Three Series Finales in One Week.

 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry and Succession all had their series finales this week. I think it is unprecedented for there to be three series finales in one week.  There will be some spoilers, so I will start with the one that had no surprise ending.

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – I was late to coming to this series. The last two seasons had flash forwards so we know how the story ends before the final show. I found that made the end a bit anti-climactic. It is the story of a female standup comic coming of age and to stage in the 1950s on the Upper West Side in NYC.  It is supposedly (very) loosely based on the life of Joan Rivers. The story of the challenges of a female entering a male dominated career were clear. It is also a reminder of how much has changed in our society since the 1950s. Although tragic, I liked how the story of Lenny Bruce was woven into the story. The question of compromising your integrity vs. becoming successful is a fine line. He knew he would be arrested for his act (words we take for granted today) and did it anyway. I found the comedy hilarious. The many different aspects of 2^nd generation immigrant Jewish families were represented in the show. I found myself literally laughing out loud numerous times throughout the series recognizing similar traits of people growing up. The season that was focused on their time in the Catskills was nostalgic for me as well. I thought the Joel story line could have been fleshed out a bit more at the end, but that is just being picky. Joel was a true redemption storyline.  I wonder if others who did not grow up Jewish, or at least culturally Jewish found it as funny or meaningful?

Succession – A show about a wealthy family running a Fox News type communication company. The opening show of season one, the Father Logan Roy (played brilliantly by Brian Cox) becomes seriously ill and the question of who will succeed him in the company is the plot of the entire series. Three of his four children are vying for the role. Almost every character who is a member of the family and featured employees of the company are fairly despicable in one way or another. (with the exception of a couple of minor characters who were sympathetic, but did nothing) The three children are not competent, but entitled. The tragedy is for the most part, until the end they believe they were competent.  It is a well worn tale of a parent manipulating their children, but ultimately not preparing them. Before Logan Roy dies he says to his children, “I love you, but you are not serious people” In the last show, one of the children realizes the absurdity of it and says “we are nothing” I liked that the main character Logan Roy dies towards the beginning of the final season in the middle of a deal to sell the company. Throughout the four seasons, I took time off from watching it because I have to say, it was obvious that the children were nothing and it just got boring after a while watching them posture and flail. Still in the end, I thought it was a fitting ending for the arc of the show.  I did like that Unitarians were represented (even if stereotypically) by Nan Pierce who was the CEO of a rival company Logan was trying to purchase.

 Barry -  The series is about Barry, a vet who comes back from Iraq with PTSD and is manipulated by a father figure to become an assassin. He decides to take acting classes to help him better understand himself. I LOVED Henry Winkler as the acting teacher. The rest of the plot is too hard to describe with many madcap antics and plot twists. There is a lot of violence. I thought the ending was artistic and well done. There are some key messages told. All actors are narcissistic. Henry Winkler’s characters strays from what he knows is right because of fame. And when the son of Sally Reed (Barry’s love interest) tells her he loves her, she just asks, was the play (she directed) good. Totally oblivious. The final message of the series is there is no redemption in this life. Redemption only comes in a sanitized version of our life that is told after we die. Not sure if I agree, but poignant nevertheless.  Although sometimes over the top, overall it was surprisingly good, even sometimes a fun show for such a dark topic.  

True Detective Season 3 - Love can transcend suffering if we let it.

My reflection on True Detective Season 3

First a short recap of seasons 1 and 2 –

Season One was groundbreaking for its style and that it was a television series with famous movie stars. (Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson) I found it more quirky and new for TV, then good, but I enjoyed Matthew McConaughey’s character philosophical diatribes and the question of good and evil. (always a favorite topic of mine)

Season 2 starred Vince Vaughn and Collin Ferrell. Critics generally panned season 2. I liked it. It was less subtle and more over the top, but it was also more real and relevant in many ways and focused on the theme of fatherhood and its different meanings, and how it impacts men. It also has the theme of bad guy trying to change for good and being  drawn back into old life. This is also a favorite theme of mine as well.  

Actually looking at all three seasons here, it is more obvious that the writers are clearly focused on men and the role of masculinity in society. Maybe because I am a man, and father of two men, I found this more interesting. However there is very little focus on women or major roles for women.

Also, whereas Season 2 focused on big city corruption and challenges, as in Season 1, season 3 brings us a fairly negative view of rural living. (Isolation, alcoholism, limited opportunities, corruption, back room deals, etc.) I have no idea of its accuracy, since I have never lived in a rural community, but it mostly focused on the negative, and not much positive.

Season 3 starred Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorf as Detectives investigating the disappearance of two children. It uses flash forwards and covers 3 time periods of time in the life of the detectives and the case. I admit at times it was hard to determine between the first two time periods and the only way I could was by the growth of Stephen Dorf’s beard and his balding hair.  

The show also includes the challenges of the detective and his family when he starts developing dementia in his old age and is trying to remember the case and just forgets how or why he is somewhere.  I appreciated this often neglected topic being an ongoing part of the show.    

Overall I liked the season. The fact that it moved me to write something about it, is a testament to it..  Everything wrapped up very quickly in the second half of the last episode, with a few twists and turns, and a feel good ending. It was logical and made sense, but it felt unsatisfying. Sort of here are the answers to all your questions now. One quip is that again, although the show did have a strong female character, (her research writing a book about the case actually helped her husband solve the case). However she was used mostly as a counterpoint to Mahershala Ali’s character and I didn’t feel she was focused on enough.  Also her death is never explained and she is not part of the show in the later time period and becomes invisible and in fact is only seen as a ghost during that time period. Also Ali’s daughter only shows up in the last 5 minutes of the last episode and it is clear throughout the show they had a strained relationship. He asked her at the end “Did I lose you?” His son stayed in town and took care of Ali. Again, women disappear, men stay and take care of things. It is a terrible message but it is part of a cultural narrative about how men are made to feel they should be.   

The show also did have a focus on the difficulties men have in relationships. How men keep their feelings internalized, and how that leads to a very lonely life. Even Mahershala Ali’s character, who we see developing a better understanding of himself through his interaction with and the deepening relationship with his wife, in the end, at the end of his life, is alone in the jungle in Vietnam. This metaphor of his being alone is used throughout the movie. His struggle to share his feelings or information, in his mind as a way to protect his wife, but really it is protecting himself from his own pain, or in his mind maybe protecting her from his pain. But in the end they decide to let go of the past, and start anew, living in a way that is not tied to the past and true to themselves. We see a glimpse that this happened, but in the end after his wife’s death, he I drawn back to his memory of this unresolved case. The theme of closing off the memory of our emotions and the pain it causes is an ongoing theme. The father of the children, says in the second time frame “Whatever it takes to stop feeling. I mean, there's no point. Ain't nobody left to feel anything for.” And Stephen Dorf’s character seems to show only immense feelings for his dogs.

 We all suffer in our lives, and the message here is that if we don’t acknowledge our suffering it will become self destructive or destructive.

 The show also touches on the redemption theme or in this case lack of redemption.  The detectives in their pursuit of the truth did a terrible deed. This negatively affected their relationship for years, until the passing of time, and memory, brought them back together. Ali’s character, in the end just as he is about to solve the case, has a bout with his dementia and never realizes he may have solved it.  

The people involved in the disappearance of (and murder of one of) the children as well suffered. One of them tried to redeem himself for his actions, but was unsuccessful. He searched to find the truth and was left unfulfilled.  At the end when confronted he said, “I cant take it anymore. Kill me or arrest me. I cant live with it anymore” The detectives let him live with his pain.  The silence of keeping secrets destroys us.

The lines of the poem read (see poem below) at the beginning of the last show were haunting for me:

“What am i now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again
Time is the school in which we learn 
Time is the fire in which we burn:”

The story shows that people can transcend their trauma if they are intentional. It also asks the question and makes the point that we often fall into the same traps that we make for ourselves. And in some cases by the time we learn and grow, it is too late to always appreciate the learning. It was (and as I look back on the series) it is a little depressing, only because I see some truth in it. it is a reminder to me to be intentional and to be open about my feelings and to appreciate or at least be present to every single moment of every single day, because we don’t know when it will end. We don’t every really forget until we do. So let us use our memories and learn from them. And move forward in our lives. We sometimes make terrible choices. We cant change them and their outcomes,  but we can learn to make better choices going forward.  We never really know the outcome of our actions before we do them, and as Ali’s character says “You do your best and you learn to live with the ambiguity”

So I know this all sounds dark, But the lasting message is that we can transcend our challenges and that it is Love that helps us transcend that challenge. I cant say much more without giving spoilers.

The opening of the season 3 finale of True Detective were an excerpt from the poem 

“Calmly We Walk Through This April Day” by Delmore Schwartz.

“What will become of you and me
Beside the photo and the memory
This is the school in which we learn
That time is the fire in which we burn 
What is the self amid this blaze
What am i now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again
The children shouting are bright as they run
This is the school in which they learn
What am I now that I was then
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day
Time is the school in which we learn 
Time is the fire in which we burn”

The Leftovers – Some thoughts on the Series Finale

I finally caught up with the series finale of “The Leftovers” on HBO. I have enjoyed watching this show. It has been somewhat uneven in quality from episode to episode, (and sometimes it jarringly changes direction/plotlines) but overall I thought it was a thought provoking, creative and well-written show. The premise of the show is that 2% of the world’s population (randomly??) disappear suddenly. The three seasons speak to how a small group of individuals from one town (and the world in general) has reacted to this event. Of course it has overtones of the rapture, which made it a theologically interesting premise for me.  That being said, the series finale was anti-climactic and disappointing.   I don’t know why certain shows have such a hard time with this knowing a series will end. In the very last episode, the show compresses something like 30 years into 1 hour and only in the last 2 minutes of the show gives a quick explanation to what happened in the intervening years. (or was she lying, or were they dead a la Lost?) Although it was an interesting explanation at the end, there was much left unanswered, such as how and why the people the disappeared and the fate of certain other characters.  The theme song of the show was Iris Dement’s “Let the Mystery Be” I guess they kept to that theme in ending the series. 

The Newsroom – Series Review a 7 out of 10 on the JWO Scale.

I like many probably saw the video below some time ago on Facebook.  Last night I watched the final episode of the 3^rd Season and I thought this episode really was well written and really ties up a lot of loose ends. Then I read today it is the series finale and well that makes a lot of sense.  Although the show had some ups and downs, Overall I liked the show.  I liked the witty banty between all the characters. This was a great ensemble cast of performers (Sam Waterson, Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortenson, Dev Patel, Oliva Munn and many more)  I like that it references Don Quixote often. I liked how it showed the transformation of people from the status quo to struggling to become principled people. I liked their  “mission to civilize”  Mostly I liked how it showed how our News has become entertainment.  I notice this more and more everynight when I watch national news.  Yes I do want to be kept up on pop culture in America, but there are other ways to do that than the nightly news.  I want to watch the news for news.  Its why I still read the NY Times every morning.  As Thomas Jefferson said “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government;”  A good show, with good acting, with good writing, and a good message. Worth catching on re-runs if you haven’t seen it.   

In his speech why America is not the greatest country in the world the lead character states:

"It sure used to be… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw