriend Merrill returns from shooting a picture in Hollywood—for a film so adamant in the inhumanity of theater folk, Eve’s got an even lesser opinion of Hollywood—Davis has even more reasons to worry. Turns out Baxter’s been writing him while he’s away.

The film’s never soapy, even as various characters work out various schemes to injure or benefit other characters. There are secrets abound (and a few where it’s unclear if they’re ever revealed), but Mankiewicz keeps them appropriately compartmentalized. Davis gets her secrets, Holm gets her secrets, and so on. Baxter doesn’t get any secrets yet because Baxter’s barely in the film at this point. Once Baxter joins Davis’s entourage, it’s Davis’s picture and everyone else is just lucky enough to be in it. From scene one, in the present day bookend, it’s clear from how she picks up a glass, Davis is going to be giving an incredible performance. It eventually works out to Mankiewicz spotlighting Davis, Baxter, and Holm’s incredible performances, but he takes his time, showcasing George Sanders’s excellent turn as a theater critic.

Acting-wise, it’s not hard to do the list in order—Davis is best, then Baxter, then Holm, then Sanders, then Merrill and Ritter sharing fifth. But the gulf between Holm and Sanders is a big one. Davis, Baxter, Holm, they all get big issues to tackle, big realities, sometimes ones they don’t even get to talk about, just ones they have to experience offscreen while the other characters gossip or plot. Merrill even gets a whopper moment to handle, even though it’s someone else’s scene. And actually then someone else’s—All About Eve has a wonderful flow to its not infrequent protagonist hops. But Sanders never really gets a big scene. Not to himself. He’s a force in the film, but not an active participant, not exactly.

He’s great. But he’s not in the same tier as the female leads.

Most of Eve has Davis in the protagonist seat; it doesn’t seem possible Mankiewicz is going to be able to shift things over mid-film to Baxter. He pulls it off using Holm, leveraging her being in the seat in the first place. It’s an awesome move. Especially when he then lengths the narrative distance out in the third act, as the flashbacks end and the bookend comes back.

It’s a magnificent film. From very early on. It very quickly reaches a point it could go incredibly wrong but so long as Davis’s performance holds, it’ll be great. But then it just keeps going well and Davis just gets better and better… and then you realize you’ve still got like ninety minutes left (Eve runs two hours and twenty minutes); you sit with bated breath, waiting for Mankiewicz and company to impress.

All About Eve is awesome. Start to finish. Davis, Baxter, Holm, Mankiewicz, et al. Just awesome.

The Equalizer (2021) s01e06 – The Room Where It Happens

It’s a perfectly solid episode of The Equalizer. It might be the best? It’s certainly a lot more comfortable with itself—minus Chris Noth, who apparently won’t be on the episodes where Tory Kittles shows up and vice versa (based on last episode)—and it handles the “equalizing” a lot better.

Instead of doing the story like a procedural, the episode does it more like a heist movie. We find things out after the characters in order to surprise us as well as some of the other characters, in this case the bad guys, but also—to some degree—the good guys. The episode’s got some really bad lines—Adam Goldberg sounding out every letter of VoIP—but the script, credited to Zoe Robyn—does take the more serious issues it raises seriously.

Concerned dad Luis Antonio Ramos calls in Queen Latifah after his daughter, Rockzana Flores, starts showing signs of dangerous depression and he has reason to suspect someone threatening her. There’s a little bit of a mystery as Flores is a reluctant client, with some good procedural scenes, then there’s an undercover sequence as Liza Lapira has to get close to mayoral candidate Erinn Ruth and her fixer, David Furr.

There’s a lot of suspense, some of it because of the narrative design, some of it because of the performances. Flores and Ramos are extremely sympathetic. There’s also a good sympathetic subplot for Latifah’s daughter, Laya DeLeon Hayes, who makes some bad choices for herself and her new friend, Kaci Walfall. Hayes is very lucky to have Latifah for a mom (and guardian angel) before the episode’s through.

Kittles and Latifah get to be cute together for a scene. I’d forgotten they used to be cute together; it’s been so long since he’s been on the show, much less had anything to do. He gets a subplot involving crooked former cop Kevin Chapman, who’s also really good.

It’s certainly the most assured episode so far—directed by Stephanie A. Marquardt—but who knows how long it’ll maintain. It’s also by far Lapira and Goldberg’s best episode—pseudo-boomer tech terms aside—which helps.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—it’s pronounced Gee-kyl, incidentally, as in Fronkensteen—is a stunning disappointment. It’s difficult to know where to begin, given the film is about a scientist, Fredric March, who’s really horny for his fiancée, Rose Hobart (and she’s horny for him too), but her dad, Halliwell Hobbes, thinks March’s a no good horn-dog so he won’t let them hurry the engagement. It’s very frustrating for March, who’s working on a serum to make men less horny and more productive. For a while there’s that joke about Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire is the song your mom liked about the Boss being so horny could die but then Jekyll becomes about March holding lower class working girl Miriam Hopkins his prisoner and raping and beating her for a month while Hobart’s away.

Large portions of the film are just Hopkins in utter terror as March, in the Hyde persona, threatens her until the scenes fade out on him inflicting pain on her while terrorizing her. March plays Hyde in makeup to make him look more savage, like a caveman. Only we’re going to find out the only savage thing about March as Hyde is his lack of empathy, which cave people had obviously. And then we find out… March the “good guy” is well aware of his bad behavior. The whole reason Hopkins is in this situation is because after March whines to his butler, Edgar Norton, about Hobart going away, Norton tells him just to start seeing a prostitute but March is too high class for it. So instead he takes the serum, which lets him terrorize and assault with abandon.

While the film is Pre-Code and so can get away with quite a lot, including Hopkins’s suggestively dangling her leg for forty-some seconds—see, March the good saves Hopkins in the street, she fancies him, but he’s engaged after all… so he has to take the serum to give himself the excuse to rape her.

I don’t think I’ve seen this film more than once or maybe twice before—a long time ago—and it’s possible I watched the cut version, which apparently excises the entire “March sets Hopkins up so he can constantly assault her” plot thread by dropping six minutes. But I’m trying to imagine how they recapped this movie for the Crestwood House kids’ monster books I used to read. Most of my memories of the film are things I’m sure were stills in that book.

So, another thing about the film is how much it acknowledges the reality of the situation. When March confides in fellow doctor Holmes Herbert, you’re hoping Herbert will have the sense to turn him into the cops. All of Hobart’s scenes become these layered suspense sequences; she’s under threat from March, who she’s convinced is a literal saint. I mean, March does operate on the poor and help little kids walk again, but he’s clearly only doing it because otherwise he’d be abusing women.

March is great as Hyde, low middling as Jekyll. The film punts resolving any of the multitude of questions it raises with a rushed third act. In addition to getting the movie done without fully addressing March—the good—as the villain, director Mamoulian doesn’t tie together any of the visual stuff he’s been doing throughout. The film opens with a length first person perspective shot, which echoes during one of March’s transformations (the transformation scenes start great but are terrible in the third act) and then Mamoulian forgets about them. The film’s aurally and visually ambitious until all of a sudden it’s just not anymore. Mamoulian’s composition is still good, it’s just not wildly ambitious like the start. He does do the big chase action sequences really well—and it’s really impressive if March did all the Hyde stunts himself–and Karl Struss’s photography is superb.

It just seems like Mamoulian’s going for something and instead all we get for a moral is “beware horny scientists.”

Again, March is terrifying and fantastic as Hyde. Hopkins is even better. Hobart’s good, Hobbes is good.

If the film’s third act were as deliberate and intentional as the first act, if it tried to resolve itself even a little instead of dropping the ball and running away as fast as humanly possible—which, even Pre-Code, might not have been possible… who knows. Also if March were anywhere near as good as the good guy as the bad guy, though Samuel Hoffenstein and Percy Heath’s screenplay deserves much blame on that one. They punt on March’s character development far sooner than anyone else.

The film’s just the right combination of unpleasant and unrewarding; it’s undeniably effective but also a pronounced failure.

Bob (1992) s01e05 – Terminate Her

The episode opens with Bob Newhart taking the L home and realizing there are a number of little people on the train and he comments on it to one of the little people. He does it in that muted Newhart way—the issue is his embarrassment over questioning whether or not people have the right to exist; it’s fairly gross and astoundingly dated. And very sad it wasn’t dated for 1992.

It’s an appropriate start for the episode, which is all about Newhart wanting to hire daughter Cynthia Stevenson to be a colorist on his comic book but John Cygan has already hired his girlfriend, Christine Dunford. Dunford is a ditzy, Bronx-rude blonde caricature and the episode is astoundingly sexist. Show creators Bill Steinkellner, Cheri Steinkeller, and Phoef Sutton wrote it, which is a surprise and a big disappointment.

The job stuff with Stevenson makes fun of her for not being able to get a job with her liberal arts degree, then shifts to Dunford. Newhart’s too nice to fire her while Cygan doesn’t seem to want to upset the relationship. But when Newhart can’t bring himself to do it, Cygan reveals the real problem is he’s a little bit of a woman when it comes to confrontation.

Luckily Timothy Fall’s around to make fun of Andrew Bilgore’s mental health issues and to suggest they kill Dunford to get rid of her.

The end manages to do introduce some toxic masculinity into the mix—it’s funny because Newhart’s tougher than Cygan (wokka wokka).

It’s a really gross episode, with all the laughs leveraging internalized or externalized misogyny. Though Bilgore gets a laugh. No one else gets a laugh.

Cygan’s got some terrible early nineties outfits again this episode—his performance is terrible but who can blame him, it’d be worse if he were any better—if only they were the only crap thing about it.

Oh, I forgot to mention Carlene Watkins, who gets to be subject of some sexism too. She doesn’t get to do anything in the episode herself, of course. Just to take some eye-widening shit.

It’s so bad. Possibly jumping off bad.

Frasier (1993) s03e23 – The Focus Group

The episode opens with a lengthy setup for the eventual A plot, getting most of the B plot out of the way in an early chunk. Both Daphne (Jane Leeves) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) are upset; she’s mad at her boyfriend for ditching her on their anniversary weekend to go to Vegas (we learn John Mahoney really likes strip clubs so long as the strippers are lecturing about American history) and Hyde Pierce is mad because he got some foie gras on a Jackson Pollock and needs to pay to get it cleaned.

Their bad moods collide in a bickering session, which is fine but more amusing when they both apologize, only then we find out Hyde Pierce is rather excited by the whole thing. Presumably Leeves just goes off to sulk appropriately about the boyfriend while Hyde Pierce does a “walk and talk” with Kelsey Grammer about it. Presumably because we don’t establish she’s left the room.

The main plot is about the focus group for Grammer’s radio show, specifically how special guest star Tony Shalhoub (not playing his “Wings” character, despite “Frasier” and “Wings” being cousins) doesn’t like the show. Grammer starts obsessing over it, eventually wrangling Mahoney into questioning Shalhoub after the focus group and so on. It’s great stuff, the right mix of an infinitely capable guest star in Shalhoub and Grammer being able to be a complete ass. Plus really good use of exteriors and the chemistry between the regular cast, specifically Grammer, Mahoney, and Hyde Pierce.

There’s some decent stuff with Peri Gilpin during the focus group scene—she and Grammer aren’t supposed to be watching the discussion but for some reason get to watch the discussion (or maybe the focus group facilitator is just a liar)—though it gets a little weird at the end for the end credits thing. Sometimes realistic for the characters doesn’t mean it should make the cut. Especially when it’s really gross.

I suppose I should’ve prefaced mentioning Dan Butler shows up to give his take during the focus group too.

Excellent direction from Philip Charles MacKenzie, sometimes good, sometimes better script from Rob Greenberg, and great performances from Shalhoub and Grammer. Even with a few bumps, it’s an exemplar episode (thanks to Shalhoub).