The Book, Dramatized

I've been a fan of the multi-season biblical drama The Chosen, written by Tyler Thomson, Ryan Hopkins and creator-director Dallas Jenkins. Some of that is because it focuses heavily on the disciples, the normal human beings who have to try to navigate life while following Jesus. Some of it is because it features a vision of Jesus I like -- funny, wry and mountain-strong against the injustices the Pharisees and Romans inflict on the people.

Jenkins is the son of writer Jerry Jenkins, who tried to write about the second coming of Christ but was hampered by Tim LaHaye's rigid dispensationalism. After some failed commercial filmmaking Dallas found himself drawn to making religiously-themed movies, but without the preachiness or stodgy demeanor found in many of these films. Asked to provide a video for his church for Christmas 2017, Jenkins created The Shepherd, which became the pilot for The Chosen.

Genuine actors show up on the screen of these episodes -- the first season featured well-known character actor Erick Amari as Nicodemus in a poignant role. Frequent TV guest star Jonathan Roumie exults in humanizing Jesus, Shahar Isaac shows Peter as the leader Jesus needs him to be as well as the uncertain man who will one day deny his Lord. Oklahoma's own Elizabeth Tabish absolutely nails the pivotal role of Mary Magdalene, one of the most important women in Jesus' ministry.

Anyway, The Chosen has been around for awhile now and I didn't intend to write about it. It just gave me an idea. A professor at Westmont University in California named Sandra Richter did a video study on the biblical book of Ruth that could create an excellent screenplay. The Moabite woman who accompanied her widowed, childless mother in law back to Israel and left her own people and homeland. Through a course of fortuitous events -- and some nudging from the mother-in-law -- she catches the eye of a wealthy distant kinsman named Boaz. Eventually they marry and have a son, Obed, who was the grandfather of King David. She is one of the five women named in Jesus' genealogy.

Richter's understanding, which is drawn from 20-some years of studying the Old Testament and the environment of its people, suggests that rather than a romantic entanglement, Boaz takes Ruth in marriage because of her great devotion to her mother-in-law and her own cleverness in getting his attention. The next part is of her own devising, but Richter envisions a union of legal custom and respect growing into love, despite the age differences.

Neither filmed version of Ruth and Boaz's story takes this angle, focusing on romance (1960's The Story of Ruth)  or the sanctifying of the biblical characters (2009's The Book of Ruth).

I just kind of thought I'd like to see that version filmed because in my mind, it matched some of the mindset of the creators of The Chosen and it turned Ruth into my favorite book of the Bible. Every now and again, I guess I'm still going to ramble.

Writers' Revelatory Strike

Two friends -- one from college and one from high school -- responded to my Facebook suggestion that, after seeing lists of shows delayed or even canceled by the current Writers Guild of America strike, I was not exactly unhappy with the strike's fallout.

The suggestion arose that TV show reruns from the past. My female high school friend suggested M*A*S*H* and I added China Beach, and my male college friend seemed OK with both. He's also the one that noted networks are likely to respond with rafts of "unscripted" reality shows, so I cast evil spirits out of him and he's resting comfortably.

One part of the fallout was that I learned China Beach is not streamed anywhere. So I bought a boxed set of DVDs that has a sexualized box cover that kind of goes against what the show tried to do with TV nurses. No problem, I won't need the box and there's recycling in the next town over.

Another part of the fallout was that some other people in the discussion in real life disagreed with the idea that shows from earlier eras might stack up as well or even higher than today's "Prestige TV." This is an idea that TV today -- or perhaps just a few years ago -- is the best television ever in terms of writing, acting and concepts.

The exhibits are usually listed thusly: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, The Wire, Mad Men and several others, depending on the lister's preferences. Qualities they are said to share are morally complex protagonists, great acting, questionable behavior on the part of the protagonists and such.

They sometimes play fast and loose with the truth. Arizona school teacher Walter White would have had some pretty good insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer, meaning he did not need to sell a chemical that ruins hundreds of thousands of lives ands ends thousands of others. And his willingness to do so indicates he did not "break bad" so much as "continue to be bad and actually get worse."

Organized crime is not dominated by colorful and conflicted people like Tony Soprano, Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri or the latest entry, Sylvester Stallone's Dwight "The General" Manfredi. Stallone's character is the lead of Tulsa King, a show shot almost exclusively in Oklahoma City. Organized crime is filled with people who will addict people, prostitute people (mostly women), kill people and do whatever else needs to be done to make money legally and otherwise.

Ranchers do not brand their workers and murder and beat people up before breakfast. Ask a real rancher to take someone "to the train station" and you'll likely hear, "Can't. That closed down years ago."

Anyone who wants to like any of these shows should do so, of course. Almost every one of them have some fascinating characters, situations, or scenes. Ray McKinnon, Timothy Olyphant and John Hawkes create a marvelous three-minute vision of the meaning of friendship in the episode "Mr. Wu" of Deadwood.

But there's almost always a flip side. The same Deadwood  features a scene in which Powers Boothe's character brutally beats two swindling children on camera. They suffer permanent brain damage before he kills them.

As I ramble to a point, I guess I'm stuck with the idea that making villains into protagonists produces ugly entertainment. Best to elect them to public office in state and national capitals. Reality is all too often ugly enough, and they fit in just fine.

The Virginian Meets Tony Soprano

Recently the free TV streamer Pluto TV -- it's free because they insert commercials, and I wish I could remember where I'd heard of that before -- began airing the first three seasons of Taylor Sheridan's modern Western Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner. I watched the first season and a few other episodes.

The post headline gives you a picture of what you're watching. Set on the sprawling Yellowstone ranch, owned and run by Costner's clan patriarch John Dutton, Yellowstone calls to mind the 1962-71 series The Virginian, starring James Drury and Doug McClure. Drury was the foreman on a ranch owned by Judge Henry Garth (Lee J. Cobb) and McClure was his top hand, Trampas. Like the Duttons, Judge Garth often faced schemes to acquire part of his land or his cattle and was always battling the folks in second place to keep them from pulling him down. The Virginian's fast draw (Drury's character never had a name) or perhaps Trampas's would finally be called on to end the threat.

Yellowstone's Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser) combines Drury and McClure's character, but Dutton's daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) is a far cry from Judge Garth's charge Betsy. She's a borderline sociopath fiercely loyal to her father and other family members. She's devious, manipulative and when holding the power in a relationship clearly a bully herself. Wheeler himself has little to no hesitation about killing John's enemies when required or when John directs him to, and violence seems to be the first item in his toolkit when handling about any situation.

Borrowing a little bit from Dallas, Kaycie Dutton (Luke Grimes) is the good son, married to a local Native American teacher and father to Tate. His past as a Navy SEAL often haunts him, even though he is mostly content with life. Bad son Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) is loyal to his father but has his own ambitions that don't always parallel the family's. Dutton's recurring opponent is Chief Thomas Rainwater (Gil Birmingham) of the nearby Broken Rock Indian Reservation. The tribe seeks the return of large portions of the Dutton ranch to their ownership.

The show offers a lot of trappings of a Western drama and characters are regularly framed against gorgeous Utah-standing-in-for-Montana scenery. A lot of the Western ideals about self-reliance, protecting your own and standing for the rights of the individual against faceless corporations or bureaucracies feature prominently. But as the other show in the headline might indicate, the people espousing these ideals rarely hesitate to set them aside if need be. The code is held most strongly when it is to their advantage, otherwise it's a tissue to be held up and imperfectly cover bloody violence.

Yellowstone suffers from the tendency to bring forth Great Philosophical Pronouncements from its characters (especially when they are framed by the aforementioned gorgeous Utah-as-Montana scenery), as well as all too frequently having them declare that the previous nasty fight wasn't nasty and now things will really get nasty. The acting hits a wide range. Costner is essentially playing himself, and while Grimes and Kelsey Asbille as his wife Monica bring a lot of layers to their characters, Bentley is all too often not much more than a handsome profile -- what's meant as conflicted appears more as wooden -- and Reilly chows down on more than her share of scenery. Perhaps Beth is supposed to be larger than life but she usually just winds up as over the top.

In more ways than one, Yellowstone also recalls the nighttime soaps of the 80s: Dallas, Dynasty, Knot's Landing and others. Perhaps its storylines are a little more realistic and perhaps its setting a little more believable than the sprawling mansions inhabited by the Ewings, the Carringtons and the denizens of Seaview Circle. And perhaps cowboy hats, Wranglers and aviator shades look cooler than the padded shoulders wielded by Joan Collins and Linda Evans. 

But even so, Yellowstone seems to be a chef's salad of several other dramas, pulling violence and language from The Sopranos, outrageous family drama from Dallas and the like and the ranch-against-the-world setting of The Virginian. The seams show, the blend is off and the show...can be skipped.

Aflight

The discovery of PlutoTV has allowed me to consume media other than current podcasts and such, which are filled with stuff that is nothing I want to watch right now.

Among the offerings are reruns of the 1990s NBC sitcom Wings, set in a regional airport in Nantucket. I'd enjoyed this show when it aired, but my career diversion to seminary took me away from television for a big chunk of its run. David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee created it and set it in the same world as their other output Cheers and later, Frasier. It never flew quite as high (heh) but lasted seven respectable seasons and brings the laughs pretty well. It was one of the first vehicles for Tony Shaloub, later known as Adrian Monk in the series of that name.

It's very much a product of its era with the setup/punchline format and issues resolved inside one episode. But it does make moves towards the kinds of longer arcs that more modern shows have and character development over time. It's also a showcase for 90s fashions of blocky blazers for women and unstructured shirts and floppy ties for men, especially on co-lead Steven Weber. I'd forgotten that it was an enjoyable little niche show, even if it never broke out like the trio's other work.

And Crystal Bernard was just about as cute as could be, but I am sure that had nothing to do with the show's appeal.

Reassessment...

For some reason, a new series of ads has been showing up on Facebook, playing video clips from classic television sitcoms.  Some of them are as funny as ever, like Barney Miller, Designing Women and WKRP in Cincinnati. But one show that hasn't aged well seems to be Happy Days.

Fonzie, Richie, Potsie and the bunch gave us the phrase "jumped the shark" when a Happy Days episode showed Henry Winkler waterski-jumping a buoy-outlined patch of water that the script said contained a shark. We knew it did because before the scene that showed Winkler skiiing towards it we saw a fin in the water. And interpolated between parts of the sequence showing Fonzie approaching the ramp (in leather jacket, of course) we saw footage of a shark that was definitely beneath the surface of some water somewhere. Conventional wisdom says that's when the show began to decline, even though it lasted several more seasons.

But watching other clips from the show makes it clear that the silliness that led to its decline began somewhere about season 3, when the characters became caricatures and the every conversation became setup/punchline, setup/punchline, setup/punchline ayyyyy.

So let the shark off the hook, OK? It may be a vicious predator laying waste to hundreds of smaller, cuter and more colorful fish and occasionally attacking a human, but it didn't signal the ruin of Happy Days. That, apparently, had already happened.

I'll Take "Think Outside the Box" for $100

The recent death of Alex Trebek leaves the venerable TV quiz show Jeopardy more than a little adrift. The show taped only half its season before going on break, and it doesn't want to just write off half a season. The studio probably wouldn't like to lose that much money coming out of pandemic-related hiatuses anyway, plus the many people who worked on the show with Trebek say he would have disliked a mid-season shutdown for its harm on the people with everyday kind of paychecks.

So far it seems like the plan is to get a rotating roster of familiar Jeopardy faces to finish out the season before making a move to a more permanent successor. The first is all-time winner Ken Jennings, whose 74 consecutive wins tops all other contestants. Some folks suggest Jennings should get the job permanently, but there are a number of problems with that. Chief among them is that he's a jerk. Or, more fairly, that he knows how to portray one on social media. You'd hope that Jennings, like a lot of other meatheads who use the platform, simply gave in to temptation to say something in front of people but without saying it to anyone's face. But even though the miracle of pre-taping can make certain similar outbursts would never make it on air, if they happened they'd be bound to have a corrosive effect on the show and its image.

Levar Burton is another potential permanent successor and would probably do a good job -- but here's where I, who will never be found guilty of being a very woke feminist, would like to stake out a spot for women. In a conversation via comment a couple of weeks ago with blogger Brian Noggle, I suggested Mayim Bialik would be a good choice. Bialik is personable and capable of projecting some nerdy host charm and holds an actual doctorate in neurobiology -- she was the Big Bang Theory cast member who already knew the science words in her script.

Brian also suggested actress Danica McKellar, perhaps best known as Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and as the author of several books encouraging school-age girls to discount the idea that math is for boys and girls can't succeed at it. McKellar would probably also be able to project the kind of calm authority-with-a-twinkle-in-its-eye at which Trebek excelled. She's no slouch in the classroom either, graduating summa cum laude from UCLA with a degree in mathematics and being a named developer of something called the "Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem," explained in a paper she and another undergraduate helped their professor research and write.

I'm not a person who figures a woman should get a prominent role just because up until now a man's always had it. But part of me would like to see strong campaigns for either or both McKellar and Bialik if only because the eventual choice to go with yet another dude would help show what a fib show business tells us when it talks about its progressive and egalitarian character.

Plus, at 63 Burton's smack in the middle of the baby boom, while both Bialik (44) and McKellar (45) are Xers. It'd be kind of a nice change to see an Xer get a job instead of yet another Boomer.

Balance

Hanging out with the folks for dinner and caught one of the network newscasts and remembered why I stopped, even before they became so Trump-centric.

Story 1: Civil unrest in Beirut following this week's massive explosion, as protestors demand to know what the heck their government was doing by storing 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in a hot, unsafe warehouse. Duration: Approx. 22 seconds.

Story 2: America's Got Talent judge Simon Cowell falls off of an electric bicycle and breaks his back in six places, and is now being monitored following surgery. Electric bikes are now a thing because they're enviromentally better than cars but the electric motor on them reduces the strength needed to power them and makes them a favorite among aging Baby Boomers. Who, consequently, can find themselves with more broken bones that younger folks when they fall off. AGT's season premiere up in the air following injury. Duration: Bit more than two minutes.

A national newscast spent just about six times as long on a story about a talent show judge as it did about the site of a world tragedy. This is why what's sometimes called "liberal bias" is hardly the modern media's worst problem.

You Were Fantastic...And So Was I

The character of the Doctor in the British sci-fi program (or maybe "programme") Doctor Who has been played by many different actors over the show's decades-long run. Rather than pull a Bewitched Darren switcheroo, the different actors are written into the story as "regenerations."

A new actor arrives, develops a new persona, new wardrobe, new way of doing things, but is still the Doctor. In the original version of the show there were supposed to be only a dozen regenerations available per Time Lord (the Doctor's species). This works great when you have an actor stick with the role for, say, seven years like Tom Baker and his extraordinary scarf. It'll take a long time to run out a dozen cast changes with that kind of tenure. But then things happen like ratings dives, cancellations, very brief tenures and aborted reboots, so you wind up burning through the first part of your second half-dozen pretty quickly. So the showrunners found some wibbly-wobbly way to remove the regeneration limit -- there's no telling how many Doctors there have been or will be. Although if the ratings from the most recent series -- the word British TV uses where we would use "season" -- don't turn around, we may not see very many more of them.

In any event, when the show rebooted in 2005 it featured the Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston. His tenure was just one season, the briefest of all of the Doctors of the "Nu Who" era except for the late John Hurt's one-episode War Doctor. His regeneration happened 15 years ago today, with Eccleston leaving following disputes with the BBC and showrunners. The actor brought a haunted quality to the character, reflecting his experiences of seeing his home planet of Gallifrey destroyed along with their greatest enemies, the Daleks, in a "Time War." He's also responsible for some of the revival's best moments, especially his joyful shouted declaration in "The Doctor Dances:" "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!"

From Page to Screen

While recently landing with both feet on Mark Wahlberg's awful Spenser: Confidential, I referenced the 1980s television adaptation of Robert B. Parker's iconic private investigator, Spenser. The show streams through IMDBtv, which I can see with ads via my Amazon streaming service, so I've been rewatching some of its three seasons.

Bowing in 1985, Spenser: For Hire starred Robert Urich as the title character, Avery Brooks as his friend Hawk and Barbara Stock as the love of his life, Susan Silverman. The show lasted three seasons and used some of the same cast for four TV movies following its cancellation. It did fairly well ratings-wise, but the cost of location shooting in Boston meant it needed to do better than "fairly well." Season 2 showrunners swapped Susan Silverman for prosecutor Rita Fiori (Carolyn McCormick) to the consternation of book fans, and the combination of the changes and being bounced around the schedule kept the show from ever really breaking out.

As mentioned in the item about the Mark Wahlberg movie, the late Robert Urich was probably a little lighter in tone than Parker envisioned for Spenser. But Urich was able to balance the different aspects that had made the character a fan favorite, switching pretty smoothly between a smartass remark, a hightone literary quote and a well-placed stiff right hand. His size helped, as he matched the larger presence Parker describes Spenser to have. Barbara Stock gives the Susan Silverman role more effort than it really deserves; although Parker sometimes keeps her in the wings he also can place her center stage as a character with agency in her own right. That's not something a lot of 1980s-era private-eye shows pulled off very well, but Stock frequently pushes the role into a much higher profile than the scripts had provided as well as greater weight. McCormick is a talented actress, but the show never really developed Fiori sufficiently.

In one sense it's hard to judge a 35-year-old television show. Spenser: For Hire is full of 80's-isms like at least one car chase and gunfight per episode and next to no season-long continuity. Since only reruns would air during the hiatus, they might air out of order and episodes needed to be more standalone than linked in an arc. It would be very interesting to see a modernly conceived show using these actors playing these characters, even one airing on a network. Current sensibilities would smooth out some of what today looks silly but was an essential part of a private eye/cop show of the mid-1980s.

For many Spenser book readers who watched the show, each of the characters is probably now a little bit of a mix of the actor and the written character. Frank Belson is written as a thin detective, but Ron McLarty's doughy image springs to mind when he comes onto the page. It's not hard to hear Urich's voice in the two or three scene-setting sentences Parker used to open some chapters (It's impossible to hear Wahlberg's. Trust me).

But in one case, the onscreen character simply took over the printed one and it's now next to impossible to read him without hearing and seeing the actor: Hawk, as played by Avery Brooks. Brooks' dominant personality, charisma and talent defined the character in ways that subsequent actors -- even decent ones like Ernie Hudson, Sheik Mahmud-Bey and Winston Duke -- can't match. If you try to tune your mental ear to "hear" dialogue in the books and you've seen even one Spenser: For Hire episode, you're going to hear Avery Brooks.

As mentioned above, Spenser: For Hire was unable to mount ratings that justified its production costs, which gave it a very short leash from early on. And its many dated characteristics leave it an uneven viewing experience today for at least half of its episodes. But when it does hit, it shows some of the quality of its source material and manages to stand almost as far above its contemporary productions as the best Spenser novels stand above their competition.

On the Bubble

There are a couple of broadcast network shows I can pick up on my TV through the antenna or that I can watch at the gym. I may write more about them  -- SEAL Team and The Rookie -- later, but for right now, as they've finished their seasons, I'm kind of ambivalent about whether or not they get renewed.

In both shows, I really like almost all of the characters and have grown to appreciate them over their still pretty short runs. But also in both shows, the brutally hacktastic storylines make me want to cringe. There are good moments even in some of the worst episodes, but the likeable characters and polished ensemble work by the actors is being embedded in clunky and lazy narrative arcs plagued with potholes.

I'm honestly not sure if I want them to be renewed for new seasons so I can continue to spend more time watching characters I enjoy or to be canceled so that time isn't spent watching those characters abused by cliché-soaked scripts.

You're Looking Particularly Lovely Today, American Electorate

Later this month, the United States' Libertarian Party will tell me the name of the candidate I'll be voting for for president of the country. This is not because I'm a member of that party or someone who believes the two major parties are incapable of proffering a candidate for whom I could vote.

Recent history notwithstanding.

In any event, I've frequently pointed out there is only one circumstance in which I will vote for Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent. Sometime before 1985, someone cloned Adolf Hitler and he is now old enough to run and win the nomination in opposition to President Trump. Since that is all but impossible, it seems clear that I will not vote for the president. Nor will I vote for former Vice-President Joe Biden, the probable Democratic nominee. I think he is almost certain to make a poor choice for his running mate and since he's north of 75 already that poor choice may become president. Sure, it may happen anyway, but I don't want to take any part in it. And should Mr. Biden finish his term in full and hale health he will have undoubtedly tried to enact policies with which I can't agree, which is also a barrier to voting for him.

So I will vote for the Libertarian candidate, whoever it is. In 2016, it was the barely average former governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson. The party will select its candidate in late May and the favorite to win the nomination right now seems to be United States Representative Justin Amash of Michigan. Rep. Amash has recently left the GOP after having been elected to office several times as a member of that party.

If the Libertarians nominate Rep. Amash, then I'll vote for him. Even if it seems like the more he talks, the more he reminds me of Eddie Haskell.

Confidentially Crud

Given the incredible liberties that screenwriters Sean O'Keefe and Brian Helgeland take with their source material, the only honest way for a Robert B. Parker fan such as your humble blogger to review the Netflix release Spenser Confidential is in two separate arenas. How does it succeed on its own and then how does it succeed as an adaptation of Parker's best-known character and his world?

As to the first, the answer is a weak meh. Mark Wahlberg plays the title character, an ex-cop just released after a five-year sentence for thoroughly punching a superior officer. He moves in with an old friend, gym owner Henry Cimoli (Alan Arkin), who puts Spenser up with a new fighter he is training, Hawk (Winston Duke). But the police captain is murdered the very day Spenser is released, and when officers question him about it he becomes curious himself. The apparently neat frame of another officer for the crime motivates him to find the truth, and he is able to enlist Hawk and Henry to his cause, as well as his (sort of)ex-girlfriend Cissie (Iliza Shlesinger).

The entire main cast -- all of whom are Friar favorites -- work very hard to make the O'Keefe-Helgeland script better than it has any right to be. They succeed but since the original material started out so far below adequate they can barely manage to elevate it to the aforementioned meh. Banal predictability means not a single development in the story can sustain the slightest suspense. Plot holes wide enough for an 18-wheeler keep the narrative swerving from side to side in often futile attempts to avoid them. Had Robert Parker never written a Spenser book or had these characters been removed from any connection to the books, Spenser Confidential would still be a solid exhibit in the case that Netflix has more money than it knows what to do with.

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But Robert B. Parker did write Spenser novels, and the inevitable comparison between his version of the characters and the Spenser Confidential version makes the latter a nearly complete failure. It's not simply that O'Keefe and Helgeland changed the characters' backstory, relationships and in a few places substituted entirely new characters to take familiar roles. Robert Urich brought a lightness of spirit to Spenser that Parker didn't often intend in the 1980s Spenser for Hire, so changes by themselves are not necessarily harmful.

Meaningless changes, though, made for no discernible reason are another matter. Some may be intended to bring a comedic element into the mix and the question of whether or not that's a good idea is made moot by the dismal execution. Again the cast tries as hard as they can but short of giving them the authority to rewrite the script they're fighting a lost cause.

Several gushing reviews on Confidential's Facebook page note that the movie's ending sets up sequel possibilities, and one commenter said they could make several movies since Parker and his successor Ace Atkins have written dozens of Spenser novels. But as seems clear, O'Keefe and Helgeland don't need any published novels as guides for their movies: They are more than capable of sucking all on their own.

Super Sundry

-- My preferred National Football League team, the Kansas City Chiefs, won in their first Super Bowl appearance in 50 years. This win fit their post-season pattern in that they came from behind with a blizzard of scoring in just a few minutes of play, led by uber-QB Patrick Mahomes. The lesson for opposing teams seems to be not to let Mahomes get behind by more than 10 points unless there is under, say, 12 seconds to play in the game.

-- Demi Lovato sang a fine rendition of the national anthem a little bit more than a year after being hospitalized for a near-fatal opioid overdose. It was only her second public live performance since she took a break following the overdose for treatment.

-- Megastar couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé stayed seated for Lovato's performance, which is understandable given that Jay-Z is partnering with former San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick in his activism trying to call attention to the injustices faced by minority populations in the United States. Many people objected, which is understandable given that the anthem and flag are widely considered to represent not simply our nation but also those who have sacrificed greatly for it, and that a show of disrespect to the flag is often seen as a show of disrespect to those people. Many news outlets covered the protest gesture, which is not understandable at all.

-- Kansas City defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi has been sponsoring one free adoption at the KC Pet Project after every Chiefs win. So after the Super Bowl victory, Nnadi said that the adoption fees for every animal at the project's shelter which became eligible for adoption on or before Feb. 2 would be covered.

-- The halftime show by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez drew criticism from people who believed it to have been inappropriately suggestive. Many women argued back, saying that women who had no real problem with Adam Levine's shirtless performance in Super Bowl LIII did not have much room to criticize the ladies' saucy work in SB LIV, and they criticized the women for tearing other women down instead of supporting them. From what I could tell, many of them emphasized their criticism by calling the critics "Karen," which has become a word expressing derision towards a certain kind of middle-class, usually white woman who leans a little bit towards self-righteousness. I wasn't able to find any actual Karen who criticized the show, although I suppose there were some.

-- Most of the commercials were stupid and boring. The lone exception was the Bill Murray ad for Jeep, which reprised his Groundhog Day movie about a man who keeps repeating the same day in his life. The Doritos ad had the brief moment of Sam Elliot's mustache helping him in his dance contest against Lil Nas X but was otherwise silly.

-- Super Bowl LIV was followed by Fox's The Masked Singer. In 1970, the last time Kansas City won the Super Bowl, the game was followed by Lassie. Super Bowl IV is the clear winner here.

Two Dudes' Duds

Sebastian Maniscalco is pretty clear when he begins his latest special, Stay Hungry, that he doesn't have much use for more modern understandings of limits on comedy's subject matter or style. He doesn't leave very much off-limits as he questions what seem to him at best silly and at worst bizarre features of life at the end of the second decade of the 21st century.

The mode is middle-aged grump, and you could be forgiven your thought that this material would be right up my alley and aimed directly at me. Perhaps it is, but most of the stories are predictable and lack much punch. Why should an exercise bicycle class would have an impossibly energetic and cheery leader/trainer, he wonders? It's weird. It is weird, but mostly everyone knows that already and Maniscalco's take adds very little texture to either that weird situation or others he explores.

This kind of "Get off my lawn" schtick can be funny even when its familiar, but it comes best in a package that matches the material. Brad Upton's receding hairline, off-the rack suit and bug eyes make him a good teller of "What's wrong with the world these days?" stories, and Jeff Allen's gruff voice and hangdog look back up his riffs on the same subject, but Maniscalco's hipster outfit jars his attempts to make fun of the people who look a lot like he's trying to look even when he's talking about them. Stay Hungry probably feeds his fan base, but not many others.

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Given that Ken Jeong's breakout role was in a Jud Apatow movie, low expectations are built into any viewing of his first Netflix special, You Complete Me, Ho. He easily exceeds them with a brutally unfunny set that would be better categorized as a public appearance than a prepared show. The title comes from a quick riff on his wife's last name, "Ho," one of the few amusing pieces of the show.  The others stem from his interactions with the audience, who are obviously fans and glad to see him. Jeong does have a good rapport with the crowd at the Ice House Comedy Club, but no one who's not already a fan will be convinced by the string of barely amusing anecdotes from his experiences on movie sets and from his first career as a physician.

Take a Pass

The first episode of the new Star Trek: Discovery show was not enough to make me buy CBS's streaming service and continue watching it. Nothing I've read about the ensuing seasons has made me think I got that wrong.

But recent trailers and publicity for another Trek-verse show on the streaming network, Star Trek: Picard, interested me. Patrick Stewart is a top actor and he made the character of Enterprise-D Captain Jean-Luc Picard far more interesting than the dated and often repetitive show he inhabited. Stewart played the role in four big-screen movies, the final one of which did enough damage to the franchise that it stayed off the big screen for seven years until J.J. Adams' rebooted Star Trek in 2009.

Picard looked interesting in the trailers, which seemed to have set aside the 1980s atmosphere of Gene Roddenberry's dippy utopian vision for the more realistic aura of the Deep Space Nine television show and the First Contact movie. So I have to say I was considering a test-run of the CBS All Access streaming network to watch the show.

Then I read Stewart's Vanity Fair interview -- in which he says that one of the guiding understandings of the new show “was me responding to the world of Brexit and Trump and feeling, ‘Why hasn’t the Federation changed? Why hasn’t Starfleet changed?’ Maybe they’re not as reliable and trustworthy as we all thought.” And he further opines on which nation -- the U.S. or the U.K. -- is currently more "****ed." And with my earlier concerns now confirmed I said, "Nope."

It's not because I like or dislike the British vote to leave the European Union or the US election of Donald Trump. Yes, the current EU is a trainwreck and any smart nation would bow out until or unless it fixed its problems. But the president is a lousy human being with next to no sense of what he should be doing in office, even on the infrequent occasions he stumbles into the right thing to do. So I guess technically, Sir Patrick and I split on those things. But as a more conservative person politically I am well-used to the idea that actors, actresses, musicians, directors, writers and interns who get the director coffee think I am a knuckle-dragging troglodyte who should probably be kept indoors and away from sharp objects.

No, I've lost all interest in the show because I want five bleedin' minutes of entertainment that doesn't comment on or reference Donald Trump and what show executives think is so wrong with the world that people elected him. It doesn't matter that the creators of most popular forms of entertainment aren't really good at that sort of thing. Many of the various and sundry Important! Statements! creators made against former President Bush are horribly dated now, especially since they all told us he was the worst thing imaginable and now, surprise, he's not. Bereft of their Deep Political Meaning they have a shallow sameness and are mostly just boring.

What matters is that both the president and his haters agree that he needs to be at the center of everything, and anyone who thinks differently just gets steamrolled by them working together to make their shared vision a reality.

Unfulfilled

The eight-year-old Friar remembers that 2020 is the year that the Hanna-Barbera company promised him an underwater habitat capable of housing 250 people. It doesn't seem like anyone's in any hurry to live up to that bargain.

The 36-year-old Friar remembers that next year will be the year that a company called 70/30 Productions promised him lame retread entertainment parasitically fastened on old shows in a never-ending spiral of ironically hip ersatz humor. It doesn't seem like anyone's in any hurry to end that trend.

Potentially Lethal

The sci-fi suspense show Stranger Things, set in the middle of the 1980s, has drawn a lot of praise for its well-handled cultural mileu. In its upcoming season, it will take on one of the most potentially dangerous challenges yet -- it will introduce "New Coke" to the story.

In 1985, the Coca-Cola company tweaked its recipe to produce what it called a "sweeter and smoother" drink. They were immediately denounced and the "New Coke" roundly rejected; in less than 80 days the old formula was returned to production as Coca-Cola Classic (Peter Jennings actually broke into an episode of General Hospital with a news bulletin announcing it). New Coke became "Coke II" in 1992 and was discontinued ten years later.

The company is making a half-million cans of the product, complete with 1985 labeling, in connection with its use on Stranger Things. So the question now is: Will the popularity and success of Stranger Things bring a revival of "New Coke?" Or will the disaster of New Coke wreck Stranger Things? There's no way to know for certain, but I hope the show's young stars socked those salaries away in a college fund.

Because the end will come swiftly.

The Funnyman

In noting the death today of Tim Conway, I debated whether I should post the clip in which he plays a dentist with his very first patient and leaves Harvey Korman (and the audience) a mess or the one in which his never-ending story in front of "Mama's family" puts them all under until Vicki Lawrence -- in character -- destroys the entire room with a well-placed question.

So yeah, both. Why not?

Exploration Commenced!

Started searching through YouTube for some good videos of former Wild Kingdom co-host Jim Fowler, who passed away earlier this week. His second-best gig was coming on The Tonight Show and showing a variety of animals to Johnny Carson, who was always game for the weirdest and wackiest critters Fowler could muster.

After spending a good hour or so cracking up at how much fun Fowler had springing surprises on Carson, I decided on the appearance where Fowler brought Doc, a Celebes ape, onto the show and Doc decided to play a little fisticuffs with Carson. This one is a highlight for several reasons, chief among them how Fowler pretty much loses it when Doc punches Carson and then when Carson gets into a goofy-face war with Doc.

The other reason is the knowledge that if Doc laid one into any current late-night host, said host would pass smooth out, wake up crying and file a lawsuit.

Seeking and Finding

The first decade of the 21st century saw a mini-explosion of "Gospel According to..." books that connected the Christian message with different elements of popular culture. It grew mainly from two sources -- the willingness of pastors and theologians to engage with some of that culture and the vastly improved quality of enough cultural elements to make it worthwhile.  Robert Short could write The Gospel According to Peanuts, but there was no call for The Gospel According to The Dukes of Hazzard (See, Bo and Luke, making their way the only way they know but with that being more than the law will allow? That's the Galatian legalizer controversy right there, man!).

Mark Pinsky's The Gospel According to the Simpsons kicked off the trend, but few of the subsequent books were written by someone with Pinsky's background as a longtime newspaper religion writer. And some of the qualified writers picked material more because they liked it than because there was any real theological substance to it, meaning the trend shallowed out sooner than most. But it's fun to run across books that take both poles of their inquiry seriously enough to make you think about them.
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Gregory Thornbury and Ned Bustard didn't compose a whole book that looked for Christian themes and connections in the venerable sci-fi show Doctor Who, which was probably a wise choice. The show began in 1963 and had a multi-year gap during the 1990s before a modern reboot made it probably better-known than it ever was during its original run. There have been a legion of show-runners, writers and actors who've brought us the adventures of a certain Galifreyan "Time Lord" in his slightly malfunctioning time-and-spaceship called a TARDIS. Which means there are both an overflow of connections and a lack of any one overarching theme to try to use. So Thornbury, a philosophy professor, and Bustard, a graphic designer working mostly for religious groups and institutions, solicited essays from a variety of people about some of the many different connections they saw in different episodes of the show.

The writers of 2015's Bigger on the Inside come from several faith traditions. Some are academics and some are religious professionals. They share an enjoyment of the Who universe, its quirks and foibles and fun. Some are written with a more academic tone, complete with endnote vapor trails, while others are a little more casual. None dive too deeply into their subject matter, which is a good idea for a show that has often had its lead actors menaced by people inside a variety of different ill-fitting rubber suits. Who episode writers probably rarely, if ever, intended to teach some kind of theological truth. But any work of art that wants to try to wrestle a little with questions of human existence is going to open itself to having those questions answered by theological-minded folks, and the essays of Bigger do that.

Organized according to different Christian doctrinal issues like the prayer, the problem of evil, temptation and so on, each chapter focuses on an episode in which the action and resolution address its titular issue in a manner reflective of some traditional orthodox beliefs on the subject. Some of the chapters are stronger than others, and a couple strain enough at their reach that their inclusion might have been reconsidered.

A major strength of Bigger on the Inside is the use of episodes from the pre-reboot era, 1963 to 1989. Though hampered by more primitive special-effects technology, many of these episodes offer some intriguing handles to grab hold of for questioning. Especially as writers during this era were less concerned with the kind of overt messaging that can torpedo the entertainment value of just about anything. Most of the essays presume some familiarity with the show and its universe, so a "non-Whovian" reader might do well to have the Wikipedia entry for the show open while reading. Either way, Bigger on the Inside offers some fun ways to think about important things like Incarnation and which Doctor and companion were the best (Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela, according to your humble blogger).

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When you combine a songwriting and poetic voice like Bruce Springsteen with a firm Roman Catholic upbringing you get a catalog filled with Biblical allusions and theological claims about the nature of human existence, the role of God and the reality of the divine in everyday life. So Springsteen was tailor-made for one of the "Gospel According to..." books, and indeed Unitarian minister Jeffrey B. Symynkywicz wrote one in 2008. It was not one of the shallowest among that trend of titles, but Symynkywicz's decision to organize his book as an album-by-album exploration and finding a single theology or single idea running through the entire catalog limited his ability to dig deeply into the more meaningful parts of Springsteen's work.

Rutgers University Professor of Jewish Studies Azzan Yadin-Israel took a different tack when preparing his own 2016 work, The Grace of God and the Grace of Man. Yaddin-Israel's professional work involves exploring texts themselves, such as ancient Jewish poetry, Biblical writings, the Talmud or different midrashic commentaries on Old Testament stories. He decided to examine different Springsteen songs as texts themselves, rather than as clues to a single or small number of main themes. He also focuses only on the theological questions or issues raised in the song itself, rather than Springsteens's own religious beliefs and opinions. Obviously those beliefs influence the material, but Yaddin-Israel takes Springsteen's own admonition seriously: "Trust the art, be suspicious of the artist. He's generally untrustworthy himself." Yaddin-Israel wrote before Springsteen often reinforced that idea in his own Broadway show, but he still refrains from trying to link what a particular song may say to what Springsteen himself might say on a particular matter.

Yaddin-Israel divides Grace into three parts. In the first he explores Springsteen's earlier catalogue, up through Darkness on the Edge of Town. It's the most self-consciously poetic period of his work, filled with outsized characters and word-blizzard street folktales that resolve only at a little distance. The center section revolves around different theological themes and the way different songs express them. This section combines songs from different eras of Springsteen's career. The final section picks a handful of songs in which Springsteen writes and sings a "midrash," or retelling, of a Biblical story to highlight an aspect of its meaning or even an alternative understanding.

In focusing on Springsteen's most overtly theological and Biblically-influenced writing, Yaddin-Israel chooses to leave out parts of the catalog that have less of those qualities. This means that some of his more famous work -- like the entirety of Born in the U.S.A. -- won't be found here or will be referenced in passing. Many of those songs may reflect on their subject matter just as deeply as some of the ones that Yaddin-Israel includes, but their lack of theological or Biblical flavoring puts them off this particular menu.

All three sections, as well as an insightful introduction covering the possibility of gleaning theological insight from pop or rock music and an interesting conclusion about these influences in Springsteen's writing, are worth reading. The middle section organized along themes bogs down a little and probably reaches for some of its allusions, but it's still a rewarding read.

That conclusion mentioned above is one Springsteen himself has reached, according to several interviews. His Catholic school upbringing remains a part of his songwriting vocabulary in the same way that the blue-collar life of Freehold, N.J., does, and the same way that the cars-and-girls rock and soul songs of the 1950s and 1960s do. My own Methodist founder, John Wesley, referred to himself as a "man of one book," meaning that his speaking and writing was so infused with Biblical imagery and language that he used those scriptural passages as his own language. Springsteen is by no means a man of one book, but the same book which influenced Mr. Wesley walks through his words and songs more than many might suspect. I wonder if I could pitch that to a publisher...