The PolyBlog

Series premiere: Clarice

February 13 2021

The Silence of the Lamb series is hugely popular, certainly iconic, and downright creepy. The SotL movie won Best Picture, the last sequel to do so. And to be honest, not one of my favorites. I like Jodie Foster in it, sure, but I find Anthony Hopkins too over the top to be enjoyable. Yet, I confess, I loved the original Manhunter, having watched it way back on The Movie Network when I was living at home. Hard to belive Gil Grissom from CSI (i.e. William Petersen) was able to pull it off, in retrospect. But I liked it better.

Still, nevertheless, with a new series with Clarice as the main character and her life one year after catching the serial killer, I wanted to give it a go. And, not unexpectedly, it is pretty well done.

There is a LOT of backstory going on in the show, with Clarice having trouble after the events, she’s avoiding the one woman she was able to save, her therapy isn’t going well, etc. But she wants to hunker down in the basement of the FBI doing data entry. Until the mother of the woman she saved is appointed Attorney General, and wants her to be on a taskforce with the agent she bested the last time out. Oh, won’t that be fun!

Clarice is played by Rebecca Breeds, and she has this southern drawl going on that is strangely alluring and a strong presence. She talks slower than her counterparts, slows down the chatter, and you find yourself listening even more. I didn’t watch The Originals, but I’m almost tempted to go back and see her in it.

Her immediate boss is played by Michael Cudlitz, and while he has been in a lot of shows over the years, almost none of them were ones I watched. Yet he was familiar. I was combing his bio, starting to think I was just mistaking him for someone else until I got all the way back to Band of Brothers. Wow, would NOT have linked him to that in a million years as Denver. Anyway, his acting is fine, but his character is a giant cliché. Oh, she’s no good, let’s wash her out, blah blah blah. Cuz, you know, every top notch investigator must be really smart to get that high but a complete idiot for how to deal with subordinates. Riiight.

There are a bunch of secondary characters, including a familiar face from Designated Survivor, for example, but overall, nobody super solid in EP1 who is likely to make it through the season (yep, I’m predicting at least one to die before too long).

Anyway, I’ll find out. Because I’ll be watching and I bet others will be too. Good show.

Series premiere: Call Your Mother

February 13 2021

The simple premise of the show, Call Your Mother, is that a mother in Iowa is worried about her two kids who are now living in L.A. The daughter is the oldest, and Mom isn’t really worried about her, she has a job, an apartment, a boyfriend, etc. No, Mom is worried about the younger son that she’s been calling for 4d and who isn’t calling her back. So Mom flies to L.A. to check on him, and the obvious long-term result will be her moving there. In the opener, she meets the daughter’s gay roommate, son’s girlfriend, and a hot AirBNB owner that she’s renting an apartment from…

Yes it’s a sitcom, and while it isn’t uncommon for pilots / premieres not being able to make me laugh, the complete lack of chemistry for ANYONE in the show is surprising.

Kyra Sedgwick plays the mother, and she’s often hit and miss with me. I confess, I HATED her on the Closer and lasted only an EP or 2 before bailing. But others loved her, and she went 109 EPs. I liked her way back in Something To Talk About, even though the show sucked, even compared to the song. Here? I found her more embarrassing as a character…borderline pitiful as she has her empty-nesting identity crisis. Which is only resolved with her maybe staying because her kids “still need her”. Actually? They don’t. But whatever.

The daughter and son are played by Rachel Sennott and Joey Bragg, and while they may grow into the roles, they have zero chemistry together. Yet that is the second leg of the show — that they grew apart and Mom wants them to kiss and make nice-nice. Yawn.

For supporting cast, Austin Crute plays the gay roommate, with some funny lines, but I liked him better in Daybreak. The son’s gf is played by Emma Caymares, and her role is beyond confused. Confident? Stylish? Worldly? And she’s with the kid who plays video games with no real ambition or charm. Riiiiight. Plus she is just all over the place without him, depending on who she is interacting with … superficial, deep, charming, rude. Weird.

The only real bright spot in the whole show is Patrick Brammall as the AirBnB owner. He seems solid, consistent, right up until he hits on Kyra’s character. She’s clearly a mess, he’s a THERAPIST and can see the warning signs, but he’s sucked right in. Supposedly. Too bad, her pursuing him might be an interesting plot. Not enough to stick around, but interesting.

In the end, it isn’t funny, not great acting by anyone, and there’s almost no chemistry. The third-string apt owner is the only “plus”, so I’m out, and I predict cancellation along the way.

Two steps forward, one step back

February 13 2021

I’ve posted already about trying to wrap my head around likely wearing compression socks for the rest of my life, etc., but quite frankly, I’m doing more “compartmentalization” of it than anything. I need to get through wound care first.

On the positive side, things seem to have “clarified” as to what was going on with the leg. As I mentioned previously, the area that is affected is an area with a bunch of scars from when I was a kid. Whenever I skinned my knee or scraped a shin, it was likely that leg. I lead with it, I protect the rest of my body with it, I fall more on that one than not. So it got dinged pretty well. One time dirtbiking, I smacked it pretty well with a foot peg on an ATV, and it was a giant black bruise for about a month. Probably should have had that looked at, but didn’t. Shake it off, just a flesh wound, right?

And now, as an adult, my streak continues. If I ding it, it is likely in the same spot. I hit it with the dishwasher door, my car door, or, a few months ago, the side of a laundry basket in the dark. No biggie, except, well, over the last few years with my weight and pre-diabetes stuff, I have swelling in my legs ergo more water, and that area has blistered. I thought it was just blistering on the scars, but now that things have healed mostly, you can see that it is around the scars, certainly, and in the area, most definitely, but in addition to the scars, I have simple blisters here and there. They fill with water, I catch them on something, they break, they leak, they dry out, they annoy me for a few weeks, they heal, the cycle starts again. Except this last time, I scraped a pretty big area and they didn’t heal very well. Partly the excess water, partly my age, partly that I’m not doing as regular a routine for early morning showering and scrubbing for personal hygiene as when I actually ever left the house. Not egregiously so, just not as regularly. Often because my sleep was screwed up, I was up late, I overslept, rushing to start work, no time some mornings for proper cleanse. Slam, bam, rinse you, ma’am? I dunno, there’s probably a rhyme there somewhere. Regardless, call it some form of leg ulcer, and move on.

And this time it got infected. Wound care and compression has helped heal it, and seeing the benefits of the wound care has shown me that this thing was NEVER going to heal on its own. Even without the infection, I’ve had proper care on it with compression for 3 weeks and there is still a small area that is “open”. But it’s working. One giant leap forward, right?

Plus, while I compartmentalized the future for compression socks, I finally got my doctor’s office to forward a prescription for custom-fit socks after two weeks of calling in order for me to now go on Tuesday to get them. Yay. Okay, not really “yay”, just “tick”, it’s moving forward. And I do have a tube compression on the left leg that is removable, which is nice to give me a break at night.

But if progress comes on one front, I normally see backsliding somewhere else. And in this case, it’s not that far away. I took antibiotics for 10d, seemed to fix me up, but this past week, my wound has been a bit sorer than normal. It’s covered, so I can’t monitor it daily, only every 3d, and on Monday they removed a bunch of dead skin around it, so not surprising that when they were done, it was quite red and annoyed. On Thursday, that redness seemed even more pronounced and a bit “wider”. The nurse marked the edges of it with a pen to see if it goes any further by Sunday (my next wound care treatment), but she felt it was a tad warmer than the rest of the area, so I took pics (as I do every visit), and forwarded a series of 6 photos to my family doctor. I then had a phone appointment this afternoon with a resident in the clinic and it was great. She agreed it was prudent to continue the antibiotics just in case, and although I’ve been on them before, it seems like a prudent risk. I don’t know that I would do the same ones again anytime soon, as I’m risking resistance, but once more into the fray. So I have antibiotics for another 14d. If I get flushed, nauseated, pain, shivers, etc. in the next 48h before the antibiotics take hold, I have to go to the ER. Fun times.

Two steps forward, one step back.

Which also means that I’m self-conscious now. Almost like memes about COVID. Wait, I have to watch for shivers? Well, I’m cold right now, what does that mean? Or my wound is giving me a sharp pain right now, what does that mean? Generally, it means I’m sitting in a cold basement AND I need to stretch my leg again that has been in the same position for an hour. Doofus. I’m supposed to stay vigilant, not paranoid.

On the other hand, Jacob and I binge-watched Captain American, Captain Marvel, and Iron Man 2 today, plus started a medium-sized Lego project, so it was a good day overall. Close two compartments, open another, onward!

Series premiere: The Great North

February 12 2021

There’s a strange “deadcat bounce” to some comedy shows. If you watch the first one, and it isn’t that funny, but okay to watch, and then watch a few more episodes, you often find that the jokes you didn’t think were funny the first time are not bad when you understand the full context for them.

In other words, once you get past the initial “kersplat” of a premiere, there’s a deadcat bounce to the second or third EPs that work just because you already know the characters and the writers don’t have to dump tons of exposition into the dialogue.

The Great North might be one of those shows. I watched EP1, and as an animated “adult” comedy show, I was expecting to see it be either really lame or just ripping off other shows. But I confess I found it kind of new. Not “Schitt’s Creek” / “Corner Gas” new, which would be bad in my view (I hate both shows’ style of so-called humour with a passion), but more the Simpsons’ in Alaska with older siblings.

It’s about a rugged family living in Alaska, and there’s a great line at the start to explain the Dad’s approach to life:

“Yeah, all right, I’ve chopped this month’s wood, mended the fishing nets, canned a batch of pepper jelly, and brainstormed my Hallowe’en costume. I think people are going to love me as Sully from Monster’s University. And it’s 5 a.m. The kids will be up soon. Oh, I almost forgot to stare with wild wonder at Alaska’s majesty while whispering ‘Hot Dog’. Hot Dog.”

Beef, the Dad, is voiced by Nick Offerman (Ron from Parks and Recreation), and he’s awesome.

The main protagonist in the story though is the daughter, Judie, voiced by Jenny Slate. She’s also awesome, and while it is hard to translate comic timing from SNL to an animated show where they manipulate the audio to match the animation, she does a great job giving Judie some range.

Other voices include the oldest son Wolf (Will Forte, SNL), his fiancée HoneyBee (Dulcé Sloan, The Daily Show) from San Francisco, the next brother Ham (Paul Rust), and youngest brother Moon (Aparna Nancherla). Megan Mulally and Alanis Morrissette also drop by as recurring characters (Alanis as herself, and I don’t recognize her voice AT ALL).

There are a constant supply of dry bits throughout the entire first EP. A moose that gets into the house, Judie talking to Alanis about her life plans and grabbing life by the ass, with a butt cheek in each hand, heck I even enjoyed a passing reference to a dock woman who wants them to buy Tupperware because if she doesn’t sell enough, she’ll owe thousands of dollars to her rep, Cheryl. I admit the first plot was probably ridiculous, as most animated shows are, but having Dad and the kids pretend that Mom was eaten by a bear rather than ran off to Pittsburgh with a guy named Marcus, is a bit odd for an opening premise. Oh, it’s not the main thing, that’s Judie leaving the family fishing business to work in photography at the mall.

But I laughed multiple times, and not only is that rare with most comedies, it is RARER still in a COVID world. I’m in.

Series premiere: Big Sky

February 12 2021

I saw that there was a show about missing girls, and two women investigating, tracking down the truth. Originally, I thought it was some fact-based pseudo-documentary, which doesn’t really interest me most of the time. But it got some buzz and I flagged it for the future. Tonight I managed to get through EP1, and I would say it is more Twin Peaks than Law & Order or True Crime.

In the opener, a mild-mannered but psycho trucker kidnaps a part-time hooker, and then adds a couple of young girls to the mix who pissed him off on the highway. In the meantime, there are three women running around at a PI firm, a husband of one of them that the other is sleeping with, and a state trooper. Oh, and the guy’s mother, a couple of people in a truck stop, the girls’ mother, boyfriend, various spouses, etc.

I confess, I thought there would be a mystery. Instead, you see the bad guy from the start. No doubt, not unclear. There’s a giant twist at the end of the episode that takes it into the conspiracy theory world, something with human trafficking and who is involved, but other than that, it’s relatively routine. I’m not sure where to start for the acting.

Start with the investigators

Okay, there are two female investigators, with prior law enforcement backgrounds, a male PI, and their office manager. They’re the driving force for the investigation because when the two young girls go missing, they were on their way to see one of their family members. It’s a little confused, I forget which one, doesn’t matter. They have a link, they’re going to investigate their disappearance. Maybe it’s nothing, car break down, or cell phone reception, or an accident, something. Until the local state trooper mentions that they have a number of young girls who have gone missing from the area in recent months. Why would he mention it to a PI? He wouldn’t, but the story needs some prodding. VICAP shows most of them disappeared from truck stops (oh, yeah, the bad guy is a trucker).

For the two women, the scorned woman whose husband cheated on her is played by Vikings’ Katheryn Winnick. She did a decent fight scene, but other than that, most of her character in EP1 is stuck in PO mode. Yawn. The woman who slept with her husband is played by Kylie Bunbury, and I totally did NOT place her as the star of Pitch a few seasons ago. She looks totally different…almost mature, compared to the youthful ballplayer previously. I like her, I like her acting, not a whole lot for her to do in EP1 though. She has one scene of substance, but it’s one-sided, so hard to see how it evolves. They’re supported in the office by Dedee Pfeiffer, and while I have seen her in stuff all the way back to Cybill, I didn’t get much of a feel for her. She had a couple of good scenes, but very small.

Switch to the bad guys

So the killer truck driver is played by Brian Geraghty, and he has a long list of credits all the way back to the Hurt Locker. None of them really resonate with me, and while the show is written with him as a hen-pecked boy by his mother, the only scene where he shines is when interacting with the part-time hooker.

His mother, by contrast, is far creepier. Valerie Mahaffey usually comes off as a bit spacey, almost like she’s on perpetual drugs. Not just here, most of her roles where I’ve seen her! She’s obsessed with her son, and as I said, she seems scarier than he does. He’s just nuts; she’s creepy too.

Maybe the victims?

Natalie Alyn Lind plays the driver of the car that gets in a road rage incident with the trucker, and I struggled to place her. I knew it was some sort of superhero show, but I could not identify her as one half of the Strucker twins from The Gifted. She’s okay as an actress, not a lot of range in that show, but she was better (I thought) on Gotham. The others? Meh.

So that leaves me with investigators I can’t get much a feel for, a weak villain, and a victim that doesn’t scream “save me” so much as “will you stop whining if someone DOES save you?”. Harsh, I know.

But I don’t really care. If I didn’t know who the killer was, I might be able to care about what happened. A totally different style of story, but here it seems like an hour-long episode of exposition. Except for the last 30s, which was shocking as a twist, sure, but not enough for me to come back.

TV Grim Reaper is predicting renewal, and he’s likely not wrong, although I don’t know where the case goes after Season 1. But I won’t be watching…I’m already out after EP1, and I would vote for cancellation.