You’ve heard it before, but it’s true, nonetheless: TV has never been better. “Justified” has shown its final episode; “Mad Men” is into its last season; you can binge watch “House of Cards” anytime; and the remarkable “Orphan Black” just began its third season.
The choices keep expanding. Amazon and Netflix, flush with cash, have successfully ventured into original programming. For $15 a month you can have all of HBO without the cable cord. And all three services allow you to watch TV without exposure to reverse mortgage, toe-fungus or sexual dysfunction ads. (No targeting jokes, please!)
It used to be that the three (yes, children, there was a time before Fox!) networks dictated the television season, roughly paralleling the school year: the new season started in September, with re-runs beginning mid-June. Now, thanks to the wide-open marketplace, new seasons and new shows can surprise or disappoint us all year long.
Schitts Creek, Pop TV network, Wednesdays at 9
You read it right - “Schitts Creek,” the ingenious way around one of the last words that gets censored, even on cable. If you enjoyed Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara in “Best in Show,” you’ll love this.
Johnny Rose (Levy) made a fortune in video stores. He and his wife Moira (O’Hara), a washed-up, soap-opera star, lived a sumptuous lifestyle. Their two children, David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy) are in their 20’s and spoiled rotten, living off Dad. That is until the Roses found that their business manager embezzled all their money and never paid taxes.
The IRS took everything except their clothes and a deed to a little place Johnny bought as an investment, Schitts Creek! Since the tax guys said it had “no value," they were allowed to keep it.
So the whole family moves into adjoining rooms in a run-down motel and tries to explain to the locals how they own the town. They are literally and figuratively up … you know!
It’s a reverse of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” The fun is seeing Levy and O’Hare navigate their new locale, being thwarted and outsmarted by the likes of the town mayor Roland Schitt, played by Saturday Night Live alum Chris Elliott.
Eugene Levy writes the show with his son Dan, who is probably the funniest cast member as well. There is nothing profound here, just low-concept, fueled by the seemingly normal, but not really, schtick Levy does so well in his films. And you gotta love that title!
Grade: B+
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a documentary, HBO on demand, six episodes, directed by Andrew Jarecki
I stumbled on “The Jinx” before all the publicity over the last episode, not thinking it would amount to much. Another reality TV show about an unsolved murder, not much different from "Dateline NBC," which the network uses to fill space on Saturday night.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. The writer and director, Andrew Jarecki, skillfully draws you into the strange, violent world of Robert Durst, the scion of the prominent New York real estate family. Durst, seemingly frail with his twitchy eyes and whiny New York accent, is oddly mesmerizing, his fall from the height of wealth and society, Shakespearean.
In the first episode, you learn of a murder in Galveston, TX, where body parts have been discovered in plastic bags that have washed ashore. All except the head. The victim is identified as a loner living in a rundown apartment in a seedy section of town. The landlord tells us about the strange, rarely seen woman who rents the apartment next to the dead man.
It turns out the woman is actually Durst in disguise, running from the shambles of his life in New York City, where he has been passed over in his father’s will for his brother to run the Durst Organization. And there is the lingering suspicion that he is behind the disappearance of his beautiful, young wife, many years ago.
Durst is clearly damaged, but for some reason decided to let these writers and film crew into his life. He never admits much, but he keeps talking, long past the point where anyone else with his kind of resources would have holed up behind a cadre of lawyers and PR flacks. His phone calls to Jarecki, when he announces “It’s Baaab,“ are chilling.
You may have seen a clip of Durst supposedly admitting to multiple murders. That may have been the cherry, but there is a lot of cake too in this morbid, but fascinating tale. You will be instantly hooked.
Grade: A-
Going Clear, Scientology and the Prison of Belief, a documentary, HBO on demand, two hours, directed by Alex Gibney, from the book by Lawrence Wright (who is also interviewed)
I’ve never met a Scientologist, and I’d be willing to bet very few of you have either. “Going Clear“ estimates that there are fewer than 50,000 current members, but the so-called “Church” has $3 billion in assets. With money like that, we should be paying attention.
This documentary, based on the book by Lawrence Wright, is flat-out scary. With its monumental stagings, charismatic leaders, rigid discipline and its ugly counterpart, retribution, the Church of Scientology reminds you of the Nazis, replete with an enforcement arm like the SS. They have even developed a euphemistic language that makes ugly reality more palatable.
Scientology begins with L. Ron Hubbard, a prolific science fiction writer, some would say charlatan, with a shark-like smile. In the Fifties, he wrote a self-help best seller named “Dianetics.” Later after a bankruptcy, he developed Scientology, because, he supposedly told an ex-wife, a religion is the only way to make money.
Scientology is a step-by-step, self-improvement program that’s akin to a Ponzi scheme. You pay more to reach each new level of enlightenment until you attain “going clear” status. At that point you are told of Hubbard’s origin myth: that there was a society much like the U.S. in the 50’s that existed 75 million years ago, somewhere in space, with overpopulation problems. Then Xenu, the galactic overlord, froze the people, flew them on planes exactly like our DC8s, and dropped them into volcanoes on planet Earth. Later bombs were dropped in these volcanoes and spewed the evil spirit of these “Thetans” all over the world. As Jason Beghe, an actor who was involved with the church for many years and has since become one of its most vocal critics, put it, “If they told you all this up front, nobody would pay a dime.”
The purpose of Scientology is to purge the corrosive Thetan juju by a process known as auditing. In what looks like a fifth grade science project, you grab two small cans that are connected with electric wires to a machine described as “a third of a lie detector.” By going over past memories, many you didn't even know you had, you can eventually rid yourself of the Thetan influence and go clear. It also gives the church lots of material to later manipulate you. It is arguably a form of therapy, but it can also be the basis for mind control and blackmail.
If your life happens to get better from this placebo, the church takes all the credit. One former member says, “Whatever good happens (to you) is because of Scientology. If it’s bad, its your fault - thats what they tell you.”
Director Alex Gibney interviews several people who held high positions in the Church, and their damnation is very credible. These leaders say they were relegated to “the Hole” for years, where they were beaten by church leader David Miscavige, unless they confessed to crimes against the Church. They even describe a game of musical chairs, played to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a form of torture itself, that devolved into melees. To a person, they say the church is based on lies. Anyone who criticizes Scientology can be attacked. In the Church’s patois, they are “fair game.”
Much of Scientology’s diminishing appeal is still based on the star power of its two celebrity adherents, John Travolta and Tom Cruise. The church’s hold over them may be based on threats to expose secrets that were uncovered during auditing.
Cruise has become the celebrity face of the church. Its possessive leader Miscavige even commanded a fatwa against Nicole Kidman for the crime of having a father who was a psychologist. She was declared a “suppressive person,” the church urged they divorce and lobbied for Tom to be awarded sole custody of their children.
They even made over a young actress and Church member, Nazanin Boniadi, to be Cruise’s girlfriend. For a trifling misunderstanding with Miscavige, Cruise threw her out. When she told a friend she was heartbroken over the experience, she was forced to clean public bathrooms with a toothbrush. (But there is a happy ending - she landed the part of Fara Sherazi on “Homeland.”)
The other secret to Scientology’s success is its tax status. With those billions in assets, it’s a stretch to think of Scientology as a non-profit religion. But when the IRS went after the church, the leaders retaliated with literally thousands of law suits against the IRS and its individual employees, and the government backed down. With no taxes and low labor costs (they pay the volunteer workers $.40 an hour), they have amassed billions in real estate. And they keep raising millions from the many wealthy practitioners, claiming the money is needed to defend against lawsuits.
Throughout the film, I kept asking why these seemingly stable, intelligent people joined the church and stayed in so long, when the truth of Scientology is so misguided, even laughable? Other than a vague desire to be a part of the illusory promise to fulfill yourself and change the world, I don’t understand what drives people to join, let alone give thousands, even millions of dollars, to a disreputable organization that has done nothing more than insure its own aggrandizement.
The human cost of this acquisitiveness and control can’t be denied. It is heartbreaking to hear an older woman talk about how her daughter, at the Church’s behest, disconnected from her and would not let her see her own granddaughter. The interviews with former members are sobering. You see the personal cost, the shame and guilt.
Is there anything to be done about it? Other than boycotting Travolta and Cruise movies (and who wouldn’t sign up for that?!), not much. We can only hope that the Church of Scientology, despite all that money, stays on the fringe, where it belongs.
Grade: A
Secrets and Lies, ABC, Sundays at 9 p.m.
There is a new formula: mysterious death, small community, lots of suspects, some obvious, some not-so-obvious, lots of intrigue between friends and neighbors, a dogged detective, usually female. Shake well and you have a plausible, if not a particularly innovative, TV show.
“Secrets and Lies” follows this well-trod path to a T. Ben Crawford, played by former boy hunk Ryan Phillipe. Crawford is on his morning run when he comes across the body of his neighbor’s son, who is also his son’s best friend. We soon learn that he has been sleeping with that neighbor and she is pregnant with his child. His wife has been fooling around as well. They all live in a perfect mini-McMansion suburb of Charlotte, that is a static facade hiding the suburban foolery, along with the real murderer.
Hot on the case is Detective Andrea Cornell, played by the usually brilliant Juliette Lewis. She was the only reason I watched this show in the first place. Even Lewis is disappointing, appearing only occasionally and then woodenly, like she doesn’t want to be there. I don’t blame her. Philip is intense, but that’s about all. His performance is so one-dimensional that only the background music tips us as to how we should be reacting to him.
Moody has tipped over to dreary in “Secrets and Lies.” The lies are transparent, and I’m not sticking around to find out any more secrets. This one is already off the rotation.
Grade: D
Battle Creek, CBS, Sundays at 10
“Battle Creek” has two very different kind of cops that have to work together in what’s known as a police procedural. Gee, that’s innovative. The only slight difference here is that it’s set in a beaten-down, old Midwest industrial town, Battle Creek, Michigan, famous for its cereal. But the city has grown cynical with a lack of jobs and the flight to the suburbs. That attitude is typified by Detective Russ Agnew, played by Dean Winters.
Thrown into the mix is a hot-shot FBI agent, Milt Chamberlain (thankfully there hasn’t been one Milt/Wilt reference!) busted from the Washington bureau, probably for sleeping with his boss’s wife. He is annoyingly upbeat, and, surprise, surprise, Russ can’t stand him.
“Lethal Weapon” with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover started this genre over 25 years ago. No matter how many times it’s been repeated since then, it hasn’t gotten any better than that. When it does work, it relies on the chemistry between the two leads. Agnew is merely disagreeable, and Josh Duhamel as Chamberlain, only gets the stiff part down. Seems he left his charm back in “Las Vegas.”
The only reason to watch or record this show is if a CBS Sunday afternoon sporting event goes long and “The Good Wife” runs out of it’s normal 9-10 slot. Candice Bergen has recently joined the cast, but even she can’t save it.
Grade: D+
American Crime, ABC, Thursdays at 10, writer John Ridley
Matt Skokie, a decorated veteran, and his pretty young wife wife have been assaulted in their home. He is dead, she is in the hospital and there is evidence of sexual assault. Both sets of parents are incredulous that such violence has been inflicted on their “perfect” children. Among others, a young Mexican boy is accused of the crime and the police are close to getting a confession from him.
This could be another drawn-out who-dun-it, but the skillful writer John Ridley (he won an Oscar for "12 Years a Slave") and the superb cast, led by Felicity Huffman and Timothy Hutton, don’t let that happen. There are a lot of works that slap on the word “American” to give a certain cynical cachet, but in drilling below the surface into current societal trends, “American Crime” truly earns that word in its title. In questioning authority and social norms, it may not be the America that some want to see, but it would be hard to argue that the depiction is fanciful.
Ridley deliberately peels away the layers of the victims, the accused and their families. A large cache of drugs is found in Matt and Eve’s apartment. The doctors say that she was not sexually assaulted, but there is evidence that she did have consensual sex - with more than one man. Maybe these kids aren’t so perfect after all.
Matt’s father Russ (Hutton) who has been absent from his son’s life, is pulled back in because of the murder. His mother Barb (Huffman) is remarried but still angry that Russ long ago abandoned her and her two sons because of his gambling problems. Forced into public housing, she has developed a reflexive bigotry that she does nothing to temper.
Huffman’s Barb is the enervating center of this drama. Without makeup, unblinking with her jaw set, Huffman spews invective that we aren’t often exposed to in the politically sanitized world of television. Infuriated that drugs have even been mentioned in connection with her son, she challenges the DA to prioritize his murder. When he refuses, she bitterly rejoins, “Hate crimes can’t happen to white people.” It is a gusty performance in which Huffman dares to be shrill and unbending.
Hutton has a disheveled, lost look that seems to come natural to him, but he does an effective job of portraying a reformed gambling addict, still laden with guilt, who is trying to reclaim his connection to his son by finding out the truth about his death. Russ doesn't romanticize Matt; he just wants to know who his son really was.
The accused’s father Alonzo (Benito Martinez) is bigoted in his own way, deploring the illegal immigrants his son has been running with. “They are Mexicans. We are Mexican-Americans,” he tells his daughter who gets caught in a cross-fire at her school between the two groups.
We also follow lovers Aubry (Caitlin Gerard) and Carter (Elvis Nolasco), another of the accused. She is white, he is black, and both are junkies. We soon meet Aubry’s father (Bob Hess), who is baffled by her choices, and Carter’s sister Aliyah (Regina King), a devout Muslim who can’t understand why his steady civil service job and Allah aren’t enough to sustain him.
Through these parallel story lines, Ridley is telling us about families and various currents of the American scene in a steady, unspectacular way. The characters are strong and well delineated, and the writer Ridley avoids sensationalizing the story. The tradeoff is a seriousness that makes this feel less like an entertainment and more like taking your medicine. After a few episodes I'm finding the good writing and acting is being overwhelmed by how depressing and humorless it all is. I’m putting a warning label on it, but still recommend you at least give it a try.
Grade: B-
American Odyssey, Sunday at 9, NBC
This “American” doesn’t have the same pretensions. It centers around our Middle East/African follies, but, rather than being introspective, it focuses blame on a favorite cop-out: a conspiracy theory involving the ultimate evil, an amoral shadow corporation, out only for profit.
Odelle Ballard (Anna Friel) is part of a Navy Seal team that is sent to Mali in North Africa to take out a Bin Laden type. After he is killed, a team of private contractors comes in to collect all evidence at the scene, but not before Ballard downloads a crucial file detailing a $30mm money transfer from SOC, an international conglomerate, to the man the team assassinated. The team itself is wiped out by a drone strike on their way out of the desert. Odelle escapes only because of a well-timed call of nature. In hiding, she sees that the same team that collected the evidence is systematically killing anyone who survived the strike. Later she is taken prisoner by locals.
Peter Decker (Peter Facinelli), a young lawyer back in New York, has just moved from the State's Attorney's office to a major New York law firm that has SOC as a client. In front of the firm’s building, he meets an acquaintance from the IRS who tells him SOC is being investigated for tax fraud.
Harrison Walters (Jake Robinson), a G8 protester and son of a prominent writer, is introduced to a reporter for TIME magazine. Later, Bob (Nate Mooney), a hacker friend from the Occupy movement who sees conspiracies everywhere, tells him of a distress email from Odelle saying that she is alive. But when Walters tries to find the hacker, he has disappeared. Walters also finds that the woman he met does not work for TIME.
Decker tracks down the drone pilot who was told to fire on the Seal team. When someone hangs a sign around the soldier’s daughter telling him to keep his mouth shut, he opens up to the lawyers. He knows the strike killed American troops, but says he was just following orders. On the day the pilot is to testify in court, Decker watches as the man is hit and killed by a fleeing van.
Odelle is stuck in a literal hole, and her family thinks she is dead. She goes on the run with the help of her sympathetic young captor, Aslam (Omar Ghazaoui.) When Aslam’s father refuses to confirm his son’s whereabouts, he is shot by the same mercenaries that are after her.
No question, but this is escapist entertainment, with no claim that it is informing us of of anything relevant about our current foreign policy or the state of the world at large. But I will admit to being a sucker for conspiracy theories. “American Odyssey,” at least two episodes in, is fast moving and exciting. You have just enough sympathy for Odelle and the young attorney that you hope they actually succeed against the evil SOC, which, of course bears absolutely no resemblance to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.
Grade: B
