Ken Tucker

TV Critic

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'Why? With Hannibal Buress' Is Just Mildly Funny: Why?

The premiere episode of Why? With Hannibal Buress on Wednesday night was an amiable half-hour. He began the show with a little stand-up comedy, low-fi topical humor about Donald Trump, the economic crisis in Greece, and complaints about low scores in soccer games. 

Most of the rest of Why? consisted of taped bits heavy on celebrity cameos: Conan O’Brien, James Corden, and Amy Schumer, the latter posing as an Internet troll who’d been attacking Buress online. The Schumer segment had a few laughs; the others were pretty flat. 

Buress is known for his genial presence on Broad City and The Eric Andre Show, and as the stand-up comic whose 2014 on-stage ruminations about Bill Cosby arguably catalyzed the current widespread condemnation of Cosby. On Why?, he made a quick reference to his most famous topic: In a chunk of material about how much he dislikes hotels that employ men for their housekeeping duties, he suggested that one reason for his antipathy was that one of those fellows might prove to be “a Bill Cosby assassin” — i.e., hired by Cosby to kill him. 

Coming on the heels of a wildly funny new episode of Key & Peele — I reviewed that show here — the Buress show seemed very low-key. Which may prove a good thing in the coming weeks; Buress is a talented man, and his style is a welcome contrast in a comedy world that’s become routinely loud or abrasive. I’ll certainly want to keep watching him.

Why? With Hannibal Buress airs Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.

[kentuckertv]

'Under The Dome' Is Back, More Fun Than Ever

Under the Dome is certainly broadcast television’s most enjoyable science-fiction/fantasy series, a summer treat that, while sometimes silly and over-the-top, is never less than energetically imaginative and aware of the history of its genre. 

The Thursday night third-season premiere — two hours airing on CBS if you can survive the second episode of Big Brother — is a showcase for all of Under the Dome’s strengths, and its forgivable flaws. Two notable actors have been added to the mix, and they add a lot: Marg Helgenberger begins her role as a therapist sent to Chester’s Mill to help survivors of the dome to heal, and ER’s Eriq La Salle debuts briefly but effectively as a dastardly villain who thinks he has some control over what’s happening under that dome. 

La Salle is all silky villainy, and Helgenberger’s is all canny charm, implying by glances and small smiles, rather than her words, that she may have an agenda other than the one she talks about. 

Related: ‘Under the Dome’ Star Mike Vogel Says He Was ‘Shocked’ by Season Premiere

This week’s two-hour premiere is really two episodes shown back-to-back; the second, directed by Peter Weller and written by new showrunner Tim Schlattmann (Dexter), is particularly entertaining. It explores the power of the much-sought-after egg and what influence over the dome it has. I can’t really go into much detail without spoiling the premiere, but I can say that we see familiar characters such as Barbie, Big Jim, Julia, Melanie, and Junior in a new light, from different angles. There is a sly reference to the famous 1959 Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last” that will resonate with many fans of Stephen King.

Indeed, the way the producers have built upon Stephen King’s source novel here is one of the most impressive things about the new season of Under the Dome. While retaining the novel’s general tone, characters and plot points have been altered and in some cases invented that have enabled the TV Dome to become its own creation. And that creation is cool, clever escapism that works well in the hot summer months.

Under the Dome airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.

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Laura Ingraham came back to Fox News, hurt but fighting

Laura Ingraham returned to Fox News on Monday night.

Laura Ingraham returned to Fox News on Monday night, the first since taking off for a week in the face of a large-scale advertising boycott launched by Parkland, Florida, student David Hogg. Ingraham never referred to Hogg in her lengthy opening statement, which she titled, “The Left’s Plot to Silence Conservatives.” Indeed, if you weren’t aware of the Ingraham-Hogg back-story—a fight Ingraham picked by gratuitously attacking Hogg in a tweet–you’d never know that this was the subtext of everything the host said on The Ingraham Angle about “bullies on the Left” and a “chilling effect on free speech.”

I have to give Ingraham credit: She marshaled the best defense possible by framing the controversy as a free-speech issue, and raised legitimate complaints about, for example, the silencing of objectionable speakers on college campuses. She attempted to place her objections in a historical context. When she put up pictures of the late Christopher Hitchens and the late Nat Hentoff to bewail the lack of “true” free-speech liberals “to defend the vigorous exchange of ideas,” I, too, felt some sadness that these two fine journalists are not still around to offer their points of view in defense of First Amendment absolutism. It was also interesting to see her bring up the firing, last week, of conservative writer Kevin D. Williamson from The Atlantic magazine due to highly offensive remarks about women who get abortions. This was probably the first time the vast majority of Fox News viewers had heard of Williamson and the debate about his employment that was pervasive throughout media circles last week.

I don’t think Ingraham deserves to be driven off the air for a mean tweet about Hogg, although I did enjoy seeing the kid flex his media muscle, a demonstration that should gave the NRA pause. Soon enough, however, Ingraham was abandoning the reasonableness of the opening moments of her show to delve into more typical weirdnesses, such as calling Planned Parenthood a “violent” organization and sneering at “all that malarkey about the patriarchy.”

Ingraham promised a “major announcement” at the end of her show. This turned out to be a “recurring series”—a new, regular feature to be titled “Defending The First.” She asked any viewers who have been subject to “threats or intimidation” for their conservative beliefs to tweet her immediately. “We will expose the enemies of the First Amendment!” she thundered. In other words, she’s going to do her variation on stuff that already occurs regularly on Fox, such as Tucker Carlson’s regular “Campus Craziness” segments.

The Ingraham Angle airs weeknights at 10 p.m. on Fox News.

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jay-z letterman interview netflix trump racism

Jay-Z interviewed by David Letterman on Netflix.

Hed?: David Letterman’s Jay-Z interview gets really, really awkward [I LIKE THIS ONE the most]

Hed?: Jay-Z and Letterman agree that Trump is a racist OR:Jay-Z tells Letterman Trump’s Presidency is ‘a great thing’

The latest installment of David Letterman’s monthly Netflix show is an interview with Jay-Z. It got some attention even before it began streaming on Friday for snippets Netflix released in which Jay-Z talks about infidelity in his marriage to Beyonce, and about conversations he had with his mother when she came out as gay. When Letterman brings up Donald Trump and volunteers that he thinks Trump is a racist, the rapper says he thinks Trump’s presidency is “a great thing,” because “he’s bringing out the ugly side of America that we wanted to believe was gone” and now we have to “have that conversation and deal with it.”

But this edition of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman is perhaps most notable for how awkward it is. Letterman is well-known to be a big music fan—some of anyone’s fondest memories of his old late-night talk show would include his segments with Warren Zevon, for instance. But when it comes to hiphop, Dave is out of his depth in a way that is sometime squirmily uncomfortable. Here’s a sample music question he asks of Jay-Z: “By the way, the east coast/west coast thing, that’s over?” Here’s another: “Forgive me for being a dope about this… What I’m getting at is the use of the n-word.” If you notice that these aren’t actually questions, but more like graceless ways to bring up subjects Letterman is ignorant of and doesn’t know how to frame, then you begin to see how awkward this interview becomes.

Hemming and hawing, dithering and fumfering, Dave admits, in a verbally contorted way, that he’s never paid much attention to hiphop, which leads some of his questions and observations sounding inadvertently condescending: “The stuff, it’s very sophisticated,” he says of hiphop, with more than a little surprise in his voice. “You play with your lyrics,” he observes of Jay-Z’s work. “It’s very complex stuff.” It’s as though he’s praising a child. Jay-Z is gracious and tolerant, while also giving Letterman a sharp glance here and there. When Dave says, “Hiphop is autobiographical, am I right?” Jay-Z responds, “Uh, no. It pretends to be.” “Really?” says Dave, rather shocked. “Even in the beginning?”—meaning, even when rappers are just starting out? “Yes,” says Jay-Z. “It’s kids lying. Sorry.” He frowns at Letterman as if to say, “Do you really not credit me with imagination?”

Every edition of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction breaks up the interview with taped segments in which Letterman goes on-location somewhere that illustrates some point being made in the conversation. Here, Dave goes to Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, California, to talk to producer Rick Rubin, who has collaborated with Jay-Z in the past. Jay-Z is not present on this visit, and these segments end up ignoring his work almost entirely, instead fixing on a woman Rubin is currently producing, up-and-coming singer Madison Ryann Ward. Where My Next Guest plays only a few seconds of Jay-Z’s music, the hour makes room for two entire songs from Ward. It’s impossible to avoid the notion that Letterman is far more comfortable showcasing the work of this white woman’s singer-songwriter folk-rock than he is with Jay-Z’s music.

Perhaps I need to say here that I admire Letterman enormously and believe he is the single greatest late-night talk-show host in the history of that TV genre. One reason for that is that Letterman always had a sure sense of who he should interview, and how to go about it. That assurance is missing here. Too often, his questions aren’t questions at all, but words he blurts because he’s not quite sure how to ask them: “My goodness, your mother is a lesbian” is how he brings up Jay-Z’s mother. Jay-Z is polite enough to rescue Letterman from his discomfort and talk about his mom. Letterman broaches Jay-Z’s infidelity by talking first about his own, but in such a stilted, oblique way—he never actually says the words “infidelity” or “cheating”—that if you didn’t know Dave’s (or Jay-Z’s) past, you’d have no idea what he was talking about. Again, Jay-Z comes to his rescue, courteously.

There’s funny stuff here and there. One unexpected running joke in the hour involves Judd Apatow in a way I won’t spoil. Jay-Z also insults Jimmy Fallon without ever mentioning the Tonight Show host’s name. And I really enjoyed the way Jay-Z takes such pleasure in making Dave squirm when he brings up Letterman’s wealth. Squirming discomfort—some of it pleasurable, much of it not–proves to be the subtext that runs throughout this entire hour.

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman: Jay Z is streaming now on Netflix.

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Review: Pacino's 'Paterno' revives the pain of the Penn State sex abuse scandal

Al Pacino as Joe Paterno in HBO’s ‘Paterno.’ (Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/HBO)

In Paterno, the new HBO film about Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, Al Pacino plays the title role with a quiet voice and small gestures. It’s a performance unlike many of the ones he’s best-known for, such as the coke-head gangster in Scarface (1983) or the feral cop in Heat (1995). For Paterno, Pacino dons big-framed, yellow-tinted glasses, and his large, sad eyes are almost obscured — it’s one way the actor communicates the regressive shame that overcame his real-life character.

Paterno, premiering April 7, re-tells the story of the scandal that broke in 2011 about the multiple sexual assaults Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky committed against young boys over decades. Sandusky is the villain of this piece, but he barely registers here: This film is about the culture of complicity that grew up around Sandusky’s crimes, primarily because no one wanted to tarnish or slow down the awe-inspiring triumphs that Paterno was scoring as the winningest coach in college football. It’s an unusual way to tell this story, but Pacino and director Barry Levinson pull it off, scoring their own, more low-key, triumph.

The script by Deborah Cahn and John C. Richards takes us along two tracks: How the Sandusky story was investigated and reported by Sara Ganim, a reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot-News, and how the revelations affected Paterno and his family. Ganim is played by Riley Keough (The Girlfriend Experience, Logan Lucky) as a tough reporter who, while still in her 20s, is an already-hard-bitten woman: She’d been reporting on the Sandusky rumors for years without anyone paying much attention. (Ganim eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting.)

Once the national media gets involved, the insular college town is engulfed in the scandal. The Penn State area’s nickname — “Happy Valley” — became a bitter irony, and Levinson is great at sketching in the local culture. Paterno summons up the worship of “JoePa” that dominated State College, Pennsylvania for a long time. Paterno and his family — including his wife, Sue, played by Kathy Baker, and his son Scott, played by Greg Grunberg — are overwhelmed by the depravity and long history of Sandusky’s crimes. Sandusky himself, played by Jim Johnson, remains pushed to the edges of this story, intentionally so: The focus is on the victims and the repercussions of Sandusky’s evil actions.

For Joe Paterno, it means a forced reckoning with himself. This is the third HBO collaboration between Pacino and Levinson — Pacino was Jack Kevorkian in You Don’t Know Jack, and played the title role in Phil Spector, for which Levinson was executive producer. The pair work in concert here, Levinson frequently shooting Pacino in tight close-ups, to let us see Paterno’s internal struggles. Paterno was in his 80s when the scandal erupted, and his reactions are partly those of a confused old man. But the film also shows us Paterno owning his own guilt, going over his memories of working with Sandusky, trying to pin down where and how he might have stopped the coach, measuring how much blame he must take upon himself. It’s a very good performance in a very good film that avoids sensationalizing the crimes in order to explore pain on many levels.

Paterno airs Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO.

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roseanne trump week 2 review

Roseanne Barr, Sara Gilbert, John Goodman in ABC’s ‘Roseanne’

Hed?: ‘Roseanne’ avoids Trump in week 2

Hed?: This week’s ‘Roseanne’ will make you laugh, not debate

Hed?: Can ‘Roseanne’ top itself in week 2? Here’s the answer

The past week has been a very eventful one for Roseanne Barr. After the surprise success for the return of Roseanne (the debut’s audience is now estimated to have exceeded 25 million viewers) she got a call from her most powerful fan; Roseanne was renewed for a second season after only one airing; she scrubbed her Twitter feed clean of pro-Pizzagate and most other conspiracy theories; and she inspired countless online, print, and TV analyses about Roseanne As The Savior of The Working Class. Now, on Tuesday night, the skyrocketing phenomenon comes back down to Earth: Turns out Roseanne is just a sitcom after all.

What I mean by that is, this new episode is more typical of what Roseanne will be going forward: Less overtly politically-themed than the premiere. There’s not a Trump argument or a pink pussy hat in sight in this edition. Which doesn’t mean it’s a bad one; quite the opposite. This week’s episode is built around a stair lift that John Goodman’s Dan has somehow miraculously installed in the house between last week and this one. He did it for Roseanne, who has a bum knee and a shortage of prescription painkillers for it. (Yes, we know from last week that’s because the Conners have lousy health-care coverage—i.e., Obamacare vs. Trumpcare—but it’s not articulated that way here.)

There’s a subplot about Darlene’s 15 year-old daughter Harris (Emma Kenney) selling clothes on the internet. Roseanne questions the parenting skills of Darlene (Sara Gilbert) when Harris behaves brattily. (You know you’re watching a network sitcom when Roseanne calls her granddaughter an “entitled little bitch” and the studio audience lets out a collectively shocked, “Ohhhhhh!”)

Really, the most political the episode gets is with a non-P.C. joke aimed not at Trump or Hillary Clinton, but at ABC itself. Roseanne and Dan fall asleep on the sofa in front of the TV, and Roseanne notes, “We slept from Wheel to Kimmel.” Dan responds, “We missed all the shows about black and Asian families.” That was the one time I laughed out loud, happily surprised. The most effective punchlines, though, are uttered by Darlene, and Sara Gilbert really sells this material with sharp timing and her poker-faced delivery. The best thing about this week’s edition of Roseanne is that is draws attention away from Roseanne to emphasize the ensemble—the star reminds you that she’s a team player. And the jokes remind you that the writing staff here includes Norm Macdonald and Wanda Sykes. It’s a very solid sitcom they’ve all been building, one of the rare network ones that doesn’t have to feel inferior to any of the more experimental ones on cable.

Roseanne airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

[kentuckertv]

laura ingraham apology david hogg fox news

Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle

Laura Ingraham’s fake apology to David Hogg exposes deep Fox News cynicism On Thursday, Laura Ingraham suddenly apologized for insulting and ridiculing school-shooting survivor David Hogg—but only after losing at least half a dozen advertisers to her Fox News show, and under the threat of losing more. The previous day, Ingraham felt not a twinge of decency when she tweeted an insult about Hogg getting rejections from a number of colleges, sneering that he was whining about it. In response, Hogg called for an advertiser boycott of her Fox News show The Ingraham Angle. By late afternoon, Nestle, Hulu, Wayfair, Johnson & Johnson, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, among others, had yanked ads from The Ingraham Angle.

Laura Ingraham could not act quickly enough to recant her previous contempt for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student, and had the gall to dress her groveling in the cloak of religion. “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland,” she said, and invited Hogg to appear on her show.

  Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA —incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David…(1/2)

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

Ingraham’s comments attempting to humiliate and silence Parkland, Florida, student aren’t unusual for her. She kicked off a different #resist movement recently when she told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.” And hers are not the only offensive comments coming from Fox News personalities. The channel has run deeply cynical “news” segments suggesting that the Parkland students calling for more extensive gun control laws are “political pawns,” and on President Trump’s favorite TV show, Fox & Friends, co-host Pete Hegseth—recently in the running and rejected to head up the Veterans Administration—heaped contempt “They shouldn’t be giving me lessons on the Second Amendment—they should be in civics class.”

Ingraham was awfully quiet about her apology—or indeed, the entire subject of gun control—on her Thursday show. The brazen insincerity of Ingraham’s apology–along with this abject demonstration that she was happy to completely contradict her supposedly tough, sincere disagreements with the March for Our Lives organizers including Hogg—is indicative of what really goes on with Fox News personalities like Ingraham. They push and push and push the edge of what is indecent outrage, and when they go over the line and start being punished for it, they fold. Ingraham’s time-period competitor, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, did a segment on Ingraham on Thursday night, noting that “the only reason Ingraham has a job on Fox News” is because of the prime-time schedule changes that needed to be made when Bill O’Reilly was kicked off the channel, and that O’Reilly had been losing advertisers over sexual-harassment charges. Ingraham faces a similar ad loss, and was, O’Donnell’s speculated, “following her bosses’ orders [to apologize] to save her job.”

In declining to accept Ingraham’s apology, David Hogg tweeted, “I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight.” I don’t think that’ll happen. But I also didn’t think this young man could send such fear into the corridors of Fox News, so… I guess anything’s possible.

The Ingraham Angle airs weeknights at 10 p.m. on Fox News.

[kentuckertv]

Yes, the new, final season of 'The Americans' proves Russian collusion

Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings, Matthew Rhys as Philip Jennings in ‘The Americans.’ (Photo: Patrick Harbron/FX)

“Russia! Russia! Russia!” chants Sean Hannity nightly, over on Fox News. “Collusion! Collusion! Collusion!” he squawks. Hannity ridicules what he sees as prosecutor Robert Mueller’s overreaching investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump Presidential campaign. Sean ought to calm down, relax, chill out with some entertainment television — say, the season premiere of The Americans, Wednesday night on FX. He can sit back and enjoy the escapades of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), Russian agents who are spending the 1980s… oh, right: colluding with any American they can get their clutches on who’ll help them help Russia to take over the world. On second thought, maybe Hannity should watch a different FX show, like Zach Galifianakis clowning in Baskets, or Donald Sutherland swanning around wealthily as J. Paul Getty in Trust.

Now more timely than ever, although not because the show wants to be, The Americans provides ample nightmare-material for both conservative and liberal viewers. Elizabeth Jennings has become, over the course of the show’s six seasons, an even more hard-line Communist devoted to subverting what she sees as our “soft,” “weak” capitalist system. If her husband Philip isn’t as tough-minded, it’s primarily because American democracy has begun to exert its creeping rot on him — he’s become a devotee of the 80s’ most touchy-feely cult self-help program, EST. Last season’s Americans suffered from a certain spinning of its wheels, as though the show needed to hold back on plot and action in order to heave itself over the finish-line for this sixth and final season. Now that the sixth has arrived, The Americans is revved up and ready: Every one of the three episodes made available for review hums along at a swift pace, dropping revelations right and left — no political pun intended.

In the new episodes, it’s 1987, and Elizabeth is unnerved by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s warm feelings toward the West. Why, it’s as though the old Bolshevik had started taking EST classes with Philip, for pete’s sake! Her trickle-down anger seeps into daughter Paige (Holly Taylor), whom we saw last season being trained as a next-generation Commie spy; she’s now come into her own, and she’s just as grim and determined as dear old Mom. I’ve always found the espionage element in The Americans — the stuff that is presumably based primarily on facts and research — to be the least believable, or the least enjoyable, stuff in the show: All those frowsy wigs, all those high-school-musical disguises, all that karate-chop killing.

No, the good stuff is in the Jennings family drama — the way they behave with each other, and present themselves to the world around them. It’s a measure of how superior those plot-lines are that, watching the new episodes, I am as interested in the ways Philip is expanding his travel-agent business as I am in seeing whether Elizabeth can snuff the life of an informant-gone-traitor. Showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields are moving us closer to the series’ end by pulling Philip and Elizabeth apart — a clever idea. In real life, Rhys and Russell have become a romantic couple who make goo-goo eyes at each other on talk shows. Knowing this provides what I think is the real suspense as The Americans draws to a close: I think it’s always a mistake when co-stars fall in love and commit to each other. Why? Because then the TV series ends, and each moves on to other, different jobs, they’re no longer together all the time, and suddenly that new co-star starts looking awfully good, and seems so much more understanding of one’s needs. Well, that’s where my mind takes me when I’m watching The Americans. I never claimed I was as serious as Sean Hannity.

The Americans airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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[kentuckertv]

'Roseanne' is back, and it's become a pro-Trump platform

Roseanne Barr and John Goodman in ‘Roseanne.’ (Photo: Adam Rose/ABC)

Roseanne returns on Tuesday night, for a 10th season no one could have predicted. Having vanished in 1997 with, among other things, the death of John Goodman’s Dan Conner, the new Roseanne opens with the whole Conner clan miraculously intact as the show picks up 21 years later. The series doesn’t just acknowledge the time that has passed — it makes it central to the drama that always tinged this show’s comedy. In 2016, we are told, Roseanne Conner voted for Donald Trump, and her sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), voted for — well, someone else. As the show re-starts, the sisters haven’t spoken for a year.

The presentation of these details is both blunt (Jackie tells Roseanne she “voted for the worst person in the world”) and coy (the show never utters the names “Trump” or “Hillary” but rather “that man” and “that woman”: why?). A lot of media coverage has been given to this plot-point as well as its real-life one: Roseanne Barr’s own loud-and-proud Trump endorsement. For all the pearl-clutching being done by gasping commentators scandalized that Barr, Former Champion of the Working Class, has defected from the ranks of the Democratic party (Roseanne did attend, after all, Bill Clinton’s 1992 inauguration), Roseanne Conner as a Trump-voter makes as much sense as anything now, in 2018. It’s easy to imagine the Conner household being swept up in “drain the swamp” fervor during election time.

What makes less sense is having Roseanne Conner now, in 2018, impervious to buyers-remorse. In the opening scene on Tuesday, Roseanne and Dan sit at the kitchen table counting out their prescription pills — their lousy new health care coverage only affords them, as Dan winsomely puts it, “half the drugs for twice the price.” Since these residents of Lanford, Illinois, presumably benefited from Illinois’ quick-witted attempts to protect the Affordable Health Care act from being completely destroyed by Trump forces, you’d think a woman as savvy as Roseanne would have figured out a full year into Trump’s presidency that her man is just refilling the swamp. Not, unfortunately, at all.

Where Jackie seems genuinely shaken by the election results and its aftermath, Roseanne is far more cavalier, and here the show gets at something few TV shows — and I’m including news programming here — are willing to point out, which is that most Trump voters still seem unconcerned about the danger that the rest of the country believes this new President poses to everyone. For Roseanne Conner, Trump is just the latest manifestation of her let’s-shake-things-up approach to life. And there’s a lot to shake up, too. If the new Roseanne sometimes feels a little stiff — as though it hasn’t quite settled on its tone yet — it can probably be ascribed to two behind-the-scenes influences. The first, of course, is Roseanne herself: Barr is nothing if not the author of her own story, and she’s made a career, if not a legend, out of blending the edges where Roseanne Barr and Roseanne Conner merge.

But the second influence is Sara Gilbert’s. She was the one who was instrumental in reviving Roseanne. She’s the one who had the idea, and pitched it to both Barr and the network. It’s therefore not a surprise that Gilbert’s character gets the central subplot in the new series, which revolves around Darlene returning to Lanford to restart her life as a single mom. One significant newcomer to the cast is Darlene’s son, Mark, played by Ames McNamara. He likes to dress in clothes traditionally viewed as feminine, which provides the opportunity for his grandmother Roseanne to — very implausibly, I should add — demonstrate she’s not so conservative that she scorns or condemns the boy. (Interestingly, the co-stars themselves can’t seem to agree whether this character is gender-fluid: In a Hollywood Reporter interview, Barr says Mark is gender-fluid but Gilbert disagrees: “But he’s not gender-fluid: he just likes to dress in more feminine clothing, is where we landed.” This may be a small warning sign that the show does not have a fix on either this character or the show’s take on him.)

There are numerous laughs in these new episodes (I’ve seen three of them), and Metcalf and Gilbert are very effective in all their scenes. (Reserving judgment on Goodman, who thus far seems to be reacquainting himself with the great performance he used to give regularly, as though he feels he still has to work out some of the kinks.) Yes, the show has found a clever way to include both women who played Becky, Lecy Goranson and Sarah Chalke, in the show.

As for Roseanne herself, she remains what she’s always been: endlessly watchable, a great entertainer who always carries everything we know about her private life into her work onscreen. During the initial run of Roseanne, I used to regularly compare her to Elvis Presley as a culture-influencing entertainer; now I’d say she’s more like Black Panther: ruling over her kingdom (queendom?) with serene effortlessness, taking for granted that monarchy, like sisterhood, is powerful.

Roseanne airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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[kentuckertv]

garry shandling judd apatow interview hbo

Garry Shandling, Judd Apatow

One of the greatest documentaries ever made about the life of a comedian, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling premieres Monday on HBO. It’s an extremely funny, extremely moving, extremely warts-and-all look at the comic actor, who died in 2016. It’s created by director-writer Judd Apatow (The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), who was a friend of Shandling’s as well as a former employee—Apatow worked on Shandling’s immortal HBO sitcom The Larry Sanders Show, the ultimate talk-show satire. Apatow made the documentary in part to help secure Shandling’s legacy: “I think there is so much new content in this culture that it’s hard for young people to go back and explore all of the great shows of the past. There’s, like, 400 new half-hour shows a year, so you have to be a real comedy scientist to start hunting down The Larry Sanders Show or The Odd Couple or The Associates. So I thought this was a great opportunity to educate people. The documentary is built to explain who he is, so if you’ve never seen any of the work, it all gets laid out for you.”

Apatow truly does lay out his subject’s life. In the documentary, we are shown pages from Shandling’s diaries. There are perfectly chosen clips of him in performance, as well as wonderful interviews with Shandling friends as various as Jim Carrey, Tom Petty, Bob Saget, Conan O’Brien, Jerry Seinfeld, and Sarah Silverman. The beauty of this four-hour film—shown in two parts, beginning Monday and Tuesday–is the way it showcases Shandling’s style, achievements, and troubles in an endlessly entertaining way. Beginning his career as a script-writer for sitcoms such as Welcome Back, Kotter and Sanford and Son, and as a stand-up, Shandling honed an unmistakable voice—it was the sound of the sarcastic whiner, the self-puncturing romantic, and, near the end, the wistful wise-man.

“Garry was obsessed with the truth,” says Apatow. “So for every aspect of the documentary, I thought, ‘Garry would want us to play it straight, he wouldn’t want us to turn him into some sort of a saint.’ He was a man who was very kind to a lot of people, but he also had his flaws and insensitivities. He made small and large mistakes.” Zen Diaries rightly places The Larry Sanders Show (1992-98) as the centerpiece of Shandling’s career–his greatest achievement. But among the “small and large mistakes” that Apatow references are Shandling’s 2000 movie bomb What Planet Are You From? (his brutal treatment by director Mike Nichols will send a shiver down your spine) and, in his personal life, Shandling’s romance with a Sanders co-star, Linda Doucett. When the relationship soured, he fired her—a gross misuse of professional power. “That’s something we all know is wrong and unfair,” says Apatow. “She went on to file a lawsuit. He settled with her and they were friends to the very end. But it took her standing up to him and saying that was wrong.” (Doucett appears in Zen Diaries, speaking of Shandling affectionately.)

Apatow frames the documentary around the central agony of Shandling’s life—the death of his brother, Barry, when Garry was 10 years old. He felt a painful grief that never healed, but which led him into a spiritual life that included Zen Buddhism. “Even when he was learning to be a stand-up comedian, he applied those principles,” says Apatow. “It was all about trying to be in-the-moment, letting go, trusting himself. It was a real Zen in the Art of Archery approach to being a stand-up comedian.”

One of the most interesting sections of Zen Diaries is about Shandling filming the DVD extras for the 2007 release Not Just The Best of The Larry Sanders Show. This project—a throwaway bonus-item for any performer less of a perfectionist than Shandling—grew to more than eight hours of completely original interviews the comedian conducted with Sanders Show guests such as Seinfeld, Sharon Stone, Petty, Bob Odenkirk, and many others. These interviews proved to be frequently moving, deep-dish discussions—and Apatow sees them as being ahead of their time: “That project in a lot of ways was very influential, because, at a time before podcasting and long-form comedic interviews, Garry was fascinated by the form, and did groundbreaking work. Even Jerry Seinfeld says that one of the inspirations for Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee was his interview with Garry [for the DVD].”

Apatow’s Zen Diaries presents Garry Shandling as the complex man he was, and the man he wanted to become. As Shandling told me when I interviewed him in 1998: “I’m nothing but a man struggling to get better.”

The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling airs Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. on HBO.

[kentuckertv]

In the new Fox News vs CNN smackdown, CNN is the loser

Sean Hannity, Fox News

On Thursday afternoon, CNN president Jeff Zucker called Fox News “a pure propaganda machine” that “does incredible disservice to this country.” Speaking to a group of media professionals, Zucker compared Fox News to the Russian government-run news service TASS, and added that “the idea that [Fox] is a news channel, I think, is really not the case at all.” It didn’t take long for Fox News to strike back.

On Thursday evening, two of Fox’s prime-time shows went after CNN and Zucker. At 8 p.m., Tucker Carlson basically did the juvenile, “I know you are, but what am I?” approach, flipping Zucker’s statement and calling CNN “state TV.” Carlson dubbed Zucker “an agent of foreign governments.” At 9 p.m., Sean Hannity went below the belt, as it were. He called Zucker “the king of porn”—this, because of CNN’s coverage of alleged Donald Trump paramours Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

And indeed, Hannity had a point here: On Thursday night, Anderson Cooper spent an ungodly long amount of time deposing McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate. Cooper seemed endlessly interested in hearing details about McDougal’s supposed “dates” with The Donald (it was during a time before he was President). Among Cooper’s hard-hitting questions: “Did he have any nicknames for you?” Honestly, what is the news value in this? If CNN’s aim is to prove that Trump behaves boorishly, well, the President proves that himself every single day he spends in the White House. In other words, this ain’t news. And nothing that McDougal alleges is in any way a crime—indeed, she says she loved the guy.

But of course, Hannity had to take things to an extreme—it’s why the Good Lord put him on TV, after all. He roasted CNN retroactively for not covering the alleged sexual misadventures of (you know that I’m about to write, don’t you?) the Clintons, his perennial, eternal targets.

Nevertheless, if Jeff Zucker thinks he’s going to win this war, he’s mistaken. His CNN doesn’t have shows that are pure opinion-asserters the way Fox News has. Fox can drown out Zucker’s objections with ceaseless prime-time derision. What Zucker said about Fox as a “propaganda machine” was (intentionally?) an echo of the exact same phrase used by former Fox News analyst Ralph Peters said earlier this week, when he resigned from Fox, his conscience too sullied to go on. It almost doesn’t matter that the description of Fox as primarily propaganda is true. These days, whoever can repeat the same message, over and over, to the most viewers, becomes the source of the “truth.”

Anderson Cooper 360 and Tucker Carlson Tonight air weeknights at 8 p.m. on CNN and Fox News respectively. Hannity airs weeknights at 9 p.m. on Fox News.

[kentuckertv]

'Grey's Anatomy' spin-off 'Station 19': Where’s the fire?

Station 19: Jaina Lee Ortiz

At least Station 19 lets you know how low it’s setting the bar for itself right from the start. In the opening moments of this Grey’s Anatomy spin-off premiering Thursday, the camera pans over a fire station house and stops at a shiny fire pole. A female voice-over asks us, “Ever try going down a fire pole? It’s not easy… That’s why I decided a long time ago just to use the damn stairs.” Really, Station 19? The most dramatic way you could think to begin your existence is by whining about how hard it is to slide down a pole?

The voice, it turns out, belongs to Andrea “Andy” Herrera, a Seattle firefighter played by Jaina Lee Ortiz. She’s the central character in Station 19. Andy is a tough, experienced firefighter whenever she’s not a tender, vulnerable daughter to her firefighter-captain dad (Miguel Sandoval), and whenever she’s not a passionate romantic partner to at least two guys. In other words, Andy is supposed to contain so many aspects of ideal womanhood, she ultimately doesn’t embody any of them: she’s a cipher with pole-phobia.

Station 19 spins off Grey’s Anatomy by having Grey’s’ Ben Warren (Jason George) hang up his scrubs and pick up a fireman’s helmet. In this show, most of the characters just call him “New Guy”—they’re hazing him, and he whines a lot too: “I’m a surgery nerd and you guys are fire nerds. I don’t speak fire nerd yet.” That cringy dialogue was penned by writer Stacy McKee, creator of Station 19 under the auspices of mega-producer Shonda Rhimes. (This show looks like it will be Rhimes’ final gift to ABC as she exits for her lucrative new deal at Netflix.) The premiere features cameos by Grey’s stars Ellen Pompeo and Chandra Wilson, both of whom look as though someone is holding a pistol at their heads just off-camera.

So, yes, there are big, blazing fires to fight in Station 19. Yes, there are firehouse meals to be consumed—although, this being a Shonda Rhimes show, vegetarian meat loaf is served as a healthy option. Yes, there are firehouse hook-ups—Andy is making it with Jack (Grey Damon), whom Andy describes as “impulsive and rash,” two words that have never emerged from the mouth of a real human in normal conversation ever.

And I’ll be damned if the fire pole that commences Station 19 doesn’t end up the central image of the show’s first hour: It comes back at the end of the episode to be used as a metaphor for the Challenges of Life, so that Andy can muse in voice-over, “You gotta grab on, take the next step, trust yourself, and let go.” Say no more, Andy: I’m letting go of Station 19 right now.

Station 19 airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on ABC.

[kentuckertv]

Why 'Krypton' is a super-irritating Superman origin-story

Krypton

Superman as created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the 1930s was an infant alien sent from “a distant planet.” That planet was eventually given a name, Krypton, and the infant Kryptonian, Kal-El, gained super-powers when placed in Earth’s atmosphere: thus the name Superman. Over the years, subsequent DC Comics writers elaborated on this origin story. Needing more plots to continue the adventures of Superman, a back-story was crafted, beginning with the establishment of Jor-El as Superman’s Kryptonian scientist-father. As these things are prone to do, the back-story became an elaborate mythology. But unlike proper literature, comic books aren’t unified wholes—they’re piece-work, crafted by diverse hands working under monthly deadlines. When commercial needs demand it, the origin story of Superman is scrapped and rewritten in new, different, and sometimes contradictory ways.

The result of this messy way of building a Superman universe is on full display in Krypton, the new, laughable costume drama premiering on Syfy. Every generation gets the version of Krypton that fits its pop-cultural moment, and so this one is as heavily influenced by the look and tone of HBO’s Game of Thrones and the recent iterations of Star Wars as it is by anything to do with DC comic books. The hero of Krypton is Superman’s grandfather, Seg-El, as embodied by young-hunk actor Cameron Cuffe. The show is set on the planet Krypton, and the predominant color palette is… dark. Everyone strides purposefully down long, dark corridors that resemble the interior of a chic Manhattan hotel. Quite a few scenes are set in a low-lit bar where drinks are poured and fistfights occur and jokes are made by a jokey bartender who’s also a pal of Seg-El’s. As for Seg himself, his parentage may be noble, but the show is careful to make him a young man of action—that’s him throwing punches during a number of those bar fights.

Everyone talks in brittle British accents, even Seg’s mom, played by Paula Malcomson, last seen negotiating a Boston accent in Ray Donovan. Here, she’s forced to utter lines like, “This is bigger than me—it’s about our entire civilization!” I’m not sure I should tell you what the “this” is that she’s referring to—maybe if you’ve never read a Superman comic, you’ll think that’s a spoiler. In any case, it’s not spoiling anything to say that Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) arrives in Krypton from our time era to tell him that our Superman, Kal-El, will be in big trouble—perhaps dead—unless Seg-El does something now to protect Superman and the House of El’s legacy. Adam Strange, it should be said, is a particularly irritating character—a stubble-faced, hoodie-wearing wiseguy who yelps things like “Get your revenge on!” Call me conservative, but I prefer my Adam Strange to look like this, as God and artist Murphy Anderson intended.

There are lots of strong women around on Krypton, including cadet-warrior Lyta Zod (Georgina Campbell). There is a lot of clunky, melodramatic dialogue, like, “You have to find the Fortress; you have to save Superman!” There is a glowering super-villain in the form of veteran DC Comics bad-guy Brainiac. Last month, I ventured a guess that, sight unseen, Krypton would be lousy. Now, sight seen, I confirm this is so.

Krypton airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Syfy.

[kentuckertv]

jim carrey sarah huckabee sanders fox news

Jim Carrey, Credit: Photo by Camilla Morandi/REX/Shutterstock

Jim Carrey’s ‘monstrous’ Sarah Sanders portrait made Fox News angry Over the weekend, Jim Carrey tweeted a portrait he painted that looks an awful lot like White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In it, she is made to look angry and not-attractive. The text accompanying the portrait refers to Sanders as a “so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked.” He concluded: “Monstrous!” Like clockwork, Fox News began howling in offended anger all across its air on Monday.

  This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 17, 2018

It started out on Fox & Friends, where co-host Ainsley Earhardt was more appalled by the “so-called Christian” aspect of Carrey’s criticism than the painting itself. That wasn’t quite on-target for the Fox News agenda being launched for the rest of the news cycle, so the show brought on a spokesperson for some obscure right-wing non-profit to direct the rage elsewhere: to scold “the Left” about “hypocrisy” and a lack of “tolerance.” This segment preceded an appearance by Sean Hannity on Fox & Friends—a guest spot plugged by President Donald Trump in a tweet (“@seanhannity on @foxandfriends now! Great!”). Many on Twitter were quick to point out that this is the same President who ridiculed a reporter with a disability. (Remember this?) I guess the point is that conservative media didn’t do a lot of squawking about that, and so Fox and other outlets shouldn’t be so upset about this.

That strikes me as over-reaching. What the Jim Carrey flap really is, is yet another example of the way Fox News devotes many, many segments to ridiculing liberals for being offended by Trump or some political issue, branding them as “snowflakes.” But a caricature of Sanders sends Fox into paroxysms of pain and hurt feelings that it can use for a 24-hour news cycle: let’s call it “weaponized snowflaking.” It’s phony outrage, programmed to make the Fox audience feel put-upon. When will its viewers figure out they’re just being manipulated?

Fox & Friends airs at 6 a.m. weekdays on Fox News.

[kentuckertv]

school walkout fox news gun control

School walkout on February 17, 2018 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Fox News targeted students in school walkouts for gun control On Wednesday morning, students all over the country left their schools for 17 minutes to commemorate the deaths of the students and staff of Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (one minute for each murder committed by the gunman), and to make an appeal for stricter gun control legislation. By Wednesday night, Fox News went gunning for the students, ridiculing their protest. Tucker Carlson devoted the first segment of his 8 p.m. hour to scoffing at the sincerity of the students, calling them dupes of the Democrats. He exhorted his viewers, saying, “You should be against this!,” as chyrons beneath the screen read “Political Props” and “The Left Is Exploiting Children.” Carlson continues to push the idea that the Stoneman Douglas students who’ve spearheaded this newly energized gun-control movement are too young, too immature, too stupid to do their own thinking on this matter.

At 9 p.m., Sean Hannity was doing his usual thing—extrapolating absurdity from fact. Beginning with the fact of the student walk-outs, he immediately jumped to the notion that, because Democratic politicians who joined the protestors had security details, all of them were “hypocrites.” If “gun-grabbing Democrats” (Hannity’s phrase) use security people, Sean thinks they are therefore “denying the same protection for American school children.” Hannity is very much in favor of armed teachers in schools, if you didn’t guess that.

Laura Ingraham followed at 10, and also followed the Fox playbook: Ascribe the event to another protest that Fox hated (“Don’t be fooled into thinking this was an organic outpouring of youthful rage,” Ingraham said, “this was a totally choreographed event organized by a group called Empower—it’s the youth wing of the women’s march”). She accused the students of being anti-education and of being “hysterical”: “Who needs Homer and history when you can get credit for screaming? … Students need more academic time, and less hysterics.” And then she revealed the true Fox News fear: “Democrats are using these kids to whip up enthusiasm for the mid-terms, 2020, and beyond, and of course for voter registration. It’s theater, but with real-world consequences.” There it is: voter registration is bad, and protest is never sincere—it’s “theater.”

Fox also gave air-time to conservo-nerd Ben Shapiro to say that “the media… are activating these kids, and putting them out on the front lines, and putting them in photo ops, so that they can essentially use them as political human shields.” (Hey students, diagram that sentence for me: Human shields for whom? The media? Talking heads like Shapiro? And shields against what? Not explained. D+, Mr. Shapiro.)

Fox News’ prime-time line-up–complete with replays of some of these segments on Thursday morning’s Fox & Friends--found ways to deny students all across the country any sense of purpose, intelligence, activism, the kids’ respect for the dead and civic responsibility, stomping on young idealism.

Tucker Carlson Tonight airs at 8 p.m., Hannity airs at 9 p.m., and The Ingraham Angle airs at 10 p.m. weeknights on Fox News. Fox & Friends airs weekdays at 6 a.m. on Fox News.

[kentuckertv]

black-ish NFL players kneel episode

Black-ish, ABC

A Black-ish episode about kneeling football players was yanked by ABC. Why? Variety has reported that ABC decided not to air a new episode of Black-ish whose plot includes a discussion of football players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem. The official word is that ABC and Black-ish show creator Kenya Barris had “creative differences” over the episode and mutually agreed to yank the episode that was titled “Please, Baby, Please.”

What’s really going on here? Variety has described the apparently-controversial scene as one in which Anthony Anderson’s Dre argue with his son Junior (Marcus Scribner) over the rights and merits of NFL players taking a knee to protest racial injustice. I haven’t seen the episode, so I can’t judge the quality of “Please, Baby, Please.” But on the face of it, it seems safe to assume that ABC did not want to walk into a potential mess. Ever since President Trump needlessly enflamed a big chunk of the country with his comments at an Alabama rally last year, the NFL protests have been a flash-point for all sorts of racial and political issues.

Potential business decisions factor into this. ESPN is owned by the same company that owns ABC: Disney. It’s possible ABC didn’t want to air something that might affect its sports programming in a negative way. Blackish has dealt with other controversial topics such as the n-word and police brutality. It may be that ABC decided the subject of kneeling football players was one controversy too many for the network. (The episode had been scheduled to air Feb. 27. ABC aired a rerun instead; the reason for the schedule change has only now been revealed.)

Given the quality and tone of Black-ish in the past, I think it’s likely that the show probably came down on the side of the rights of players to express themselves on bended knee. The idea that such a point of view would prompt ABC to become weak in its own corporate knees is another reminder of how fragile we’ve become over notions of potential offense and protest.

[kentuckertv]

love s3 netflix review

Love: Paul Rust, Gillian Jacobs. Netflix.

The best Love story has returned to Netflix Love returns to Netflix for a season that finds young lovers Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and Gus (Paul Rust) in a good place romantically. This in itself is a tricky challenge for a TV series: Where’s the conflict if things are going well for a couple? Turns out, this is no problem for the endlessly inventive Love. The new season as conceived by co-creators Judd Apatow, Rust, and Lesley Arfin takes full advantage of its Los Angeles setting, locating episodes in a wide array of places: backstage at the filming of a teen TV series; in L.A.’s underground wrestling scene; a weekend road trip to Palm Springs; and an emotionally exhausting wedding (not theirs).

In the past, Mickey has struggled with the realization that she’s an alcoholic, and her love life has been such a complicated, unhappy mess, she came to think she was a sex addict, too. In the new season, Mickey is sober and discovering that one big hurdle is feeling secure enough to admit she may actually be happy. You can feel in Jacobs’ performance everything that’s gone on with Mickey up to this point. Jacobs has made her character the kind of person who’s always ready to toss aside easy comfort to dive deeper into any situation or relationship. Being with Mickey can be thrilling–at any moment, she can be brashly funny, fumingly angry, or daffily romantic—which also means she can be exhausting. Jacobs has found a way to play that character in such a way that Mickey is endlessly surprising rather than easily irritating.

Gus is a writer and would-be director whose career has been going exactly nowhere; living in Los Angeles, surrounded by wealthy successes in the entertainment industry as he labors at a menial job as a tutor, hasn’t exactly making him feel any better about himself. A big chunk of the new season addresses the idea that, while he seems like the steady, sensible one in their relationship, Gus has always been just as deeply screwed up as Mickey is. In this final season of the show, there’s a reckoning with his own neurotic behavior, and Rust shows himself fully up to this challenge as an actor.

Love also delves more deeply into its supporting cast. Claudia O’Doherty gets a number of lovely showcases for her Bertie, Mickey’s whimsical Australian roommate. The idea is to make her something more than whimsical and Australian, and Love accomplishes that very well, as her relationship with her boyfriend–the dim, ursine, and almost-lovable Randy (Mike Mitchell)—takes unpredictable turns. There are also a couple of excellent episodes spotlighting Iris Apatow’s Arya, the teen TV star whom Gus tutors. Apatow—daughter of Judd—has a way of communicating a groundedness that’s wise, while maintaining a spikey adolescent edge. The new season of Love made me ache once again with nostalgia for its L.A. setting—few TV shows make the city look so cozy and inviting. If Mickey and Gus don’t remind you of passionate or frightening or warm moments in relationships you’ve had, you’re a cold fish indeed.

As it happens, I watched the final season of Love just before watching another upcoming Judd Apatow production—his staggeringly great, two-part HBO documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, coming up on March 26—which left me mightily impressed at the range of Apatow’s ability to tease truth, pain, and drama out of comedy. Spend this weekend binging Love—oh, and before you go searching the internet for it, I’ll save you time by telling you that the beautiful song that closes out the 10th episode is Loudon Wainwright III’s 1985 tune “Lost Love.”

Love is streaming now on Netflix.