Another bite of Apple

After my earlier survey of AppleTV+, I’ve re-subscribed to catch new seasons of two of my favorite shows, Ted Lasso and Dickinson.  [This post updated in December, through conclusion of the latter.]
 
Everything about the second season of Ted Lasso (MC-86) is bigger (longer episodes and more of them), and most of it is even better, and this season’s haul of Emmys is likely to be even larger than the 20 nominations and 7 wins earned by its first.  So you don’t need me to make a case for the show as “must-see tv.”  More amplitude yields more attention to subsidiary characters, in witty scripts braided out of pop culture, music and movies, and ornamented with hilarious cross-cultural jokes.  The second season ends with a number of reversals that struck me at first as somewhat abrupt and mechanical, but upon reflection seemed to fit within the overall arc established from the pilot on.  As Brett Goldstein says, in character as gruff Roy Kent, “Everyone has his fucking reasons” (tipping his cap to Jean Renoir).  He beat out three of his fellow supporting actors for the Emmy.  Meanwhile creator and title character Jason Sudeikis picked up a couple of statues, and Juno Temple edged out fellow supporting actress Hannah Waddingham.  So it goes without saying that the cast is great, the writing is both funny and touching, and this is a show you will want to watch, even if you don’t give a hoot about English football.  By the end, you’ll wind up agreeing with one of the endearing characters, “Football is life.”  Death too, and love, and everything in between.
 
The well-put-together eight-part documentary series 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (MC-83) may not live up to its subtitle, but it certainly calls up the era for anyone who lived through it.  The music of that year may have changed nothing, but it was certainly reflective, and definitive, of popular culture and politics at the time, and I was decidedly engaged with its recollection, even artists who didn’t mean anything to me at the time.  It’s a curated cross-section of music in a specific period, post-hippie, pre-punk.  For the most part eschewing talking heads, the series combines performance with newsreel footage in a very effective way, with voiceover narration and commentary.  Eminently watchable, and more than simply nostalgic.
 
There are plenty of Sundance faves to which I remain impervious, but I totally fell for CODA (MC-75), accepting its formulaic elements and relishing its idiosyncrasies.  As in Lady Bird or Wild Rose, the key is the lead actress, in this case Emilia Jones, whom we root for to escape the trap of her marginal existence.  She is the teen Child Of Deaf Adults, who has all her life been their interpreter to the hearing world, helping out on their Gloucester MA fishing boat, and suppressing her own aspirations – to sing and to go away to college.  The acting is excellent all round, including Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin and other deaf performers.  Writer-director Siân Heder adapts a French film to a well-defined American locale, and achieves sentiment with more authenticity than sentimentality (though there is that).  She went to great lengths to portray ASL (extensively subtitled) and deaf culture as accurately as possible.  I’d wondered how they found a young woman who could both sing and sign fluently, but the British Emilia Jones deserves credit for months of studying both when she got the role (plus mastering an American, if not specifically North Shore, accent).  She’s definitely someone to watch for in the future.  Sure, the film is tailored to be a crowdpleaser, but in my view displays more truth than mendacity.  On this one, consider me among the pleased crowd.

I came to Velvet Underground (MC-87) more for the filmmaker Todd Haynes than for the musicians, who meant nothing to me in their heyday, or since.  Nor do I have a particular interest in the specific cultural moment of the Warhol Factory days.  Nonetheless I watched this distinctive documentary with interest, if not enthusiasm.  It was certainly evocative of an era and an aesthetic approach, but not really on my wavelength.

For a different sort of musical experience, also not on my wavelength, but recommendable nonetheless, watch Come From Away (MC-83), a popular Broadway musical about 9/11, from the perspective of the 7000 in-transit air travelers who were grounded for days in Gander, Newfoundland, doubling the town’s population in a matter of hours.  I don’t know what’s more commendable, the unexpected documentary quality of the script, taken from the words of actual “plane people” and residents, or the incredible staging, continuously in motion as the admirably diverse cast takes on a variety of roles, with a set of chairs standing in for bus or plane cabin, Tim Horton’s restaurant or seaside cliff.  It moves fast, remains deeply sympathetic and empathetic, and maintains a Celtic lilt to the nonstop singing and movement.  I read that the movie was planned to be filmed on location, but instead the play was the first to reopen on Broadway after Covid lockdown, and was filmed judiciously in front of an audience of 9/11 survivors and responders.  The movie was released on the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, and the play itself ends with the 10^th anniversary “reunion” of travelers and townspeople in Gander.  It recalls the feelings at the time of the horrific event, while still remaining an uplifting celebration of commonality.

Though I’ve never listened to a true-crime podcast, and never will, I gave a look-see to the tv adaptation of The Shrink Next Door (MC-61), because of its stars, Paul Rudd, Will Ferrell, and Kathryn Hahn.  Made it through three episodes of the limited series, but could not be bothered to continue, as the show failed to deliver the humor suggested by its cast, and did not offer anything more in its portrayal of a therapist taking over the life of his client for his own benefit.  Like therapy, it’s unconscionably protracted with no clear reward. 
 
[P.S. as of 12-24-21]  As much as I like Ted Lasso, there are two series on AppleTV+ that I truly love and want to urge upon you, even if your interest in the subject matter is not as intense as mine.  Either would amply reward a month’s subscription to the streaming channel.  I’ve repeatedly telegraphed my devotion to Dickinson, but there was another series that grabbed me from the get-go and never disappointed.
 
Swagger (MC-79) emerges from the experiences of NBA MVP Kevin Durant as a 14-year-old hoops star, which may seem a thin premise for ten hour-long episodes, but this series is eminently topical (Covid, BLM, abusive coaches, etc.) and takes in many storylines, familial as well as athletic, social and political too.  It’s a team effort in the best sense.  For a group selected primarily for authentic basketball skills, the acting is excellent across the board.  These are kids you really come to care about, led by Isaiah Hill as the Durant stand-in.  O’Shea Jackson Jr. is also good as the coach of a basketball team of 8^th-graders, which already has college scouts and shoe companies sniffing around.  Though there is so much else going on around it, the game coverage is excellent, with drone footage putting you literally in the middle of the action, where there’s never a cutaway from ball release to going through hoop.  All these shots are truly made.  This series rivals Friday Night Lights in making family and community the center of a well-made sports-themed show.  A taste for hoops helps, but there’s a lot more here of interest and appeal.  Created by Reggie Rock Blythewood, the series recalls Love & Basketball, the fondly-remembered 2000 film directed by his wife Gina Prince-Blythewood.  I found it satisfying in every respect.  Even when everybody is wearing masks for the final episodes, it only highlights how well the performers can act with their eyes and posture.  Here’s hoping it returns for a second season.
 
If I make exaggerated claims for Dickinson (MC-91), you may dismiss them as hyperbole, but I am truly hyper about this show – I feel part of an exalted fellowship while watching it.  It resides in my chosen period and place – mid-19^th-century Massachusetts – which the show approaches with irreverence but veracity.  The dialogue and music may be 21^st century, but the settings, costumes, and situations reek of authenticity.  The third season takes place during the Civil War.  Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Thomas W. Higginson, and others have cameos that are more fact than fantasy, comic but accurate (even Sylvia Plath – don’t ask).  Hailee Steinfeld remains terrific as Emily, and is well matched by the rest of the cast.  I can’t say that Emily was ever one of my favorite poets, my understanding of her verse is very hit or miss, but as a literary figure she’s the epitome of the anonymous recluse and therefore significant to me.  In Hailee’s portrayal, she also comes across as a woman of spirit and resolve, a dynamo rather than the pale lonely spinster of legend.  This show led me to fact-check by reading Martha Ackmann’s bio These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, for a fascinating back and forth between historical fact and contemporary imagination.  Though a few episodes were a bit too imaginative for me, the same is true of Emily’s poems.  And if you’re unfamiliar with the first two seasons of Dickinson, check out my comments here.  For me, the only question remaining is just how high this series will rank retrospectively among my all-time favorites.