Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 175

Dirty John 1.2: Motives and Plans

Well, Debra'a finally beginning to get wise to John in episode 1.2 of Dirty John, though she certainly took long enough.

A second indication that he's not really a doctor didn't get Debra there.  Nor did the insensitive
comment he made to Debra's nephew Toby (good acting by Kevin Zegers).  But Ronnie unfazed.  She puts a tracker on John's car, which so far turns up nothing untoward, and hires a private detective, who finds the trailer park where John had been living.   Toby and Debra go there, and find a woman who knows John all too well, and tells them he's never been to Iraq.

And just when we'd be justified in giving up all hope for Debra, she grows suspicious when John gets a letter from someone in prison, and he gets defensive and hostile when Debra questions him about it.  Finally!

But what is John really up to?  To somehow get all of Debra's money?  To kill her?  The answer resides in just how much of a psycho he really is.  At this point, anything is possible, and the episode ends with only Debra's mother having anything good to say about John, because she "loves" the way he treats her daughter.

Back to Debra's money: the two got married without (as far as we know) a pre-nuptial agreement, so if they got divorced now he'd be entitled to half of her money (and property, etc).  But if that's all he wanted, he could have filed for divorce already.   (By the way, I know this limited series is based on a podcast and a true story, but I'm familiar with neither, and I'm actually glad about that, because it makes the series more fun.)

What will John do when he learns Debra is on to him?  Will he change his plans (whatever they are) and do something worse, or just try to cash in and get out of there?  I''ll definitely be along for the ride, and back here with more reviews.

See also: Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted

 
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Ray Donovan 6.6: The Mayor Strikes Back

Tough going for Ray tonight in episode 6.6 - indeed, for most of the Donovans - not to mention Sam.

The evening starts off with someone breaking into Sam's apartment at night, and not raping her but knocking her unconscious in her bed.  Right before delivering a warning to Sam to keep her hands off the Mayor's race.

Of course, that's the last thing Ray would now do.  In a satisfying scene, he knocks the Mayor to the floor in the men's room of Hizzoner's gym.  But Ray has taken on more than he counted on.  I always thought the NYPD was more to be reckoned with the the LAPD - though what do I know - and Ray learns this the way he learns most things, the hard way.  He (again, of course) ignores the advice of his NYPD friend to leave to town.  And he winds up being knocked to the ground and taken into custody by the NYPD by the end of the episode.

Meanwhile, Bunchy's daughter is back with his estranged wife, after she admits that she never loved him, just to rub it in.  Terry has another success in the ring, but that could be the worst thing for him, since the lure of additional fights could well kill him.  Only Mick does ok tonight, with all the money he has in hand.

And so it goes with the Donovans.   The good news is no matter how often they and Ray's clients are knocked down or knocked unconscious, they alway manage to come back.  And I'll be back here next week with another review.

See Ray Donovan 6.1: The New Friend ... Ray Donovan 6.2: Father and Sons ... Ray Donovan 6.4: Politics in the Ray Style

See also Ray Donovan 5.1: Big Change  ... Ray Donovan 5.4: How To Sell A Script ... Ray Donovan 5.7: Reckonings ... Ray Donovan 5.8: Paging John Stuart Mill ... Ray Donovan 5.9: Congas ... Ray Donovan 5.10: Bunchy's Money ... Ray Donovan 5.11: I'm With Mickey ... Ray Donovan 5.12: New York

See also Ray Donovan 4.1: Good to Be Back ... Ray Donovan 4.2: Settling In ... Ray Donovan 4.4: Bob Seger ... Ray Donovan 4.7: Easybeats ... Ray Donovan 4.9: The Ultimate Fix ... Ray Donovan Season 4 Finale: Roses

And see also Ray Donovan 3.1: New, Cloudy Ray ... Ray Donovan 3.2: Beat-downs ... Ray Donovan 3.7: Excommunication!

And see also Ray Donovan 2.1: Back in Business ... Ray Donovan 2.4: The Bad Guy ... Ray Donovan 2.5: Wool Over Eyes ... Ray Donovan 2.7: The Party from Hell ... Ray Donovan 2.10: Scorching ... Ray Donovan 2.11: Out of Control ... Ray Donovan Season 2 Finale: Most Happy Ending

And see also Ray Donovan Debuts with Originality and Flair ... Ray Donovan 1.2: His Assistants and his Family ... Ray Donovan 1.3: Mickey ... Ray Donovan 1.7 and Whitey Bulger ... Ray Donovan 1.8: Poetry and Death ... Ray Donovan Season 1 Finale: The Beginning of Redemption


 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

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Outlander 4.5: Chickens Coming Home to Roost

All kinds of chickens and baser things coming home to roost in Outlander 4.5, another fine episode filled with Colonial culture and danger.

Measles and superstition were the real villains in this episode, as the illness fells a mother and her newborn baby - delivered by Claire - and her grandfather thinks the culprit was not ultimately an illness but a curse put his water by the native Cherokee.  Again, Outlander in 1768 portrays some of the irrationality that grips some of America today, where some people think illegal immigrants are the source of all the problems that beset our world.

Meanwhile, Jamie runs into Murtagh, who turns out to be an American revolutionary, or one in the making.  This is another kind of chicken coming home to roost for Jamie, who was warned by Claire that, as a landholder of land granted him by the Crown, he'd be on the wrong side of the American Revolution, just a few years away.

But the best - at least, as far as time travel is concerned - was saved for last, as Brianna travels via the stones to the past in search of her parents, on a quest to warn them of the deadly fire that awaits them. As a chilling prelude to that, we have just seen the Cherokees burn the grandfather's house, after he kills the Cherokee woman healer who became Claire's mentor and friend.

The course of history never did run smooth, as I often say, especially when time travel is involved.  And I'll see you here next week after the next episode is on.

See also Outlander 4.1: The American Dream ... Outlander 4.2: Slavery ...Outlander 4.3: The Silver Filling ... Outlander 4.4: Bears and Worse and the Remedy

And see also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife ... Outlander 3.8: Pirates! ... Outlander 3.9: The Seas ...Outlander 3.10: Typhoid Story ... Outlander 3.11: Claire Crusoe ...Outlander 3.12: Geillis and Benjamin Button ... Outlander 3.13: Triple Ending

And see also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades

And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6:  Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

House of Cards Season 6: Animus in the White House

Well, I thought I'd begin my reviews for December, the last month of the year, with House of Cards Season 6, presumably the final season of the series that broke the hold of cable television in stunningly original content back in 2013, and would soon see streaming well surpass cable and network television as the cutting edge on the home screen.

This final season came with two all but insurmountable problems:

1.  Kevin Spacey is a great actor, and his Frank Underwood character one of the most memorable ever on any television screen.  But due to numerous allegations of sexual misconduct throughout his life, Netflix removed him from the series that Spacey, more than any other actor, had helped put in such triumphant play.

2.  Donald Trump was elected (via the Electoral College) President in 2016.  Other than Frank literally murdering people who got in his way, Trump is in most ways more horrendous and pettily conniving that Underwood.  Life, in other words, surpassed art, before the sixth season even began.

Yet, somehow, against all those odds, the sixth season of House of Cards succeeded.  Although I missed Frank, Claire (peerlessly performed by Robin Wright) amply filled the role, as someone as brilliant, manipulative, and murderous as her late husband.  And, as a woman, Claire added a whole new feminist dimension to the story.  She cleverly turned her battle for survival and success into a battle for women in what is still a man's world, politically.

There are all kinds of surprises in this sixth season.  I won't be spoil any of them for you.  I will say that we see a lot of old scores settled, vivid new characters in high gear, and it was great to see Petrov again (he's much better than Putin, as far as I can tell).

Everyone says this is the last season of the series.  It even says so on the poster.   But, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see another season somewhere down the road.  Indeed, I'd be delighted.

See also House of Cards Season 1: A Review ... House of Cards Season 2: Even Better than the First, and Why ... House of Cards Season 3: Frank, Claire, "Putin," and Superb ... House of Cards Season 4: Trump and Frank ... House of Cards Season 5: Reality Less Alternate

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Homecoming: Memory Spliced, in Ten Short Parts

A powerful, unusual, vexing yet ultimately satisfying short series on Amazon Prime - ten 30-minute episodes - created and directed by Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail (with Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz), starring Julia Roberts, with great supporting acting by Boardwalk Empire's Bobby Cannavale & Shea Whigham, and Stephan James, whom I've seen here for the first time.

The plot concerns a government contractor with a plan for PTSD soldiers - treat them with a drug that will make them forget the memories that are unraveling them, with the result that they will be whole and happy again.  Julia Roberts plays social worker Heidi, with a heart and a brain.  Cannavale is her boss Colin, in charge of the project.  Whigham is government investigator Thomas looking into this.  And James is Heidi's patient Walter, beginning to fall in love with her, as patients in therapy often do.

But that's the best of what's happening.  The worst, we soon discover, is that four years later, in 2022 (the present are the Spring months of 2018), Heidi has lost all of her memories of working in Homecoming, and Walter is nowhere to be found.  We're now not only in Mr. Robot territory - one of differentiating truth from lies, what's real from what's implanted - but in Chris Nolan's pathbreaking world of Memento. 

And Homeland delivers, with one of the most memorable performances ever delivered anywhere by Julia Roberts, a storyline that surprises and yet all fits into place, and even an ending that's good for your heart.  Cannavale is suitably megalomaniacal yet vulnerable,  Whigham is aptly dogged and a little clumsy, and James has a winning quality, making it not surprising that Roberts' Heidi has reciprocal feelings for him.   Hats off to all concerned, including whoever came up with the square and letterbox screens, as a way of showing limited and full memories.   I predict that by 2022,  Homeland will become as much a classic as is Memento.

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Sneak Peek at the Batavia Sessions

Just a quick note to let you know that Twice Upon A Rhyme - digital as well the original 1972 vinyl released on HappySad Records - is now up on Bandcamp. And ...
I know that many of you have been clamoring to hear some of the songs I recorded at the Batavia Sessions October 31 - November 2 for Old Bear Records.  Here are two of them - Samantha and If I Traveled to the Past.  (These are rough mixes, with stuff likely to be added.)  Chris Hoisington produced and did the harmonies,; Jeremy Thompson guitars, mellotron, and stand-up bass; Steven Padin drums and piano.Music Samantha If I Traveled To The PastMORE MUSICPress

"PAUL LEVINSON WRITES SONGS THAT ARE CATCHY AND COLORFUL. WITH A STORIED CAREER THAT INCLUDES WORKING WITH SONGWRITING LEGEND ELLIE GREENWICH, LEVINSON RELEASED FOLK AND POP GEMS IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES. FANS OF SIMON AND GARFUNKEL, DEL SHANNON, BRIAN HYLAND, SPANKY AND OUR GANG, THE ZOMBIES, THE VOGUES, AND STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK WILL LOVE LISTENING TO PAUL LEVINSON."— Modern Music Maker, Mar 23, 2018

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Liberty Loves Reason: Trees, Freedom, and Rationality

The full title of this 45-minute documentary - Liberty Loves Reason: The Evolved Wisdom of Trees versus Identity Politics and Political Correctness - shows exactly what you're getting into if you watch it, which I very much recommend:  a brief on the importance of reason in this, our hyper-partisan age,  and its connection to the biological, evolutionary basis of our and all living knowledge and intellectual faculties, as well exemplified in trees.

Well, maybe this documentary is a little more than that.  It argues, as did John Milton, that truth and falsity must be free to fight it out in the marketplace of ideas.  This means that excluding any patently untrue idea is a dangerous thing to do, on even the slim chance that it may be not be untrue, for that would result in truth not falsity being excluded.

In the realm of trees and all non-human organisms, nothing is ipso facto excluded.  Instead, strategies are tested (unconsciously, for trees).  If they survive, their lack of falsity has been demonstrated, at least to a point.  In trees and other living, non-human things, these "ideas" will continue to be employed in this way, unless and until something in the environment changes and the strategy no longer works.

Karl Popper and his evolutionary epistemology is most and correctly associated with this (though Percival should have mentioned that Donald Campbell most developed that term, in a brilliant essay in The Philosophy of Karl Popper two-volume anthology published in 1974.   Ray Scott Percival might have also mentioned Popper's "paradox of tolerance" (from Popper's 1945 The Open Society and its Enemies), lately used as a justification for censoring hate speech.  I always thought that Popper's argument that allowing speech that preaches the destruction of a free society should be not be allowed, since such speech is designed to destroy the free society, misses the point that the free society is compromised the instant it censors anything, including noxious hate speech.  (See my Government Regulation of Social Media Would Be a Cure Far Worse than the Disease for more.)

But despite these inevitable imperfections, Liberty Loves Reason is a lushly imagined and photographed masterpiece, beautifully scored, of an intellectual argument absolutely crucial to these our dangerous times.  Eminently worth your time.


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Twice Upon A Rhyme on Bandcamp

Twice Upon A Rhyme by Paul Levinson Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Dirty John 1.1: Hunter and Hunted

Well, how can you resist watching a series starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana?  Tina and I couldn't, and we were glad.  At least so far as the debut episode, on Bravo last night.

Debra Newall (Britton) has been married four times.  She has two daughters (Ronnie, played by Juno Temple, excellent in Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams) and Terra (played by Julia Garner, who was so good in Ozark) to show for it.  That, and, against all odds, an apparently open, questing heart.

John Meehan (Banner) is some kind of anesthesiologist (maybe a doctor, maybe a nurse, maybe both? not clear).   He's incredibly attentive and apparently caring of Debra.  But there's something not quite right about him.   After a first date in which he jumps in Debra's bed - he leaves when she asks him to get up and go into another, less intimate room with her - he and Debra strike up a relationship.  But he shows up late to an important event, with she dressed to the nines, and he in scrubs.  And neither daughter can stand him.

Nonetheless, she marries him.  And that's where the first episode ends, leaving us certain that some kind of serious no good is going to come from this.  And part of that is what Debra is up to.  Is she in some sense leading John on, for some purpose as yet unrevealed to us?  She seems too smart to be taken in by whatever his game is.  And her siding with John against her daughters doesn't quite add up, either.

There's clearly something evil lurking behind this, and it will be fun to see from whom, and on whom it's inflicted.

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Ray Donovan 6.5: Politics in the Ray Style

Haven't had a chance to review the past few episodes of Ray Donovan - I thought they were excellent - but I'm back with a review of 6.5, on earlier tonight.  I thought that was excellent, too.

The thread I liked the best was Ray applying his customary strategy to put Sam's Mayoral candidate Anita back in the race.  By "customary," I mean any combination of putting opponents in embarrassing situations, threats of violence, actual violence, and the like.  Tonight, it was all violence, some of it real, some feigned. 

Lena's roughs up one of her women.  Later, a hooded Daryll pretends to be beat her up in the park.  All so Anita who appears on the scene at just the right time can play the hero.  Classic Ray - this time applied to politics not show business.  But, hey, there's not much difference between the two anymore, if ever there was, is there?

Everybody's happy (except, no doubt, Anita's opponent).  Especially Anita, whose happiness spills over into wanting to sleep with Ray.  He doesn't want to, but - again, classic Ray - he obliges with some semi-rough sex.  That, unlike the incident in the park, at least was real.

As I said in earlier reviews, I think Ray and Ray Donovan have gained a real energy in their move to New York City.  The place tingles with energy.  Every time I'm away, even on Cape Cod which can be paradise on Earth, I feel like I've been plugged back in when I get back to New York.  Much like the character and the series.

And I'll try not to miss too many more reviews of this fine season.

See Ray Donovan 6.1: The New Friend ... Ray Donovan 6.2: Father and Sons

See also Ray Donovan 5.1: Big Change  ... Ray Donovan 5.4: How To Sell A Script ... Ray Donovan 5.7: Reckonings ... Ray Donovan 5.8: Paging John Stuart Mill ... Ray Donovan 5.9: Congas ... Ray Donovan 5.10: Bunchy's Money ... Ray Donovan 5.11: I'm With Mickey ... Ray Donovan 5.12: New York

See also Ray Donovan 4.1: Good to Be Back ... Ray Donovan 4.2: Settling In ... Ray Donovan 4.4: Bob Seger ... Ray Donovan 4.7: Easybeats ... Ray Donovan 4.9: The Ultimate Fix ... Ray Donovan Season 4 Finale: Roses

And see also Ray Donovan 3.1: New, Cloudy Ray ... Ray Donovan 3.2: Beat-downs ... Ray Donovan 3.7: Excommunication!

And see also Ray Donovan 2.1: Back in Business ... Ray Donovan 2.4: The Bad Guy ... Ray Donovan 2.5: Wool Over Eyes ... Ray Donovan 2.7: The Party from Hell ... Ray Donovan 2.10: Scorching ... Ray Donovan 2.11: Out of Control ... Ray Donovan Season 2 Finale: Most Happy Ending

And see also Ray Donovan Debuts with Originality and Flair ... Ray Donovan 1.2: His Assistants and his Family ... Ray Donovan 1.3: Mickey ... Ray Donovan 1.7 and Whitey Bulger ... Ray Donovan 1.8: Poetry and Death ... Ray Donovan Season 1 Finale: The Beginning of Redemption


 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music