Very, very proud of myself for cramming all this media consumption in between mountain bike races, track meets, spring concerts, the NBA playoffs, and Greta getting honored as a senior every other night! To be fair, the books and TV were mostly started in April (or March!) but finished in May.
TV
Survivor, S44 — CBS | With the Writers Strike in full swing, I’ve heard that the granddaddy of reality TV is expanding to 90 minutes next year! This season of hour-long episodes was worth most minutes. Great cast, skilled players steeped in the game’s history, and just enough idiots to keep you gasping each week. I’m never quite sure how the jury eventually decides to crown the champ — the criteria certainly change from season to season — but the journey is always enjoyable.
Ted Lasso, S3 — Apple TV | Season 3 started to jump the shark a little for me, really expanding its storylines to cover all sorts of stuff you don’t typically associate with a mid-level English football club — from depression to bisexuality. Ted remains his homespun, droll self, always quick with a non-sequitur or a pun, but it’s the supporting cast who really shines.
Succession, S4 — HBO | Totally appreciated the savage satire of this drama, but don’t like how beloved it was by critics, as if turning what is essentially the Murdoch family into a fictional TV series somehow makes what is happening IRL more bearable. Having worked in a network newsroom on Election Night, I can say the scenes with executives huddling before making world-altering “calls” based on exit polls are indeed real. But I never saw anyone snort coke behind a whiteboard.
Live Theater!
Jagged Little Pill — Proctors Theater in Schenectady | Really enjoyed singing along under my breath to all the hits from Alanis Morisette’s seminal 1995 album, but as a theatrical production, I thought this was lacking. Way too loud, for starters. And while the best singer sounded the most like Alanis, the entire artistic exercise felt a little too overreaching. These were one young woman’s personal songs — to extrapolate them into something that attempts to cover the emotional spectrum of an entire dysfunctional Connecticut family just didn’t work for me.
Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations — Proctors Theater in Schenectady | Two live theatrical performances in one month! Our friends had discounted tickets through his job at Union College so we tagged along for this one. I knew some of the songs, but not all 30+! At 2:35, it was 30 minutes too long, but an awful lot happened to the group — and the world — during their decades of making music.
Movies
Air — Amazon Prime | This movie may as well have been green-lit just for me. And Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, two dudes from Boston almost exactly my age. I got goosebumps during scenes that imagined what it must have been like for Nike execs to risk everything on the promise of Michael Jordan. He truly changed not only the game of basketball, but the way athletes were marketed, their share of the spoils, and so much more. As a fan, I remember just never doubting that he’d win every big game. That kind of faith can sell a lot of shoes and other merch!
The People We Hate at the Wedding — Amazon Prime | Kristen Bell, Ben Platt and Allison Janney! But that’s about the only exclamation point this film earns. Some laughs, but pretty horrible people acting out as they attend the wedding of their daughter/half-sister in London.
Ticket to Paradise — Amazon Prime | Been meaning to watch this Julia Roberts/George Clooney comedy for awhile, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. It was a solid C, at best. But the stars look great and Bali always films well.
Under Siege 2 — DVD | What can I say? There’s a reason it wasn’t a trilogy. Though it was amusing to see a teenaged Katherine Heigl!
The Commuter — Amazon Prime | Our Liam Neeson kick continued with this taut 100-minute thriller. A little more cerebral than some of his others, but the plot is consistent: A former NYPD cop is fired from his job selling life insurance and then finds himself the only man who can uncover a conspiracy and expose his former employer during a hair-raising trip aboard his homebound Metro North train from Grand Central to Tarrytown.
Books
Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle | Scary stuff from one of the most cynical novelists working today. This one is set in a very believable future as one wealthy family blithely tries to live “normal” lives amid the devastation caused by climate change. It’s really dark stuff, but comical, with a satiric edge. No spoilers, but the plot involves a Burmese python, a robotic arm and lots and lots of crickets.
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson | Finally read this 2021 sci-fi about climate change after hearing about it on a variety of podcasts. The author is an engineer known for writing fiction that incorporates real technology and is thus considered more “plausible” than most sci-fi. This one is set in a future when people wear cooling suits outdoors in order to survive. After a rich Texas billionaire comes up with a plan to launch “bullets” filled with sulfur into the stratosphere in an effort to lower the Earth’s temperature, the plot skips from Texas to the Netherlands to the borderlands between India and China as everyone copes with rising sea levels and the consequences of geo-engineering on a planetary scale.
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