DVD

ANDY BARKER, P.I. (2007)

November 21, 2020

(VOD/DVD) A comedic neo-noir from Jonathan Groff (LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O’BRIEN, SCRUBS, HAPPY ENDINGS) where most of the major players are fools, out-of-touch with reality, or a combination of both.

Andy (Andy Richter) is a wide-eyed suburban accountant who, within five minutes of opening his private practice in a mall court, is duped into the world of investigating underground crime. Joining him is Simon (perfectly annoyingly played by Tony Hale) as Andy’s partner/video store owner whose store resides a floor under Andy’s practice, Wally (Marshall Manesh), as the tech guy/the middle-eastern restauranteur in the same mall court, and grizzled ex-private investigator Lew Staziak (Harve Presnell), who often drags Andy into as many cases as he drags him out of.

While it pokes fun at the genre (it was naming each episode after a noir film a decade before RIVERDALE was), it’s shot with the luster of a Barry Sonnefeld film, and the plotting is as tight as a drum. While the show is silly, the jokes are either sneakily smart, or the stupidity of them are so well-crafted that you don’t care. Also, it never goes as broad as say other genre parodies, like POLICE STORY! or ANGIE TRIBECA.

The series was unceremonious cancelled after four episodes — despite only having a six-ep order — which I’m oddly okay with. While I’m sure they could have sustained this level of quality for another six episodes, what we have here is more than enough.

One caveat: while the pilot is about as perfect of an initial episode of a comedy — this show hit the ground running — the second episode, despite being co-written by BUFFY alum Jane Espenson, leans far too heavily on the premise that folks can find a larger person attractive. I don’t mean there are a few jokes here and there — the episode starts with them and fires off about one or two gags a minute until the ep closes with one more joke. Maybe circle back to it, because it’s one of the rare misfires for the show.

A few out-of-context jokes for you:

“The man’s crazy! He’s throwing babies at us!”

“Gene Kelly’s 50th was a big night. Buddy Hackett took off his pants and sat down on the cake! That was comedy back then: it wasn’t funny, but they committed.”

“Someone’s moving in! I wonder who… said the owl.”

“What do you known about the chicken business?” “Oh, that’s bad news. Like the pork business without the conscience.”

(I swear, the show’s better than this trailer makes it look.)

HE & SHE (1967)

November 12, 2020

(YouTube/DVD) A whip-smart, tightly-wound gag machine that was well-ahead of its time.. A precursor to THE BOB NEWHART SHOW (1972) in that it allowed autonomy for the childless couple (Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss), and also encouraged them to pursue their own interests and, at the end of the day, they respected each other for doing so, often in bed.

It’s also a direct inspiration for THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, especially Jack Cassidy’s blowhard performance portraying the superhero that Richard Benjamin’s character created.

If you want to pick up a copy for yourself, you can do so via the excellent preservation site modcinema.com (I’ve ordered more than a few items from them — they’re doing fantastic work.):

https://www.modcinema.com/categories/3-made-for-tv/197-he-she-tv-series-3-disc-1967-dvd

STELLA (2005)

November 9, 2020

(DVD) An absurdist comedy from THE STATE members Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain, this one-season wonder has its roots in Marx Bros-type anarchy. Michael, Michael, and David play petulant man-children who dress in formal suits, and literally run from scene, throwing words at the walls to see what sticks.

Here’s an example from the pilot (linked below):

“Guys, the landlord’s coming. We have to clean up!” [They plump the many pillows found through their otherwise visibly immaculate apartment, then they take up instruments in front of their door and strike individual poses. The landlord knocks.]

“It’s the landlord. Let me in.”

“Uh, we can’t! We’re in a tableau! You’ll have to use the key under the rug to let yourself in!”

[Landlord looks down]

“There’s no rug.”

(Michael, to Michael and David): “Guys, I forgot, I took the rug to be dry cleaned last month because it was filthy.”

[Michael opens the door]: “Here’s the dry cleaning receipt. You’ll have to pick up the rug.” [Michael closes the door. The landlord takes a cab to the dry cleaners. Michael, Michael and David are visibly uncomfortable maintaining their tableau. Landlord gets the rug, heads back, unfurls the rug, plucks the key from under, and opens the door.]

Michael, Michael, and David: “Don! What a surprise! Great to see you!”

How much mileage you’ll get out of this show will depend on how grating you find the characters’ tone, and whether you’re able to overlook their rivalry with their all-woman downstairs neighbors (including Rashida Jones in the pilot). None of them have the charisma of Groucho, nor the hapless naïveté of Harpo. There’s certainly no Zeppo. Despite that, the show represents a neo-vaudeville sensibility far better than any show I can think of in the past twenty years (with the possible exception of CHILDRENS HOSPITAL, but that’s a show for a different day).

The original pilot:

https://vimeo.com/313214499

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1978)

November 5, 2020

(DVD/YOD) You may be familiar with the Hollywood film PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981), starring and ushered into existence by Steve Martin, but it’s based on a six-ep British series penned by Dennis Potter. To be fair to Martin, the film sticks very closely to the original series, but the Hollywood gloss gets in the way, to the point where the film can’t see the premise for the trees. For example:

Potter’s ‘Yes, Yes’:

Martin’s ‘Yes, Yes’:

But I’m getting ahead of myself. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is an incredibly unsavory lip-synced jukebox musical that takes place in the 1930s about a man’s midlife crisis — Bob Hoskins as Arthur Parker, portrayed Willy Loman style — and the women he leaves in his wake. On paper, it’s not terribly appealing, partially because Potter frames Arther as a noir hero, eschewed by his wife (and therefore, society) because of his sex drive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duIlaVlLwX4&list=PL10169BEFFBF3C1B6&index=14 ). However, Potter’s women are far more fascinating than Arthur, and the musical numbers still resonate, well over 40 years later. Take for example, Arthur’s paramour, teacher Eileen:

Potter’s ‘Love is Good for Anything that Ails You’:

Martin’s ‘Love is Good for Anything that Ails You’:

What’s dictated via Hollywood’s PENNIES FROM HEAVEN — no offense to Bernadette Peters’ performance — is the longing, the frustration, the thrill in letting loose. It’s all spelled-out. Contrast it with Potter’s number, where it’s all simply acted out through Cheryl Campbell’s amazing performance.

And here’s a number featuring Arthur’s long-suffering wife. (The number doesn’t appear in Martin’s film.)

Potter’s ‘You Rascal, You’:

If you aren’t into 20s/30s era American Jazz or post WWI British miserabilia, this probably isn’t a series for you, but if you’re into either one, hunt down a copy.

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN (1976-1977)

November 3, 2020

A breakout daily satirical soap conceptualized by Norman Lear, but shaped by Gail Parent, Ann Marcus and Joan Darling, focused around a severely dysfunctional family and their titular wife, Mary Hartman (played by Louise Lasser), whose life of constant stress and anxiety and insecurity builds to a crescendo of a nervous breakdown. It’s a severely intelligent, often hilarious, self-critical melodrama about domesticity, consumer culture, American media & existentialism that’s just as relevant now as it was when this was first broadcast.

The show nailed its tone out of the gate, as you can see with the infamous ‘Waxy Yellow Buildup’ series opener:

(I really wish SHOUT! featured a longer clip, as the first half of the premiere is amazing. The show quickly picked up its pace, but kept its oft-putting, absurd sensibility, well before it was fashionable.)

It’s worth noting that MARY HARTMAN was a full-blown phenomenon, at least for its first year. If you’ve read the first TALES OF THE CITY (1978), you know that characters planned their days around the broadcast. Lasser was brought onto SNL to do a Mary Hartman bit, which allegedly resulted in her being banned from the show for erratic behavior.

The show was too smart, burned through too much plot, was too emotionally grueling and controversial to have any proper longevity, and it wrapped when Lasser bowed out at the end of the second season which, doesn’t sound like much, but those two seasons consisted of 325 half-hour episodes over the period of under two years.

If you’d like to read more about it (instead of watching all 325 episodes like I have), here are two great places to start:

https://tv.avclub.com/mary-hartman-mary-hartman-combined-soap-opera-satire-1798242393

https://eastofborneo.org/articles/from-a-waxy-yellow-buildup-to-a-nervous-breakdown-the-fleeting-existence-of-mary-hartman-mary-hartman/

In typical Lear fashion, a spin-off was born based on one of the odder characters, Barth Gimble, as FERNWOOD 2 NIGHT, and then reborn as FERNWOOD FOREVER, both tongue-in-cheek takes on local late night programming which are probably better remembered today than MARY HARTMAN is.

PROFIT (1996)

November 2, 2020

(DVD/YouTube) PROFIT has the dubious honor of ushering in the modern era of asshole male anti-heroes, despite the fact that practically no one watched it which resulted in it being cancelled having only aired four episodes (four more were aired on the late, lamented — at least by me — Trio channel, and are available on the very out-of-print DVD).

That said, critics loved it, despite the fact that the lead character — Jim Profit, yes that’s his name — is a cutthroat corporate man, willing to do anything to get ahead. The storytelling engine has him crushing a fellow employee (or just someone in his way), then celebrating by opening up a hilariously dated virtual reality app and shattering their poorly rendered 3D likeness.

On top of this, he has severe mental issues: he killed his father, slept with his mom (well, step-mother), and every episode ends with him climbing naked into a cardboard box to sleep.

While you might think that this would be played as a soap, no, it’s played straight as straight as can be, often with grizzled narration from Profit himself, occasionally even addressing the audience. It helps that Jim Profit, played by Adrian Pasdar, could turn on the charm in a way that few other TV anti-heroes have managed. (Gandolfini excepted, of course.)

At the time, there was nothing like it on air, which sadly seems to be why FOX briefly flirted with the idea of rebooting it. (Given the state of the world right now, it appears they’ve wisely realized that’s a terrible idea.)

I’m not going to say PROFIT was a great show, but it did have a lot of fantastic — albeit absurd — character work. Also, just about anyone reading this probably has loved one of the shows that creators John McNamara (THE MAGICIANS, JERICHO, BRISCO COUNTY JR.) or David Greenblatt (EUREKA, GRIMM, SURFACE) have been heavily involved with. (Also, both worked on ANGEL.)

While the entire series is difficult to find, the 90min pilot is available on YouTube, which should give you more than enough of a taste for the show.

MILLENNIUM (FOX, 1996-1999)

November 1, 2020

(DVD) Sadly, there’s no way to stream this show, no way to digitally purchase any eps, and the DVDs are definitely costly, but I can’t talk about undersung TV shows without discussing MILLENNIUM.

MILLENNIUM was Chris Carter’s second FOX show, launched midway through X-FILES’ run. The first season was a severely grimdark and mostly lackluster procedural about Frank Black (Lance Hendrickson, giving it his all), a gifted profiler hunting down serial killers, with a mostly untouched framing device about the killers being obsessed with the upcoming millennium. I do not recommend the first season.

The second season was handed off to X-FILES alums Glen Morgan & James Wong — yes, the folks behind FINAL DESTINATION — and they reframe the show into a battle of Christian sub-sects — the Owls versus the Roosters — and they ramp up the ‘gifts’ that have been bestowed upon Frank Black in that he can see devils and angels, then they double-down on his family guilt by adding Darrin McGavin as his father. The show culminates in a ‘burn the fucking world down’ finale that Morgan & Wong surely thought would result in the show being cancelled, because they were fucking pissed off at FOX’s notes and knew they would not be invited back.

Not one, but two episodes of the second season were written by legendary TV writer (and Glen Morgan’s brother) Darin Morgan, probably best known for his X-FILES ep -Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’-. Darin brings Chung back in Morgan’s -second- most memorable MILLENNIUM episode: -Jose Chung’s ‘Doomsday Defense’-, which is a must-see, and entertaining enough as a stand-alone.

For my money, Darin Morgan’s most memorable episode is -Somehow Satan Got Behind Me-, and it’s something special: four devils — literal devils — gather in at a donut shop in the early morning hours to discuss their latest accomplishments in corrupting humanity. That’s it, that’s the episode. It’s surprisingly melancholy and hits hard, and it deserves more attention.

The other facet MILLENNIUM S2 excelled at was silence. So many MILLENNIUM S2 episodes went five or more minutes without anyone saying anything, and the pinacle of this is with their Halloween episode, -The Curse of Frank Black-, in which ‘modern day’ Frank Black maybe utters 100 words, tops (most of which boil down to an argument with his tech sidekick as to whether the killer in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is a spree killer or a serial killer). Instead, the score speaks for him.

What Glen Morgan & James Wong always excel at is infusing their scripts with the perfect song, usually via counterpointing or general sentimentality. Season two introduced so many classic artists and songs to my young mind: Terry Jack’s Seasons in the Sun (via -Goodbye Charlie-), the muzak of Love is Blue from Paul Mauriat (via -Room With No View-) and, most importantly, the goddamn entirety of Patti Smith’s Horses for a ten-minute scene in -The Time is Now Part 2-, which is paired with a no-budget experimental phantasmagoria that, as I watched it live in 1998 — imagine watching this on network TV in 1998 — dropped my jaw. I’ve still never seen anything quite like it on TV. (No spoilers concerning the link below — it’s mostly context-free.)

Morgan & Wong — predictably — were jettisoned after season two, and the third season rolled back their finale and, apart from the addition of Klea Scott as Frank’s new partner and a somewhat amusing Halloween episode, it limped along for 22 eps before being cancelled. There’s an epilogue episode in X-FILES’ seventh season (the fourth ep) but it’s perfunctory and lackluster.

Just stick with the second season and you’ll be fine.

(Shoutout to the hardcore MILLENNIUM site https://millennium-thisiswhoweare.net/. They’ve been doing great work for so many years.)

ALL THAT JAZZ (1979)

September 8, 2020

(DVD/BR) While I appreciate Bob Fosse as a talented choreographer and director, I don’t think much of the man himself, which is what conflicts me about this self-indulgent paean from himself, about himself, to himself. On one hand, the self-glorification of his caddish behavior — even if he hangs a lampshade on it — is pretty despicable and, even more criminal, it’s often dull. On the other hand, the closing scene is a goddamn stunner, and may make the film worth your moral price of admission.

Closing scene (NSFW):

Trailer: