BEFORE: About a week ago, I ran through my Emmy preview, since I'd just watched "Bad Education", nominated for best limited series or movie. Sunday was the Emmys broadcast, which was kind of like the world's biggest Zoom meeting, by necessity. It took me a couple of days to get through the whole show, but now it's time for my Emmy wrap-up.
I probably should have known from the news that there was no star-studded audience in attendance - but I figured it out anyway, after about two minutes I realized they were using stock footage of the stars reacting to the opening monologue, so I was three minutes ahead of the reveal. I got it NOT from logic or common sense or the fact that everyone had made the same fashion choices as they did in a previous year, but I got it from the EDITING - the reactions all came just a bit too quickly, some editor forgot that when they cut to a star in the audience, there's usually about a half-second before that person realizes they're on camera and they have to laugh or do a take or act insulted. Something was clearly just a bit...off, and it was the timing.
The show was quite watchable, for once, maybe that's the fact that I watched only an hour at a time, in three sessions. Allowing essential workers to read the nominees was a nice touch, putting the focus on the fact that television production workers aren't nearly as important to society as medical professionals, freight delivery workers, mail carriers and bus drivers. Yet at the same time, the show pointed out repeatedly that with most people still stuck at home, either unemployed, furloughed or working from home, that the entertainment TV provides is more important than ever. So, umm, is television important or not important? Seems to be a bit of a mixed message there.
Some of the shows I'd watched regularly won a bunch of Emmys - which is not normal, because I tend to not watch the mainstream network shows any more except for a select few, and I've really been watching shows on the fringe lately. I watched "Schitt's Creek" from the beginning, for example, and only recently after airing on Netflix does it seem like other people have joined the party. That show swept the comedy awards, ironically only after airing its final season - but after becoming a clear voice for gay rights and marriage equality, so any rewards are well-deserved. "Watchmen" also won a bunch of Emmys in the Limited Series category, and I watched the heck out of that when it aired, so I'm ahead of the game there, too. "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" won for best Variety Talk Series, but since I watch 4 out of 5 shows nominated in that category, I was probably going to score there, no matter what. By contrast, I watch 2 out of 5 programs in the Competition Program category, so it went to "Rupaul's Drag Race", which I do not watch.
Since I choose my TV more carefully than my movies, it's kind of astounding - there are dozens of dramas that I've heard good things about that I just don't have time to watch. "Succession", "Ozark", "Big Little Lies", "Little Fires Everywhere", "The Crown", 'The Handmaid's Tale", "Better Call Saul" - it's impossible, I don't have any time to even START chipping away at this list. And while that limited series on HBO with Mark Ruffalo playing two parts ("I Know This Much Is True") looks very intense, honestly I'd rather watch that limited series on Netflix with Paul Rudd playing two roles ("Living with Yourself") - because the episodes are shorter, and I could probably get through that in a week if I buckled down, and then my Netflix queue will be that much shorter. It's all about making reasonable choices, I think.
"The Good Place", "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", "Black Monday", "The Morning Show", "Killing Eve", "GLOW", "Mrs. America", "Hollywood", "Unbelievable", "Unorthodox", "Normal People", "The Kominsky Method" - they all seem like quality shows in different ways, and people seem to be enjoying them, but to really partake in TV's Golden Age I would need to stop watching movies, quit my job and watch TV around the clock, and I just can't do that. Maybe I should have been watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" from the start, but I couldn't be bothered, and now it's nearly too late. Maybe one day when I'm in a nursing home or hospital for an extended period of time I can go back and catch up on these shows that I missed, I just don't see any other way. I already spent a good portion of my pandemic hours watching the entire runs of "Arrested Development" and "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee", and now I wonder if I properly prioritized things.
If I get beyond the televised awards and look at the craft awards, aka the "Primetime Creative Arts Emmys", which is a confusing title at best - congratulations to "Bad Education", which won Outstanding Television Movie, "Saturday Night Live" (which I hate-watch, I'll admit) for Variety Sketch Series, and "Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones" for Variety Special (Pre-Recorded). "The Mandalorian" also won SEVEN Emmys in various production categories, none of which aired during the main telecast, but it also LOST in eight other categories. All my other shows were also-rans, like "McMillions", "Tiger King", "Shark Tank", "Drunk History", "Laurel Canyon", "Westworld", "Drunk History", "Bob's Burgers", "Survivor", "Top Chef", and I think even "The Simpsons" came up empty. Clearly "Survivor" and "The Simpsons" are played out, they've got nothing left in the tank at this point. (JK!)
I'm just going to keep on watching what I think will make me happy, and doing what I can do, which is maybe taking on one new show at a time, until they start cancelling my shows and I've got some kind of opening. I'm starting "Star Trek: Discovery" this week, season 1, episode 1, so I've got no time for anything else, not right now. But if you feel like you're always playing catch-up with TV because there's so much of it, you're not wrong. Also, welcome to my world.
This is the second of two films airing on Hulu that needed to be added at the last minute to get me back on track after postponing "The Call of the Wild". Adding two films in place of one meant I had to drop another film, and the best candidate was "Downhill", available on iTunes for $9.99 but not yet airing on cable, and also the middle of three films with Will Ferrell in them, so therefore easily dropped - er, postponed. As I've said many times, there's just no rhyme or reason to the release schedule for films on all our multiple broadcast and streaming platforms - as many times as I've scheduled a film in advance with it popping up just before I planned to watch it, it's possible that just as many times, that tactic has not worked, because some films just take longer than others.
So now Toni Collette carries over from "Please Stand By", which is fine, and then I'll reconnect with my planned chain tomorrow. There are several other films on my list with Ms. Collette in them, so I could spend another five or six days on her films, easily. But with only so many slots left in the year, adding any more than two here would then cause something to be removed from the end, and right now the chain's ending where I would like it to. So most of the time it makes sense to get to a certain actor or actress and knock out all of their films, but that only works in the first 2/3 of the year, where there are spaces galore. When there's a limited number, I have to remind myself that it's all connected, choices I make today are going to affect my options at the end of the year - the goal seems to be to gradually narrow down my options as the amount of remaining slots also gradually decreases, until there's one link left to make and one slot to do it.
Adding any more Toni Collette films would also be a bit off topic (some, like "Muriel's Wedding", are tentatively saved for February) and also mess with my ability to have two roads in November - one to take if "Black Widow" is released and another should it be delayed until 2021. So there you go.
THE PLOT: A father and daughter form an unlikely songwriting duo in the summer before she leaves for college.
AFTER: This is one of those films that's been on my list for a few months, with the rationale that it might make for a good Father's Day film, if the linking allows it at that time. Tangentially, the mention of some romance-based plotlines, plus the word "Hearts" in the title, might have encouraged me to find a spot for it in February, again, if the linking allowed. But then obviously the casting choices of both Toni Collette and Nick Offerman suddenly shot this to the top of my list, since it allows me to make the EXACT connection I needed to prevent me from tearing apart my late September schedule and re-building it from the ground up - assuming such a thing were even possible, thankfully now I don't have to find out that it's not.
But I think I lucked out, so maybe the Linking Gods sometimes know what they're doing. This is an adorable, meaningful film that could have worked anywhere, be it February or Father's Day or, as it turned out, a Tuesday in September. Since part of the plot concerns Sam Fisher one late summer as she prepares to enter UCLA for pre-med studies, maybe unofficially this is "Back to School" film #5 for September 2020 (following "The New Guy", "Thirteen", "Bad Education" and "Liberal Arts" - OK, that works).
At the same time she's getting ready to enter college, Sam starts a romance with her friend Rose, and similar to films like "Bad Education", we seem to have reached a point where we can have a gay character in a movie, and that's not the entire focus of their story arc. They just happen to be gay, and it doesn't completely define them on the screen, that's more of a big deal than most people realize. Sam's father isn't even shocked by the news that his daughter has a girlfriend - about 20 years ago, the whole movie would have been about this. Nick has his own potential budding relationship with his landlord, but it's not moving forward the way he would like, since he keeps seeing her out on dates with other men, and in public she introduces him as "her tenant", not as "her boyfriend".
These are characters who just keep suffering from bad timing, which inevitably brings them to question their choices. Frank's been running a record store in Red Hook, Brooklyn for the last 17 years - but is it really a good time to sell physical media, when people can instantly buy an album as a series of digital files and immediately listen to it on their phones? Selling a vinyl record for $3 that customers can't hear until they get home, assuming they even own a working turntable, may not be the best continual business model. For that matter, selling a few discount records each week may not be a viable plan considering that he has to pay rent and also somehow come up with college tuition for Sam to attend UCLA. Sure, there's financial aid, but then she's going to spend the first half of her medical career repaying student loans.
In another instance of bad timing, one of Frank and Sam's jam sessions produces a pretty good song, "Hearts Beat Loud". Frank's dreams of forming a band with his daughter are suddenly revived, even though there are only a few weeks before college starts. After mapping out a whole concert tour schedule and hearing Sam complain, "Dad, we're not a band!" Frank uploads the new song to Spotify, and it makes it to some influencer's New Indie Mix. Congratulations, and man, what horrible timing. The new track by We're Not a Band is an internet sensation, and clearly the down-side of any success, in any media, is that it calls into question what we're doing with our lives, and makes us think we should be doing THIS instead of the path we're currently on. Admit it, if you win a game of darts or bowl a great set of frames, the next logical step is quitting your job and going pro in that sport, right?
Also, life is complicated when you've got an elderly mother who can't help shoplifting, a daughter nearing adulthood and a questionable relationship with a business partner (this theme was also seen recently in "Stuber") - how the heck does anybody figure out if they're on the right path, or if it's time to burn everything to the ground, move to South Dakota or Montana and make the best out of whatever's there? Does Frank want to keep his record store going, even if that means re-working the "flow" and adding a barista to keep the hipsters coming in? I vote no - it's not worth it, Frank. Plus nobody young even goes to Red Hook, there's not even a subway line that goes out there. Still, it's a wonder that anybody at all is still buying vinyl records, or that we still have bookstores. Amazon's takeover of society is nearly complete, except for a few stalwart holdouts.
Eventually, we learn what happened to Sam's mother, and it's one of those New York-centric reasons why somebody passed away. It explains so much about why Frank has been stuck in neutral for so long, or maybe it's standing on the crossroads, afraid to make a move in any direction for fear of failure, or even worse, success. Nick Offerman is so great at playing these characters, like Ron Swanson, who've been internalizing their emotions for a long time, then slowly letting them come to the surface in complex ways. Somehow a smile means so much more when you've seen a character being deadpan for an extended period of time, you know what I mean?
I realized I haven't seen Ted Danson in a movie for a long, long time - I guess he's been focused on TV lately with "The Good Place", "The Orville", "Fargo" and other shows, but that shouldn't mean he can't make movies during breaks. Here he plays the owner of a Red Hook bar - come on, who's going to buy Ted Danson as a bartender? Looking at his IMDB page, it seems he has been in several movies in the last decade, just nothing I would have seen except for a cameo in "Ted".
Yesterday was the first day of fall, and today's film is all about the changes in life during one late summer as autumn and the new school year are approaching. Somehow, quite accidentally, after scrambling for a replacement film, I'm right on point. Once again, I praise the Linking Gods and offer up my time as my sacrifice. Now back to some catch-up television, and I'll be back here in a couple of days. I still have to work three more skip days into the September schedule somehow, that's not going to be easy.
Also starring Nick Offerman (last seen in "Bad Times at the El Royale"), Kiersey Clemons (last seen in "Lady and the Tramp"), Blythe Danner (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Sasha Lane, Ted Danson (last seen in "She's Having a Baby"), Quincy Dunn-Baker (last seen in "The Big Wedding"), Alex Reznik, Will Rogers, Rafael Poueriet, Kim Ramirez (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), with a cameo from Jeff Tweedy.
RATING: 6 out of 10 Brooklyn Brewery East IPAs
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