TV 2021

 I have a 40+” screen at home, hooked up to a DVD player and an XBOX One.  The latter serves 95% of the time for streaming and 5% for those green boxes with game DVDs in them.  It’s reached the point where I have to keep track of which streaming service the show I want to keep watching is on…

I’m old enough to remember television:  three major VHF channels:  Channel 4 was NBC, Channel 7 was ABC, and Channel 9 was CBS (Washington DC area).  There were some UHF channels with PBS and other odd channels.  We moved to Paris in 1979 and did not care much for French TV, even if some of that was US shows dubbed into French.   When we went up to SHAPE we could watch AFN (Armed Forces Network) TV at the Raymond Hotel in Mons, Belgium – that was older US TV shows with public service announcements where advertising would normally be.  The primary purpose of the big 26” TV in a wooden box was to put the humungous VCR on top to watch VHS tapes: first ones being the 1976 “King Kong” with Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, and Charles Grodin, and first recorded movie being “The Odessa File” (1974 with Jon Voigt).  Our friends had relatives back in the Boston area taping US TV shows for us, but their tastes were along the lines of Lawrence Welk and “Murder, She Wrote”.  You know, old people stuff.  But we’re talking about the early 1980s, well before FOX and more provocative programming. 

Eventually DVDs came around, plus the flat screen TVs far larger than 26”.  Now we’ve got streaming.

Netflix.  Remarkably, I STILL borrow DVDs from Netflix.  However, the days when a red envelope wound up back with them the day after, and I received my next movie the day after that, seem to be long gone.  However, a note “DVD ONLY” for a movie does not discourage me at all:  send it to me and I’ll watch it.  You’ve spared me the need to find it on YouTube or buy it used. 

Shows I’ve been watching:  The Crown (still season 1), Schitt$ Creek (finished season 1), Disenchantment (previously finished S2, but rewatching S1 again now that S3 is available), Umbrella Academy (finished S1), The Politician (finished S1).  I was watching the Original Twilight Zone (finished S4), Peaky Blinders (finished S1), Riverdale (finished S2), and as noted in the last blog, Babylon Berlin.  Their original programming is competitive and watchable.

Amazon Prime.  The $12.99 membership gives some excellent viewing – plus free shipping and far quicker delivery times than USPS these days.  Shows:  Goliath (finished S2), Suits (finished S1), 30 Rock (finished S1), Roadkill (still plowing through S1, brings me back to my earlier days working on my cars and subscribing to Car Craft), The Boys (finished S2, glad to hear S3 is on its way), Tin Star (finished S2), and of course, High in the Man Castle.  

Hulu.  I had to get Hulu to continue with season 4 of Burn Notice – that Miami-based show about the CIA operative, Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) who was inexplicably fired from the CIA while in the middle of an operation in Lagos, Nigeria and is trying to figure out what happened, while he takes miscellaneous jobs – narrated by him in the first person – which take advantage of his unusual skill set.  Sharon Gless of “Cagney & Lacey” plays his mom (Tyne Daley guest stars in one episode) and Bruce “Army of Darkness” Campbell is his FBI buddy, Sam Axe, who helps out.  There’s also a hot skinny chick, Gabrielle Anwar, as his “no, I am NOT gay, Sam and I are just friends” GF and close associate.  I can’t help calling this “BURN!!” (KELSO!) Notice.  Hulu also has Black Jesus – Aaron “Boondocks” McGruder’s most recent thing – and Archer, including the most recent season 11.  

Disney+.  This has ALL of “The Simpsons” (just finished Season 16) and all the “Star Wars” stuff, including our beloved Man Delorean. 

CBS All Access.   This has all the Star Trek stuff:  the movies, the Original Series, plus Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks, plus the movies. 

Binge Watching.  I think we’ve reached a critical mass where they are coming out with new TV shows faster than anyone can watch them.  As for watching a show from start to finish nonstop, even if it’s only one season, I don’t have the patience for that.  I prefer to mix things up.  Recently I was alternating “M*A*S*H” (Season 4, we’ve got BJ Hunnicutt and Colonel Potter, but still Major Frank Burns) and “Modern Family” (Season 10, Alex graduates from CalTech, Dylan and Haley have twins).   Both of those, however, I was watching on DVD, not streaming.

Shaggy Dogs and Lawyers

The Shaggy Dog (1959).  This was actually Disney’s first live-action comedy, in black & white.  A young teenage boy, Wilby Daniels (Tommy Kirk) discovers a mysterious Italian ring with a Latin inscription, “in canis corpore trasmuto” (“I change into the body of a dog”) allegedly an artifact of the Borgias, the famous medieval Italian family.  He turns into a sheepdog several times.  As a dog he overhears bad guy discussing plots to steal weapons plans (Cold War, remember?) but manages to foil the plot.  The movie is based on an older novel, The Hound of Florence, by Felix Salten, who is better known for having written Bambi (yes, the story about the deer).  Without having read it, though, I can’t comment on how much the story is changed.  It is entertaining.

I did watch the first episode of “The Borgias”, the recent miniseries with Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia, aka Pope Alexander VI.  His daughter Lucrezia does NOT turn into a dog.  Sorry, no magic.  So much for that show.

The Shaggy D.A. (1976).  This is actually a sequel.  In fact, I recall seeing “The Shaggy Dog” in the US around the time this movie came out.  Before VCRs and cable, the most likely explanation is that the 1959 film was broadcast on TV to tie in with the release of the sequel in the movie theaters.

            Daniels is grown up now, played by Dean Jones, with his wife played by Suzanne Pleshette (most often seen on “Newhart”).  He’s a private attorney but strongly encouraged to run for district attorney (D.A.) because the incumbent, John Slade (Keenan Wynn) is not merely incompetent, but corrupt: in cahoots with local gangster Roshak (Vik Tayback, aka “Mel” from “Alice”, plus “A Piece of the Action”, etc.).  The magic ring gets discovered again, so Daniels starts turning into a sheepdog again – apparently at random, but at the most inconvenient times.  Tim Conway plays the local ice cream man whose dog he turns into, and his would-be fiancé is a roller derby chick.  Here he can actually talk, even as a dog.

The Shaggy Dog (2006).  My initial impression of this was, “oh no…Tim Allen is going to ruin this.”  Not quite.  Despite the title, it’s more of a remake of “D.A.” than “Dog” because the character is a grown man, not a teenager, and he’s an attorney, Dave Douglas.  He’s actually an assistant D.A., hoping to take over the top position from Danny Glover’s character – who presumably is getting too old for this.    

            This time around the cause of the transformation is not a magic Borgia ring, but rather a serum derived from another dog, Po, who is 300 years old.  Douglas is prosecuting an animal rights activist, Forrester, accused of vandalizing the lab of Grant & Strictland.  G&S is trying to extract Po’s essence to cure aging.   Po bites Douglas, which makes him somewhat of a were-dog.   Too bad for Douglas, in this film he can’t talk as a dog, but he does figure out how to deliberately change into a dog (though he never figures out how to change back).  His wife is played by Kristin Davis (Charlotte from “Sex & the City”), and I recognize Shawn Pyfrom (Alex Van De Camp from “Desperate Housewives”) as the teenage daughter’s boyfriend. 

            The bad guy here is Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey Jr, playing the #2 scientist at G&S, Kozak.  Everything comes to a climax at a “Liar, Liar” type trial scene.