Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 42

Y: The Last Man: We Need More

I just finished watching Y: The Last Man on Hulu, about a year after I should have watched it in the first place.  Why am I saying that?  It's because Y is a breathtaking, one-of-a-kind daring one season of a series, which warranted multiple seasons, but was inexplicably cancelled in October 2021 before the first season was over (all ten episodes are now up on Hulu).  To be clear, I get that the viewership sagged, as widely reported, and Hulu had other reasons for not continuing the series.  But given how groundbreaking the narrative was (based on a comic book I haven't read), it eminently deserved more story and screen time.  Or, to be less courteous, I think the cancelation was one of the most clueless moves in all of television history.

The overall story, in case you don't know it, is that the planet is hit by the death of all male mammals, except the son of a woman who is elected Speaker of the House (she's already a Congresswoman) and therein via line of succession becomes President, and his (the President's son's) male monkey.  We then follow a combination of political intrigue in the White House and various colonies of women in the United States who ultimately live and die by the sword, actually more usually guns.

This is a startling and provocative set-up for a narrative, and it amply succeeds most of time.  The dialogue is sharp and refreshing.  The daughter of the deceased Republican President (a man), comments on the progressive Democrat who becomes President that she's a "Rachel Maddow fever dream".  One of the women is who is leading one of the gang communities has a single mastectomy and flaunts it.  There are pitched battles, scientific attempts to figure out what happened -- why all the male mammals died -- and explorations of parent-child and sibling relationships in all kinds of ways.

I said "succeeds most of the time".  So what didn't work for me?  About halfway through the series, the action often shifted away from the White House to the Walking Dead-like hinterlands, and the scientific attempts to understand the calamity pretty much stalled.  I would have liked to see more Washington, DC and science, and less of the teenage girls carrying guns, under the sway of a nearly maniacal leader.

But the politics and the potential science and the sheer set up of the series was so riveting, that I very much want to see more, much more of this story.  I probably know just slightly more than you about how television programming in the streaming age works.  But, optimist than am I am, I'm holding out hope that I'll someday see at least a another season of Y.

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George & Tammy: Two Intertwining Stories

So, the wife and I saw George & Tammy on Showtime, and very much enjoyed it.  Neither of us are especially fans of country music, but we did also watch and really loved Nashville (the TV series) a few years ago.  So much so, that we went to a concert with some of the Nashville stars at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden.  (I guess we're secret country & western fans.)

Now, speaking for myself, I of course did know Tammy Wynette's blockbuster hit, "Stand By Your Man". But I'd never heard of most of other songs performed in George & Tammy, and the real joy of the limited six-episode series for me was the discovery of great country songs that were new to me.  Like "Two Story House," released by Tammy and George in 1980, with a catchy melody and a brilliant lyric (song written by Tammy, with David Lindsey and Glenn Douglas Tubb).

The story of George and Tammy --  portrayed memorably well in the song -- is actually very familiar, in reality and on the screen.  A famous male singer gets together with a talented newcomer female singer who is a big fan of his, and she soon eclipses the guy in fame and commercial success.  The personal lives similarly have those ups and downs, as they marry and break up (usually because the guy is an alcoholic) but they still love each other, to the very end.

But the performances of Jessica Chastain as Tammy and Michael Shannon as George were so incandescent and perfect -- including their singing --  that they made that old story very much vivid and alive.  And the particular ending of both the series and the true story of George and Tammy was presented so well in the final episode that whatever else you might think of the rest of the series, you'll think it was worth watching.

So bravo to everyone who made this series, and here's a video of the real Tammy and George singing "Two Story House".

See also Nashville in New York City: Reality Even Better than the Fiction

And here's about the closest I ever came to singing a country song ....

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Podcast Review of Kaleidoscope

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 347, in which I review of Kaleidoscope on Netflix.

Read this review.

See my in-depth video interview with Rufus Sewell about his role in The Man in The High Castle.

Check out this episode!

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Kaleidoscope: Right Up There with Kurosawa and Scorsese

Hey, I just saw a great movie on Netflix -- actually, not a movie, but nine episodes of a television series, each of which feels like a movie in itself, and they all fit together like, well, a kaleidoscope. 

And, this is the best heist story I've ever seen.  It has everything, a suitably complex plot, a story in which every character is memorable, all kinds of things that go wrong and sometimes right, a superb soundtrack, and scenes that will move you to tears.

[There's bound to be some spoilers ahead ... ]

Apropos a kaleidoscope, we're told at the beginning that the episodes can be seen in any order.  I saw them in the order presented on Netflix and listed on IMDb.   I have no idea if this was the best order, or indeed if there is a best order.  I will say, for whatever it's worth, that I thought the first and last (ninth) episodes were the weakest.  That's because the eighth episode, which takes place at the end of the story, was the best.  And even though I thought the first and ninth episodes were the weakest, I still think this was the best heist story I've ever seen on a screen.

I'm not going to reveal how many characters die and in what circumstances.  But I will mention two unexplained deaths and my best guesses as to who did the killings.

Let's look at FBI Agent Abassi's death first.  An old guy brushes past her on a New York City street, and she soon keels over and dies.  The characters with the most motives are the Triplets (whose bonds in Salas's vault were the object of the heist), Leo/Ray's daughter Hannah, and Roger Salas's son Brad.  Here's why: the Triplets want to stop the FBI's investigation into their business, Hannah is the one who got away with the money and she also doesn't want the FBI to continue looking into this heist, and although Roger is in prison his son Brad must know there is a lot more crime his father could be kept up the river for.   My best guess is: Hannah.  And if I had to rank the three, I'd say Hannah, the Triplets, and Brad, in descending order.  Hannah has more than one motive.  In addition to wanting to keep her money, she also wants to protect her father.

But speaking of her father, and even more important, who killed Leo/Ray?  First, we don't see him actually killed.  We see him, struggling to walk with Parkinson's, being stalked.  And we hear a shot fired.  So ... he easily could have fallen right before the shot was fired, with some good samaritan then tackling the gunman.  But who then was the shooter?  Not Hannah, who clearly continued to deeply love her father, in some of the best scenes in the series, by the way.  The Triplets really had no motive, especially given Ray's deteriorating condition. That leaves, by process of elimination, Roger's son Brad.  His motive was he blames Ray for ruining his father's life, and doesn't know Ray's true motivation.

By the way, not only was every character memorable, so was the acting.  Three that especially stand out:  Giancarlo Esposito as Leo/Ray gave the best performance of his career, even exceeding his outstanding work in Homicide and Breaking Bad.  Rufus Sewell, as superb and versatile an actor as you'll find, was perfect as the complicated, driven, highly intelligent villain and victim of the heist.  And Paz Vega as Ava was just perfect as Leo's indefatigable supporter.

This will be a series for the ages, right up there with the best work of Kurosawa and Scorsese.  Hats off to creator Eric Garcia, and the four directors.

my interview of Rufus Sewell about The Man in the High Castle

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Treason: Who Should Have Lived and Who Should Have Died

Just binged Treason on Netflix -- if you can call watching five episodes in a row really binging.  It's a top-notch MI6 British spy story, right up there with the very best of them.

Every important character has unpredictable twists and turns in their story, including the killing of a very major character, which I'll tell you more about after I alert you to spoilers below.  You'll be on the edge of your seat just about every minute, in a story that rips through London town just about as fast as you can keep track of.  And the political variables, including the role of Russia and poisons its agents so frequently administer, are pitched just right.  But--

[Ok, here's the alert about spoilers ... ]

There were two things I didn't much care for in the narrative.  One was a death -- the one of the very major character -- that needn't have been -- and the other was a death that should have occurred, at least in my humble opinion.

Adam -- as of course you know if you've already seen the limited series -- is the death that wasn't needed.  He could have been badly wounded, and laid up in the hospital, and that would have had the same effect of motivating his wife Maddy to go all out at the end.  It's true the pimest movers in the story are women, but that point could still have been made with Adam surviving.

And the woman who shot Adam dead -- CIA agent Dede -- should have been killed after her murderous act, by either Maddy, who had the greatest motivation, since Dede was her friend and Maddy loved her husband and Dede knew it -- or Kara, who as a seasoned Russian agent must have known better than to leave Dede alive and ever dangerous.   Although Dede won't exactly have a happy time of it, and her career may well be ruined with the downfall of Sir Martin, she deserved a more definitive fate.

But, hey, that's just me, and in addition to most of the narrative being so good, the acting was great, including Ciarán Hinds as Sir Martin (always rewarding to see him on the screen), Oona Chaplin as Maddy (same as Ciarán Hinds), and Olga Kurylenko as Kara (the only other time I've seen her was as a Bond girl in A Quantum of Solace, where she was memorable, too).  Charlie Cox also put in a fine performance as Adam, and a shout-out to Beau Gadsdon as Adam and Maddy's daughter Ella.

All of which adds up to: see Treason, you won't be disappointed.

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Echo 3 1.9: Yes!

A superb, break-neck speed, thoroughly satisfying episode 1.9 of Echo 3 up on Apple TV+ today.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Yes!  Prince and Bambi and their team finally liberated Amber from that prison she was in, but it certainly wasn't easy.  Interesting, as always, to see the slightly different but complementary roles Amber's husband and brother played in freeing her.

Bambi is the better battle strategist, calling shots on the move, on the fly, with piercing accuracy.  But Prince is the one who refuses to give up on the mission, even when Bambi rightly says that the mission and therefore Amber is in grave danger with the oversight towers that we took no longer in action.  The enemy tank could have ended the mission, and it was great to see the savvy and daring with which it was taken out.

So, what happens next?  Our three leading characters are still a long way from home, deep in enemy territory.  The Venezuelans know that it wasn't the Colombians who freed Amber, and the Venezuelans will be doing everything in their power to recapture Amber and kill the team who demolished their compound.  A big continuing question is what role the US government will play in all of this.  At the very least, they/we will need to unofficially help get Amber, Prince, and Bambi up in the air and back home.

So far, all three have survived, against incredible odds.   I hope we see them standing and back on American soil in the season finale next week.

See also Echo 3 1.1-1.3: Bondian Flavor and Pure Adrenalin ... 1.4 Welcome to the Jungle ... 1.5: Currents ... 1.6: Fighting Back ... 1.7: Your Mother Should Know ... 1.8: The Past

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The Mosquito Coast Season 2 Finale: Examining the Ending

Well, I saw the Season 2 finale of The Mosquito Coast on Apple TV+ late last night, and I was enjoying the episode immensely, until the ending, which I didn't like at all, because--

[Big spoilers ahead ... ]

Well, if you saw the episode, you'll know why.  Why kill Allie?

Let's look at this a little more closely.  First, is Allie really dead?  I have a fundamental principle about death of characters in my television reviews.  If you don't see the character's head blown off, or the character blown to bits, he or she may still be alive.  Actually, shows like 24 sometimes violated that rule, or came pretty close, so let's say that principle holds in 99% of television series.

So, what exactly happened to Allie?  He was shot in the back by Lee (I hate that character), but certainly was alive after that to be able to touch a button that blew up the whole building he was in.  So things look pretty grim for Allie.  But, since we didn't literally see him blown to bits, I'd say there's an outside chance he survived.

What we do see is Margot, Dina, and Charlie enjoying that Mosquito Coast island sometime later.  Allie wasn't with him.  But he could be back in a shack convalescing.  I don't know if I'd bet on that,  But it's certainly possible.

There's been no announcement yet from Apple TV+ about a third season of The Mosquito Coast.  I suppose there could be a third season without Allie, and I suppose it could be as good as the first two seasons, but, at this point, I don't know if I would want to see the story continue without Allie.  He was -- I hope, is -- the central character in the narrative.

So the best I can say is maybe I'll see you back with here with reviews of Season 3, if there is one -- and, hey, I did entitle this review "Season" rather than "Series" finale -- and I'll certainly be here with reviews of a third season if it has Allie alive and well ... and well, he's never exactly been well, but you know what I mean.  

See also The Mosquito Coast 2.1: Thirteen Years Ago ... The Mosquito Coast 2.4: Motion Pictures on the Cave Wall ... The Mosquito Coast 2.5: Hitting the Fan ... The Mosquito Coast 2.6: Close Calls ... The Mosquito Coast 2.7: Sandpiper ... The Mosquito Coast 2.8: Hari Seldon in Mexico ... The Mosquito Coast 2.8: Dina's Story and Margot's Story

And see also The Mosquito Coast 1.1-2: Edgy, Attractive, Enlightened, and Important ... The Mosquito Coast 1.3: Broadening Horizons ... The Mosquito Coast 1.4: Charlie and the Gun ... The Mosquito Coast 1.5: Charlie and the Gun, Part II ... The Mosquito Coast 1.6: What Kind of Brother? ... The Mosquito Coast season 1 finale: I'm Well Bitten

See also my essay, Foundation, Dune, and LaPlace's Demon

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Three Pines 1.3-1.8: Unique and Wonderful Series

Continuing my reviews of Three Pines on Amazon Prime Video, having watched the concluding six episodes (1.3 - 1.8) of what I hope will be just the first season of many.

Because I really think this is a top-notch, outstanding detective show (note that I haven't read the novels upon which the series is based.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Some of the things I like most about this series:

How Inspector Gamache always tells the police on the scene, including his own team, to lower their weapons as he tries to talk the suspect/perpetrator down, i.e., to peacefully surrender.  It's a real pleasure to see a police detective who has such a strong belief in the possibility of logic winning the day.Alfred Molina's portrayal of Gamache is just superb.His team  -- Jean-Guy, Isabelle, and Yvette -- are excellent too.  I especially liked Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers -- an indigenous actress -- and her portrayal of Isabelle, but Rossif Sutherland as Jean-Guy and Sarah Booth as Yvette were fine, too.  All were fresh, delivering characters we haven't quite seen before on television.Speaking of indigenous people, the Crees were very well portrayed in this narrative. We're introduced to  a wide variety of people, of all ages, who play crucial roles with their wisdom and attitudes in solving the crimes, including the crime that weaves its way through all eight episodes, the murder of two young Cree adults.A great example of this wisdom is the difference between white pine needles and red pines needles, conveyed to Gamache, and central in his solving the above murder.And speaking of nature, it's beautifully captured in every episode.One thing I didn't like: Pierre getting the better of Gamache at the very end.  I suppose it's understandable, considering, again, Gamache's deep belief in rationally appealing to criminals to do the right thing.  But given that Gamache knows that his friend Pierre callously murdered Blue Two-Rivers, it still bothers me that he didn't search Pierre at gunpoint before walking away from him. I do hope/expect that Gamache will survive, given that he wasn't shot in the head and showed some signs of life at the end.  And I really hope and expect that we'll see the aftermath of that final scene in a season two of this unique and wonderful series.
See also Three Pines 1.1-1.2: Murder North of the Border, and More

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Good Way to Start off 2023

"The Soft of Your Eyes", song I wrote for Tina in 1968, just added to new, short "Best of Wrapped" Spotify playlist.

And see 16 other playlists "The Soft of Your Eyes" was added to in the past few years.

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The Mosquito Coast 2.9: Dina's Story and Margot's Story

An excellent, next-to-last episode of this season of The Mosquito Coast -- 2.9 -- in which we see and learn all kinds of things about Dina and her mother Margot.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Dina has quite a story, after she takes off in Adolfo's car. (Significant footnote: Adolfo later tells Allie, when he's questioning Adolfo about what happened to Dina, that Adolfo loves Dina.)  But Dina manages to stay in a fancy hotel, even have a room, enjoy the pool, and have an hilarious conversation with two latter-day Valley girls from the East Coast.  What all of this shows is that, however much Dina may want to get away from them, she's very much her parents' daughter.

And Margot has quite an adventure of her own, as the story of her and Richard twists and turns at least three times.  First, we think she's betraying Allie, in order to get her and her kids back to the safety and comfort of the U. S.  Next, we find out -- happily -- that's she's actually going to betray Richard, because she's still loyal to Allie, or at least thinks that he's her and the family's best ticket to safety.  (Romantic than I am, I still think she loves Allie -- that's why she asked him if he and she are over.  And note that he doesn't answer.)  But, finally, we find that Richard was on to her.  He escapes the trap, which means the U. S. government owes Margot nothing but anger about their wasted time.  And this in turn means that Margot and Allie and the family's only path to safety is the one they make -- the one being mostly made by Allie.

All of this is a great foundation for next week's season 2 finale.  No announcement yet from Apple TV+ about a season 3, but I'll 100% be watching and reviewing it if there is one.

See also The Mosquito Coast 2.1: Thirteen Years Ago ... The Mosquito Coast 2.4: Motion Pictures on the Cave Wall ... The Mosquito Coast 2.5: Hitting the Fan ... The Mosquito Coast 2.6: Close Calls ... The Mosquito Coast 2.7: Sandpiper ... The Mosquito Coast 2.8: Hari Seldon in Mexico

And see also The Mosquito Coast 1.1-2: Edgy, Attractive, Enlightened, and Important ... The Mosquito Coast 1.3: Broadening Horizons ... The Mosquito Coast 1.4: Charlie and the Gun ... The Mosquito Coast 1.5: Charlie and the Gun, Part II ... The Mosquito Coast 1.6: What Kind of Brother? ... The Mosquito Coast season 1 finale: I'm Well Bitten

See also my essay, Foundation, Dune, and LaPlace's Demon

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