Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 209

The Deuce: NYC 1971 by way of The Wire

I thought, what's not to like about The Deuce, a new series,  now four episodes along, on HBO?  David Simon and George Pelecanos, best known for The Wire (unarguably one of the best series ever on television) are producers and writers, as is Richard Price (author of the superb Bronx novel, The Wanderers, as well as The Night Of, last year on HBO).  The Deuce even has two great actors from The Wire - Gbenga Akinnagbe and Lawrence Gilliard Jr. - and a riveting storyline about prostitutes and porn back in 1971, with lots of skin in the story.

So what's not to like about The Deuce?  Absolutely nothing - meaning, it's another example of outstanding and unique television, as only HBO and sometimes Showtime, have been able to deliver.  For HBO, The Deuce is very much in The Sopranos, The Wire, and Treme lineage -- meaning, memorable characters, searing narrative, served up with vivid color and style.

Richard Price and his way with words is in evidence all over.  Barely a conversation goes by without an apt phrase and a ringing line.  Simon and Pelecanos come across with their keen eye for detail, as a character mentions Penny Lane as a good song, and the songs playing the background are always bang-on right for the time.  I walked down or close to those New York streets, and nothing in The Deuce looked out of place.

And the characters and their vectors and actors are real and rewarding, too.   Gbenga Akinnagbe portrays a pimp with heart, Gary Carr with maybe a little less kindness but more than enough swagger to make up for it.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is just right as an older prostitute who wants to be in show business aka the porn industry; Margarita Levieva is very appealing as an NYU student who drops out (where I was student just a few years later - too bad I missed her) and into porn or prostitution or maybe not, it's still too to tell; and Emily Meade as the ingenue hooker under C. C.'s thumb (played by Gary Carr) and more, as they may be falling in love, or at least something, is just perfect.

Yeah, and I haven't even mentioned James Franco, who plays a bartender turned bar owner with a heart of gold - with money put up by the mob (with boss played by Michael Rispoli, who played nearly the same role years ago on The Sopranos, but doesn't look a day older) - as well as a gambler twin brother who's not quite as golden, with his typical sensitivity and splash.

The upshot: I'm looking forward to watching The Deuce for a long time.





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Curb Your Enthusiasm 9.1: Hilarious!

I don't usually review comedies - I'd rather just laugh than try to explain to myself and to you why I'm laughing, which is what it takes to write reviews of comedies - but after watching and reviewing tonight's episode of Ray Donovan, I need to write about something that lightens my soul.

Fortunately Curb Your Enthusiasm, back for its ninth season after who knows how long, more than fits the bill.  Like the prior seasons, it's flat out hilarious.  And I've got to say that Larry David is not only uniquely funny but pretty lucky, giving Jimmy Kimmel a central role in tonight's episode.  I mean, Larry could gave chosen the other Jimmy, and missed getting all the well-deserved good vibes that Jimmy Kimmel now brings to anything he says.

Meanwhile, Larry continues with his unerring sense of putting various kinds of truth up there for us to laugh at.  The Ayatollahs in Iran do have very similar sounding names.   Various plastic devices including soap dispensers are indeed infuriating to use (in a previous season, Larry railed against plastic packages that were impossible to open).  And his riff on why to hold open or not hold open doors for approaching people, based on an algorithm of how far away they are and what they look like, is right on.

Larry's strength has always been standing up for what we all want to, but getting burned by it.  He's completely right, also, that it's hard to get too upset about a friend's parakeet kicking the bucket, even if it has been saying "Seinfeld".

Speaking of which, it was good to see at least a few of his funny friends back in action, including Richard Lewis.  I'm looking forward to more, and I'll be watching every episode, but don't expect me to write about it.  This review may have been ok, but it didn't do the comedy the justice it deserves.

Hey, if you'd like to read a better analysis of Curb Your Enthusiasm, here's an essay written a few years ago by my daughter.

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Ray Donovan 5.8: Paging John Stuart Mill

Tonight's episode 5.8 of Ray Donovan was so terribly heartbreaking that I almost don't want to write about.  Maybe it's better that it just rest in peace, like Abby.

But I think there's a vitally important morale to this story, somewhere not that far beneath the surface, that needs to be said.  It's the cliche that where there's life, there's hope.  Words strung together become cliches because they contain some truth.

Ray, despite the horrible thing he did to that patient in New York, injecting him with meningitis so he would be disqualified from the trial, did indeed have the key to Abby's survival.  We saw on an earlier episode this season that the trial surgery worked on another patient.  I guess that's no guarantee that it would have worked on Abby, but we were shown the success with the other patient for a reason.

Ray's doing what he did to save Abby does not justify what he did to get Abby into the trial - the ends do not justify the means if the means cause someone else's death - but that doesn't negate the strong possibility that Ray may have saved her.

And that in turn means, I would say, that it's not only tragic that she took her life because it's tragic that she died, but it's also even more tragic because she took her life when perhaps she didn't have to.  Not that she would have wanted Ray to do what he did, or approved of it after he did it, but it must be said that, in light of what Ray accomplished back East, Abby may taken her life unnecessarily.

This is why I've always had mixed feelings about suicide being legal.  I'm a strong believer in adults doing whatever they please to themselves and their bodies, as long as that doesn't harm anyone else.  But like John Stuart Mill, who argued the same in the middle of the 19th century, I can't quite extend this to suicide.  Or, to put it otherwise, I think someone who prevents or tries to prevent someone from committing suicide is more likely than not to be doing the right thing.

But these are wrenching issues, personal as well as philosophical, and Ray Donovan deserves lots of credit for putting them out on there on our screens.


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See Ray Donovan 5.1: Big Change  ... Ray Donovan 5.4: How To Sell A Script ... Ray Donovan 5.7: Reckonings

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 Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan

A surprisingly tender and altogether superb episode 3.4 of Outlander tonight - in fact, the best of this season and among the best of all three seasons so far, I'd say.

There's not much that's been tender, at least recently, in Outlander.  But tonight Jamie, blackmailed to make love to one of the daughters - a virgin - of the lord of the manor, complies with the utmost of care of not only her body but her mind.  And, of course, Outlander being what it is, she becomes pregnant with Jamie's baby, marries an old goat, dies in childbirth, and Jamie has no choice but to shoot the old goat, who's on the verge of killing Jamie's baby.  (Ok, that part wasn't tender.)

But Jamie's love for his son is, as is his decision to stay and help raise the boy when Jamie's given the chance to go back home to Scotland.  And the prelude to his eventually leaving, where he offers himself to the man who both put his hand on Jamie's hand, then freed him from prison, was also one of the most quietly powerful of the series.

But in some ways the very best was saved for last.  As Jamie at last rides off to go up north and those centuries, Claire and their daughter are on a plane back home, or their home now, which is Boston.  And while these two modes of travel are happening, horse and plane, Dylan's "Hard Rain," nicely sung by someone who could be Claire or Brianna, plays soulfully in the background.  That's what I call a fine piece of television, or movie making, and indeed there is no difference when the television is this deeply engaging.

But, if ever the course of true love didn't run smooth, this story with its time travel soft and strange would be it.  The irony of Jamie finally getting to within striking distance of seeing Claire again, just as she's leaving those very future premises, is acute indeed.   With all those allusions in Dylan's song keeping them apart, they have a lot to overcome indeed.

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

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

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Small World at 59E59: Cosmic Ideas

Tina and just got back from seeing Small World on stage on East 59th Street, a profound and memorable series of conversations between Walt Disney and Igor Stravinsky pitting popular culture vs. high culture, the king of animation vs. the 20th-century successor to Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky.   I don't know if Herbert Gans, author of Popular Culture and High Culture, has ever seen it, but if he did, I'd bet he'd love it.   Tina and I did.

Disney and Stravinsky did meet at least once in 1939, but no one knows what they talked about. Presumably about Disney's slowly-recognized masterpiece Fantasia, which put Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" music to animation.  Small World imagines these two describing competing visions of art, debating commercialism and artistic sincerity, with wit and passion and, against all odds, not only anger at times but mutual integrity.

Mark Shanahan plays Disney with his customary style and depth.  Shanahan, whom I've seen at least a dozen times in various roles, has a talent for inhabiting those roles, and in the case of historical characters, bringing them to life in front of your eyes.  I never met Disney, but I left the theater thinking I'd had the rare privilege of meeting this extraordinary film pioneer, and hearing what he had to say.  The same for Stephen D’Ambrose's Stravinsky - this is the first time I've seen D'Ambrose on stage, but I'd welcome the chance to see him again.

Small World (written by  Frederick Stroppel, directed by Joe Brancato) doesn't pull its punches.  Disney's take on the Nazis - he condemns them, but thinks there would be some good in getting Hitler to laugh - is unflinchingly portrayed.  (Most of us would prefer him just erased from existence.) Stravinsky comes across as all too quick to be converted to commercialism as the years in ensue.  These are flawed men, far more than just the best of their opinions, as we all are.

They also lived in a time very different from ours, in which avenues to fame and success were far fewer.  But if the pursuit of stardom has gotten has more routes in the 21st century, it hasn't gotten any easier, which makes Small World as relevant today as it was all those decades, almost a century, ago.

Here's a disclaimer.  Shanahan is an old friend.  He was my Masters student years ago at Fordham University, where he now teaches some great courses.  He did audiobooks for two of my novels, The Consciousness Plague and The Plot to Save Socrates, and wrote an Edgar-nominated radio play for my novelette, The Chronology Protection Case.

Should you therefore take what I say about Small World with a grain of salt?  Hey, maybe someone should write a play about this issue, too, and I could play the part of I. A Richards, who says all acts of creation, including reviews, should be judged only on their words, and not on the bios of their authors.

So see the play - Small World, that is - you'll love it.



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Paul McCartney at the Nassau Coliseum

Paul McCartney ended his three-hour concert at the Nassau Coliseum tonight with "the love you take is equal to the love you make".  I can't think of any single songwriter, singer, or musician who has brought more to love to the world with his or her music in the past half century.

And McCartney continued do to that tonight.  Here were some of the highlights, for me -

"Let Me Roll It" - this of course is a Wings not a Beatles song, and it's a measure of how good Wings were, even though no Beatles, that this song still sounds so good.  This song came early in the concert, and signaled how alive McCartney and his music still is.  The four members of his band were fabulous, too.  So was "Band on the Run," later in the concert, another great Wings song, performed with power and verve, just as it should be."A Day in the Life," segueing into ... "Give Peace a Chance"!  Not only that, but McCartney said as an intro to the song that it was especially appropriate to "New York".  A quiet shot against Trump?  I hope so, but I loved the composite anyway.McCartney did the Lennon part of "A Day in the Life" with sensitivity and excellence.  One of the high points of the concert - which brought tears to my eyes, in fact - was McCartney's "Here Now," written, he said, after John's death, and embodying the feelings McCartney wishes he had conveyed to John when he was alive.McCartney's rendition of "Something" was likewise wonderful, starting off with just Paul on the ukulele and expanded to a whole Beatles-like performance with the band."Back in the U. S. S. R.," "Live and Let Die," "I've Just Seen a Face," "You Won't See Me," "I've Just Seen a Face," "Let It Be," were also especially outstanding - but, then again, so was just about everything in this concert.I'll end by mentioning again how great the backing band was - two guitarists, a drummer, and a keyboard guy, who sang as good as they played their instruments, which was tour-de-force indeed.

Tina and I had a wonderful time. We were on our feet almost the whole concert, singing, clapping, swinging with the packed house.  We met just a few months after Sgt. Pepper was released.  How sweet and magical it was to enjoy this tonight, some fifty years later.

In the aftermath of this concert, I'll especially miss the Beatles.  On the other hand, there's always the Beatles Channel on Sirius XM Radio, where the Beatles and their offspring are playing every minute. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Ray Donovan 5.7: Reckonings

An especially strong Ray Donovan 5.7 last night, in this especially strong - and heartbreaking - season, with at least four signal developments:

1.  Looks like Avi is off the show - at least, for a while.  It was close to being permanently, but Ray managed to refrain from killing his loyal and usually highly effective assistant and protector.  Fortunately, Ray is if anything nothing but clever, and he went the root of video recording his shooting Avi, rather than actually shooting him, and it managed to convince the LA head of the FBI.

2. Actually, I was surprised that he was convinced so quickly, but it turns out not to really matter, because that FBI head was soon shot as well - this time for real - by Daryll, in defense of his father, who's almost always in need of some quick defending.  But as Mickey knows, killing the LA FBI Chief brings huge dangers on to the family.

3. Terry telling the audience (and Ray) that he gave Abby mercy-killing drugs was one of the most heart-rending revelations in the whole Abby story, which is so sad as to almost make Ray Donovan another kind of show.  I know it's brought all kinds of possibilities to the show and the characters, but I still wish they hadn't done that.

4. But there was a least a little good news last night - or about as good as it goes on this show - with Bunchy getting out of jail.  He'll no doubt do something before too long which will land him in hot water again, but at least he's out and free now.

Hey, I guess Ray sleeping with Natalie is good news, too - it definitely is - and this is a story I'd like to see more of in the weeks ahead.   Ray Donovan continues as a truly unique piece of television, and though I can't say I always enjoy it, I can never not watch it.

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Available on Prime

See Ray Donovan 5.1: Big Change  ... Ray Donovan 5.4: How To Sell A Script

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


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Star Trek: Discovery 1.1: Klingons and Hitchcock

Star Trek: Discovery debuted on CBS tonight.  Alas, it won't be there long - in fact, after this first episode, viewers will need to pay for CBS All-Access to continue watching this latest Star Trek series.

Which is a shame, because the first episode has a lot of promise.  It takes place a few years before the original Star Trek - aka Star Trek: TOS - and so far has at least one familiar character, Sarek (well-played by James Frain) whom we got to see, a little older, in TOS, and even older in some subsequent movies, etc.

Discovery also has a feisty #1 - Michael Burnham (a woman, well played with style and spunk by Sonequa Martin-Green), a human woman, to be more precise, who was raised by Vulcans.  She thus combines of the best of both species, for reasons different from Spock, but also governed by logic on top of emotions, but much in play than Spock's.  In a decisive moment, she gives the Captain a Vulcan nerve pinch to knock her out, when she (the Captain) is not willing to listen to reason regarding an imminent Klingon threat.  That's what I meant by feisty.

And the Klingons are indeed a threat, emerging as the full-bodied danger we saw so well in TOS. But the Federation is not yet aware of this, so we're set in a tense Hitchcockian suspense rather than surprise mode.  (Hitchcock thought it was better movie-making to show people on a bus when we the viewers know a bomb is ticking away - suspense - than the surprise of a bomb shocking us with an out-of-the-blue explosion.)  We viewers in 2017 know what threats to humans the Klingons will soon pose, so Discovery is well positioned just on that verge.

Will I subscribe to All-Access so I can continue to watch this series?  My wife and I were tempted with The Good Fight, but decided that Netflix and Amazon Prime were enough great streaming to pay for. I'm a little more interested in this new Star Trek, but hey, we're still inveterate cheapskates, and we just paid plenty for great Paul McCartney tickets at the Nassau Coliseum.

So I can't tell you I'll see you next week here with another review - but, maybe, someday, if this new series shows up streaming somewhere else.  Or if someone in Hollywood picks up my novel below.


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Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad

A powerful and powerfully sad episode 3.3 of Outlander tonight, with both Claire and Jamie gaining freedom from each of their own prisons, separated by some 200 years in time.

So why was it so sad?

Well, Claire finally is free of Frank, and not because he finally wants to get divorced because he knows that Claire can never love him again, with Jamie forever in the way.  No, it's because Frank dies in a car crash.  And that's sad.  He was by no means perfect, even though he was having an affair all these years.  But he took Claire back, and raised Brianna as his own, and can you blame him for loving another woman, after what happened with Claire.  True, that wasn't exactly Claire's fault - she didn't choose to go back in time, and once back there, she had no way of knowing she'd ever see Frank again in her future.  But, still, she might have done more to banish Jamie from her heart, once she was back with Frank, though that's easier for a viewer to say than her character to do.

And Jamie is free, too - or, at least, no longer in prison.  Again, he now has a better chance of going back up to those stones and trying to find Claire in the future, now that he's left that prison and its rats behind.  But, will he?

The coming attractions suggest that it will be Brianna who goes back in time, not Claire, though that's not clear.  But what's to stop Claire from going to the stones again, especially if she's back in England with Brianna?  I guess it's also not clear if she'll go back to England now, either - but is her hard-earned profession as doctor truly more important to her than finding Jamie?

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

See also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ... Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ...

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

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Salvation: Plans A and B and more

Salvation was shown on CBS this summer - finale was just this past week - but binge-junkie that I am, I binge-watched the whole 13-episode run over the past few days on Amazon Prime. And this series is binge-watchable and excellent indeed.

The premise or starting point is actually the least original part of the story, one we've seen several times before: an MIT student discovers a deadly asteroid is heading towards the Earth, due to arrive and likely render us into extinction in less than a year.   But the series really takes off from there - figuratively and literally - and delivers all kinds of surprises and lessons, just what a good science fiction story should do, including -
an Ethan Musk kind of billionaire, working on not one but two ways of countering the impending catastrophe - an "arc" (named Salvation) that can get 160 or some number like that of people off this planet, with a view towards setting up shop on Mars or anywhere the human species can continue; and a device, separately launched, which can pull the asteroid enough off-course that it avoids the Earth (crashing into the asteroid won't work because the resultant pieces will still take out a lot of the Earth's population)a Hillary Clinton type of President in office, who's beset by people high up in the government who want to kill hera Russia a lot like the one we have today, though more on the verge of attacking the U. S if provokeda top-notch mainframe computer - reminiscent of the one in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - though not sentientall manner of loving and not-so-loving relationships, with characters who manage not to be cartoonish On the last point, Jennifer Finnigan does an excellent job as Grace, one of the central female characters (and it's good to see she got over Barry from Tyrant).  Ian Anthony Dale puts in a similarly strong performance as Harris - he's Grace's boss in the Department of Defense - and it's always good to see Tovah Feldshuh (this time as President) and long since time that we saw John Noble (Fringe) back on television again.  Charlie Rowe (the MIT student) and Jacqueline Byers make an appealing couple struggling with a relationship as they each struggle in different ways to prevent or do something about the end of the world.  But my favorite is Santiago Cabrera as Tanz, the billionaire computer-genius high-tech quick-witted space-engineering mastermind - so good I'm sorry he's not with us here on this Earth right now, even without an asteroid rapidly approaching.

Top notch science fiction on television, highly recommended, and I'd watch a second season right now if it existed.


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