Great Newspaper Reads: Eddie Murphy makes #2 on my list of favorite Saturday Night Live players

In honor of Eddie Murphy’s upcoming Netflix movie Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, The New York Times makes him this subject of The Interview this weekend.

Here are the highlights:

• When Murphy joined Saturday Night Live in 1980, the show was thought to be on the verge of cancellation. His memorable characters like Mr. Robinson, Gumby, Mr. White, Buckwheat, and James Brown contributed significantly to making me a life-long SNL fan.
• Murphy knew around age 13 or 14 that he would become famous.
• 1987’s Eddie Murphy: Raw remains the top-grossing standup-comedy movie ever.
• His look in that movie and also what he wore everywhere around that time was influenced by Elvis.
• He met Richard Pryor on a plane and gave him a cassette of his first album. Sitting a few rows away, he could see the back of Pryor’s head and that he was laughing. “I could have died right there,” he says.
• Murphy says he’s never seen a better comic than Pryor or a better actor than Charlie Chaplin.
• Most people likely know him from his movies, although SNL is by far his high water mark for me. That said, Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs. are classic comedies. 
• After 48 Hrs., Marlon Brando called to see if Murphy would have dinner with him. Brando told him acting was bullshit and that anyone could do it, naming “that kid” Clint Eastwood - one of my all-time favorites - as someone he couldn’t stand.
• He doesn’t drink and he turned down participating when Robin Williams and John Belushi would hang out with him while doing coke. Murphy said he smoked weed but not that much and not until his first time at age 30.
• He thought there was plenty of racism directed against him over the years. One that he points out in the interview is when David Spade made a reference on SNL to Murphy’s career being in free fall. Murphy said hearing that from his own people at the show was a cheap shot and somewhat racist. That said, he’s cool these days with Spade and SNL mastermind Loren Michaels.
• He calls Pluto Nash his worst movie.
• He describes himself as so out of touch these days that he can’t even name a single Taylor Swift song.
• His ideal day sounds a lot like mine: sit around and not do much other than play guitar and hear the kids somewhere playing around. 

Not an easy task, but I'll add my all-time 10 favorite SNL cast members (not based on what else they have done in the careers, just based off their SNL output):

10. Gilda Radner

09. Mike Myers

08. Will Ferrell

07. Steve Martin (regular guest)

06. Adam Sandler

05. Bill Murray

04. Martin Short

03. Chevy Chase (with just one season!)

02. Eddie Murphy

01. Chris Farley

Palm Royale season 1 has Kristen Wiig comedically busting into country-club society

Kristen Wiig has had a disastrous run since her wildly hilarious days at Saturday Night Live. OK, Bridesmaids is a classic. And granted, she played strong bit parts in Anchorman 2, Extract, Adventureland, and MacGruber. But super stinkers have included The Skeleton Twins, Date Night, and Friends with Kids.

The lowest of lows arrived with her last production, which I was initially pretty excited about. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar was excrement stinkier than whatever would be considered the worst of Adam Sandler (who I love of course).

But Wiig's got a winner with the 10-episode first season of Palm Royale on Apple TV. I thought I would give it a try for a couple episodes but ended up binging the period piece, which bursts with color straight out of 1969 Florida. 

Looking like somewhat of a grown-up Marcia Brady. Wiig grifts her way into country-club society in elite Palm Beach, battling the strong forces of Ricky Martin, Josh Lucas (who I fondly recall hot tubbing with at his sister's wedding), Allison Janney, Bruce and Laura Dern, and many others (including Natalie of Facts of Life).

The story is totally wacky but has several strong Agatha Christy-ish storylines, not least the one involving a mostly comatose Carol Burnett. The show's design is as strong as that of Mad Men, which is saying a lot.

The final episode ends on a major cliffhanger, which would suggest a season 2 is on the way. Critics were not super kind to the show, but I think it's one of the better comedies I've seen over the past year (perhaps an admittedly low bar). The zany plotlines about a beached whale, Richard Nixon, a prince, an astronaut, and Wiig's Maxine being stranded in the middle of the ocean are creative and entertaining.

3.5 out of 5 stars

How Steve Martin became (and stayed) a titan of comedy

Steve Martin was around 10 when he realized that, even though he didn’t have a talent, he wanted to be on stage. His workaround was to learn magic tricks and say “welcome ladies and gentlemen.” Voila, that put him in show business, and the rest is history ... at least as told in Apple TV+'s new, three-hour documentary STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces.

About that same time, young Steve started a job at Disneyland and his childhood from there was as happy as could be, at least outside his house. His dad was a jerk, and Martin came to the realization later in life that his dad had just not been that good of a person. 

Anyway, he eventually realized that magic was a bit of a dead end but comedy might not be. He met a girl who helped convince him to find the meaning of life and to find himself, and he started going to Long Beach State to study philosophy. 

He discovered he wanted to find “real laughter … like the kind you have with your friends.” Bob Hope and others built up the tension then released it with punchlines. but Martin thought real laughter could come more from building up the tension and not releasing it. The audience would have to pick their own places that made them laugh. 

He transferred to UCLA and took advanced logic then began having new experiences: travelling across the country and also dating a girl whose family was fun-loving in all the ways his own family wasn’t. 

As he aged a little more, he looked like someone from the Eagles then decided to shave his beard, lose his country outfits, and create a new look for a new future. He began opening for his friends in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, as well as lots of other bands, from The Carpenters to Black Oak Arkansas. 

He thought the 500-person venues were too hostile and started headlining his own shows in front of 40 people or so, and it worked. He was killing it with college audience but fell flat to older adults in a week-long run at the Playboy Club in San Francisco. He decided his comedy needed to appear in weird places. 

By 1975, Martin was in his early 30s and thought he was flying the flag for the new world of comedy. Then he saw something come onto TV called Saturday Night Live and worried. But fortunately he became a regular guest on SNL and by the time he retired what could be called his 1970s classic standup act, in 1980, he had become the biggest standup comedian in history.

There isn’t much about 1979’s The Jerk in the documentary, other than that his dad didn’t give it the time of day. I would’ve liked more focus on that (The Jerk is my 21st favorite comedy movie of all-time) and his other best films The Man With Two Brains and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (my 49th favorite). 

Perhaps he doesn't include much about any one of his movies because he says his stand-up career had a beginning, middle, and end, but with movies, they are each like little anecdotes rather than full chapters of a book. In fact, one of his hobbies detailed in the doc is creating dialogue for comic strips that a friend then draws. Many of those are about the anecdotes from and of his films.

There are also stories about his other hobbies, which include having dogs and collecting paintings. And finally, the doc covers his relationship with comedy buddy Martin Short and his wife Anne Stringfield, whom he met when she was fact checking his writing for The New Yorker.

I especially enjoyed the stories in the documentary from his childhood and coming of age in the comedy scene. Listening to his records, reading his short-essay collections, and seeing Martin on SNL were among my fondest childhood memories. His life was long overdue for a telling in this format, although the documentary could have been tightened up just a little bit.

4 out of 5 stars

This Fool gets cancelled after a less-perfect Season 2

Just five months ago, I called Hulu’s This Fool "amazingly hilarious," TIME Magazine has called it "one of TV's funniest shows," and The New Yorker called it "summer's best comedy." So then how did The A.V. Club recently have this headline? "Those fools at Hulu cancel This Fool."

Perhaps those fools saw things winding down. Season 2's focus on the gang trying to get a South Central L.A. coffee shop operated by ex-cons up and running was definitely not as funny and endearing as Season 1's setting at an unorthodox rehab center calls Hugs Not Thugs for ex-cons. The cancellation is still a little surprising, as high-water marks continued to sometimes pop up. 

Episode 1 of Season 2 about the neighborhood rooster keeping everyone up at night is a TV classic. The same can be said about Episode 4, in which Julio and Luis convince chef Percy and Minister Payne to join in on the coffee journey. But too many of these episodes didn't really quite hit the mark. There are still lots of humorous moments, but the diversions of the two-episode supermarket robbery, Julio acting as a dad for his girlfriend's daughter, and the episode focused on Julio's mother just don't live up to the perfection of Season 1.

Even when This Fool had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, there didn't seem to be enough people watching. Almost everyone I've told about the show hasn't even heard of it. Chris Estrada, who plays Julio, is the mastermind, so it will be interesting to see what he comes up with next.

3 out of 5 stars

I've finally found my church: The church of The Righteous Gemstones

Megachurchs are a little bit of a small obsession for me. They seem so weird and culty and foreign. I guess I just wasn't brought up in a way to think that religion could somehow be entertainment and that I would want to go and invest a lot of my time and money into helping one operate. I'm sure they're helpful to a lot of people and provide a strong community where there might not otherwise be one.

Maybe if they didn't have to base everything around one book that, speaking as a former literature major, is such a major snooze. Bible 101 in undergrad at Southern Illinois had a very nice professor but the content was by far the most boring of all my classes. The little made-up story is pretty nonsensiscal and just basically fails at storytelling, characterization, plot, and every other key element of writing.

Bible 101 aside, I just finished season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones (on Max), which is thank-the-Lord coming back for another season soon.

Here's what I wrote about season 1: Led by the masterful patriarch John Goodman, this ensemble cast gives us a look at what life must be like - albeit taking it to ridiculous and hilarious heights - to be megachurch leaders. I especially like the performances of Danny McBride as the oldest and seediest son, Edi Patterson as wacko sister Judy, and Walton Goggins as Baby Billy, a low-budget pastor stereotype. The gang needs to cover up all kinds of misdeeds. 4 out of 5 stars

I liked season 2 even more: A lot of Danny McBride-watching can never be bad. He’s got to be my favorite comedic actor at this point, up with the likes of Bill Burr and Mike Myers (still). The family continues to show its mega-church evil, wackily obliterating anyone who dares to threaten the empire. 4.5 out of 5 stars

I'm not going to jump to giving season 3 5 out of 5 stars, but it is still every bit as great as season 2. 

• Dealing with infidelity by using marriage therapy in a box. 
• Celebratory family gathers while watching each other take turns driving the family monster truck. 
• Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers TV game show is just absolutely bonkers. 

These televangelist and megachurch pastors are a hoot, totally out of control, and quite possibly uncomfortably realistic. The family has dealt with rivals from other local smaller churches, investigative journalists, nonsensical but fun motorcycle assassins, and now needy and estranged family members. Oh the poor lives of megachurch leaders.

Some evangelicals haven't appreciated the show (such as the "media organization" The Gospel Coalition, which wrote, "This show ... feels built on cheap shots and easy caricatures rather than empathy and incisive observation. Created from a mood board that draws inspiration from Falwells, Bakkers, Benny Hinn, T. D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Bieber-looking hypepriests, and PreachersNSneakers, the Gemstones are essentially the Ewings of holy-roller evangelicalism"), but surprisingly there hasn't been much real backlash.

Interesting things about real megachurches (which I'm pretty convinced includes the church of The Righteous Gemstones; heck, I would actually pay good money to see Danny McBride preach every Sunday morning, even if I knew he was doing an 8-ball of coke backstage before each sermon):

• A megachurch is defined as "any Protestant Christian church which at least 2,000 attend in a weekend."
• The first megachurch was established in London in 1861. 
• The first megachurch in the U.S. was the Angelus Temple, founded in 1923 by Aimee Semple McPherson (fascinating story) in Los Angeles.
• By the 2000s, as they had slowly grown in popularity, they eventually started to become more untraditional, with stadium seating, especially in places like the U.S., Africa, Asia, and Australia.
• With more than 1,300 megachurches in the U.S., most are in Florida, Texas, California, and Georgia.
• Many megachurches focus on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage and forego important issue like social justice and the immorality of war. Megachurch pastors, like the Gemstones, frequently appear to encourage their poor flocks to give money to the church that often goes right into their pockets for fancy clothes and vehicles.

Re: monster truck.

Can't wait for season 4. As for season 3, it gets 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Mountain biking in Moab, Utah is a dream come true

I've always loved mountain biking. I don't do it anymore as much as other activities like tennis and road biking, but when I do, I always have a blast (even when tumbling bike over heels down cliffs, which seems to happen way too often to me).

So knowing that about me, you can guess that Moab, Utah has been a place I've wanted to visit for a long time. It's known as the mecca of mountain biking in the U.S. I took about a three-hour ride on Saturday with my family and didn't do anything too daring, but it was an exciting taste of what the area known for Arches and Canyonlands national parks has to offer. 

We rode in Dead Horse Point State Park, which is located on a mesa (a flat-top mountain) high above many breath-taking views of the Grand Canyon-like sandstone cliffs of Canyonlands National Park and the Colorado River.

It seemed like we barely explored the 17-mile mountain-bike trail system located in the park. It takes a long time to go a little way over such rocky trails, especially with our 10-year-old in the mix. That said, she was able to conquer the many obstacles along the way and this is a really good option for other families with young kids (and bike rentals, although pricey, are available right there in the park at the trailhead alongside a handful of camping yurts).

Other points to note:

• Dead Horse Point allegedly got its name from many horses dying there from exposure to the elements high on the mesa (it was a very windy ride, at least on this day).
• It has provided a set for many movies and TV shows, including Con Air (1997), Joe Dirt (2001), MacGyver (1985), Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Westworld (2016), and, most famously, the ending scene in Thelma & Louise (1991).

 

Becoming a cult leader led to Shoko Asahara's attack on the Tokyo subway 29 years ago today

I just finished Netflix's six-part series How to Become a Cult Leader fittingly today on the 29th anniversary of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult led by Shoko Asahara, the subject of part 5 of the fairly well-done series (I'll give it 3.5 out of 5 stars).

The series, narrated by Peter Dinklage, takes "at best a questionable approach to the material," noted the Chicago Sun-Times. Providing a "playbook" for how to start a cult, each episode focuses on one leader and the tools they used for success. 

• Charles Manson has always been the Mt. Everest of cult leaders for me, and while I didn't learn anything from the episode about him, there is excellent footage from his story and each of the other ones highlighted. 
• I've always been fascinated by crazy-eyed Marshall Applewhite of the Nike-shoes-wearing Heaven's Gate.
• I learned a lot about the Jim Jones cult.
• I didn't previously know anything about the failed-actor Jaimie Gomez's "army of servants."
• I learned more about Sun Myung Moon and his sushi-pushing, Washington Times-owning, mass-wedding Unification Church.

On March 20, 1995, there were coordinated releases of sarin gas on five Tokyo subway trains near the Japanese parliament headquarters, which killed 13 people, severely injured about 50 more, and resulted in temporary vision problems for almost 1,000 others. 

The tragedy was found to be the work of Asahara, who was sent away as a child to a boarding school and felt he had been abandoned by his family. According to the TV series, this was the source of his pain and his desire to create a major PR plan around his life and image. That plan was to form Aum Shinrikyo in 1984 as a yoga and meditation group, all the way through its transformation into a killer cult that wanted to purify the world. His believers thought he was god and that he could levitate and read people’s minds. 

Aum gained 10,000 members in Japan and about 40,000 worldwide. Japan had become very materialistic in the 1980s and people there were vulnerable to questioning this consumerism. Asahara gave speeches at top universities about spiritual awakening, and he gained prominent professors into the cult. 

He began killing cult members if they somehow acquired bad karma. For his other followers, that was fine. He also ran for office to gain more attention and to spread his message. The mass media ended up making fun of him and his group and from then on, Asahara decided the world was corrupt and it would need to be punished. On a busy Monday morning, his canisters caused thousands of people to go into convulsions and have trouble breathing from the nerve gas. 

The subway attack was not the end of the cult's murderous rampage, as they tried to assassinate judges and government officials who opposed them, succeeded in murdering a lawyer investigating them as well as Asahara's own son, and developed bombs and biological weapons like anthrax. Asahara and other top members of the cult were eventually found guilty in what the Japanese press dubbed "the trial of the century" and he and others were executed by hanging in 2018. His ashes were given to one of his daughters in 2021.

I was still curious as to why Asahara became so murderous. The show didn't quite tackle that well enough, but it seems the combination of his obsession with Biblical prophecies of apocalypse, his immense control over his followers, and the possibility that he wanted to overthrow the Japanese government during a vulnerable time of economic turmoil may have been the perfect storm for Aum Shinrikyo.

Suits Season 1 offers a poor man's Mad Men, but an oh-so-good one

I don't remember the last time I watched a lawyer-procedural TV series, but a lot of people had been recommending Suits and then it recently exploded in popularity when it moved to Netflix. And of course, even though I'm not that intrigued by the British royal family, there's the added allure of Meghan Markle, the pseudo-princess. So I figured I would try an episode or two. But do you know what? I binged the entire first season.

It's a poor man's Mad Men, but that's not a bad thing (you may recall Mad Men was named my favorite show of all time). The suits. The questionable morals and ethics. The beauty of everything from the characters to the office space to the New York City settings. The writing is sharp and witty. One such example is everything out of the mouth of Rick Hoffman's Louis, with his constant Paul Lynde-like sneer. It all adds up to being a lot of compelling eye candy.

Season 1 goes like this: Mike (played with youthful enthusiasm, street smarts, and photographic memory by Patrick J. Adams) is a dropout who accidentally gets hired at a prestigious law firm in the middle of running away from a drug deal. Even though he never attended law school, Mike intrigues Harvey Specter (played in star-making fashion by the smooth and magnetic Gabriel Macht) and the two work all season to hide the fact that Mike never attended Harvard like he claims and like everyone else at the firm.

Each episode tackles a legal situation, but office politics, romantic liaisons, and personal struggles are the parts that had me riveted. Some of my favorite storylines include: 

• Rachel (played very enticingly - very smart and very cute and very underappreciated by the firm - by Markle) is accused of leaking some of the firm's confidential documents.
• The love triangle (or is it simply tension?) between Rachel, Mike, and Mike's girlfriend Jenny simmers throughout the season.
• Harvey's internal battles about his past ethical lapses, such as putting several people in jail who were innocent, is written and played in a cool-guy and airy manner, and
• Again, I find all of Louis' smarmy blackmail attempts against his own firm teammates one of the most compelling elements of the show.

I would guess I won't live long enough to watch all nine (??!!) seasons, but I plan to watch at least a few more. We'll see how it goes.

Season 1 (from 2011) is 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Looking back at Curb Your Enthusiasm's Season 7 Seinfeld reunion

I gobbled up the first six seasons of Curb Your Enthusiam, which ran from 2000 to 2007 on HBO. For some reason, I never returned to the show, which is now up to a whopping 12 seasons. So I binged season 7 - highlighted by its storyline of a Seinfeld reunion - over the past couple of weeks. I'm happy to find that Larry David's character Larry is just as obnoxious as ever, bordering on a modern-day Archie Bunker. Here's my recap of the season, which has at least three episodes (1, 3, and 10) that could be part of the Curb greatest-hits collection.

In Episode 1, Larry confronts the possibility of having to take care of his girlfriend who is diagnosed with cancer. The doctor says there won’t even be any time for golf in his schedule, which leads Larry to brainstorm ways to get out of the relationship. When Larry bumps into the doctor and his boyfriend at a party, Larry is taken aback by the doctor being gay and tells the boyfriend, “You seem slightly gay." Then there’s guest star Catherine O’Hara playing Bam Bam, his friend Funkhouser’s sister, who has just been released from an asylum, has sex with Larry's best friend Jeff, and then goes around singing “I love the fat boy” around Jeff’s wife. This episode really sets the scene for the season when Larry bumps into his ex-wife Cheryl, sparks rekindle a bit, and she says she misses him and could maybe handle “three hours of Larry” per day like back when he was working on Seinfeld and wasn’t home with her all day. 5 out of 5 stars

In Episode 2, it takes a running gag about blow jobs in cars to finally end Larry’s relationship with his cancer-stricken girlfriend, played likeably by Vivica A. Fox. The fact that she is so likeable makes Larry’s game to end the relationship over her cancer all the more despicable. 4 out of 5 stars.

In Episode 3, “tippers are solo” is one of the classic lines as Larry proposes a Seinfeld reunion for all the wrong reasons - mainly so he can offer the role of George's ex-wife to Cheryl in order to win her back. It seems very unclear whether the reunion will happen after Larry tells off the head of NBC for giving him cruddy Lakers’ tickets. Along with the Seinfeld gang, Meg Ryan guest stars as - uh oh - George’s potential TV ex-wife. 5 out of 5 stars.

Episode 4 sees Larry going to Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen’s anniversary party. He tells Christian Slater that he's taking too much caviar then interrupts Jeff’s daughter’s gift to Ted and Mary of a serenade of “You’re Just Too Good to Be True." His bad karma builds up - including for criticizing a man on a plane for wearing shorts - and he gets beaten up for dating a woman with a boyfriend. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

In Episode 5, Larry stumbled into dating a woman in a wheelchair named Denise, gets in fights with Rosie O’Donnell, and ends up having Denise and another woman in a wheelchair chasing him around a friend’s sophisticated party. Not as many laughs as usual but the depths Larry goes to are spellbinding. 4 out of 5 stars

Episode 6 sees Larry deciding to fire Jerry Seinfeld’s assistant because the midriff shirts she wears show too much of her flabby belly. But Julia Louis-Dreyfus says he has to hire her back because the woman’s mom is suicidal. That mom is the hilariously wacky highlight of this episode, which almost sees the mom/daughter duo heading out for a cross-country tour to spread the Jesus gospel. Instead, Larry is the one they save, with the help of the woman’s afore-mentioned love handles. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Episode 7 is my least favorite of the season. Larry kills a black swan that is possibly attacking him on the golf course, which leads to his gang being nearly kicked out of the club. As usual, there are a handful of belly laughs, but this one is inessential. 3 out of 5 stars.

Episode 8 brings Larry to Banana Republic, where a fire drill sends him outside without his own pants, instead he's wearing unpurchased ones he was trying on and still have the security tags. This is mixed with a storyline in which Jeff’s wife finds women’s panties in Jeff’s glovebox. So Jeff convinces Larry to tell her that they’re his and he likes to wear women’s panties. It’s a funny episode and even includes Larry yelling at kids selling lemonade that he doesn’t like. 4.5 out of 5 stars

Episode 9 features the classic line “how’s her p—sy?" Cheryl by now has won the part of George’s ex-wife and the Seinfeld reunion table read happens. George’s pen troubles with Larry and Larry’s troubles with a nine-year-old daughter of one of his crew lead the funny storylines, with Kramer’s disease and his play off Michael Richards’ real-life race troubles don’t work as well. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Episode 10 More memorable lines cascade out of this episode, including “busy with your beans” and “do you respect wood?” While Larry gets very close to possibly getting Cheryl back, the Seinfeld reunion ends magically (unlike the end of the original show, which many people didn't like). This one is a must-watch as a landmark in both Curb and Seinfeld’s histories, at the very least. 5 out of 5 stars.

Michael J. Fox is a real inspiration for people with Parkinson's

I was intrigued to watch STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie on Apple TV because I wanted to learn more about his Parkinson’s, which we have been testing my dad for recently. And while his shaky legs and hands and current struggles with that are a really interesting part of the movie, I found his rise to fame from an active and under-sized trouble-maker with bad grades in Canada to three years of struggle in the slums of Beverly Hills before finally landing on his feet as Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties to be equally touching.

Hardly anyone believed in Fox in terms of having the skill to play what would go on to become, I think, his greatest role. But when the show was performed to test audiences, he slayed them and became an obvious star. It wasn’t long before Steven Spielberg called. Fox would work days at Family Ties and go directly to the Back to the Future studio site all night. For three-and-a-half months, he would experience confusion at times as to which set he was on and wonder “how could any of this shit be any good?”

When Back to the Future was at number one at the box office, Teen Wolf was right on its tail at number two. He won best actor for a comedy for Family Ties at the Emmys at the time too. It was like Actor Beatlemania, and he was hanging with all the coolest actors in L.A.

With his Parkinson’s, all his activity and busy-mindedness have possibly made it tougher for Fox to adapt to his new life. His personal trainer in the film says it’s difficult for him to slow down and his mind gets going faster than his body can handle, making Fox prone to falls as he walks. The trainer repeatedly says to slow down. The way his wife (Tracy Pollan, who he met through their roles in Family Ties) and son and daughter interact with him is beautiful, as they laugh at how he hardly responds to texts. They don't treat him differently because of his iconic status or his Parkinson’s.

Fox was in his late 20s when he was diagnosed, and he told himself, “how can I have this old-persons’ disease?” He had to take lots of pills and didn’t eat a lot. He drank alcohol to escape the situation. Siskel and Ebert start to regularly pan his work. 

He admits he was an alcoholic, but has now gone three decades without a drink. After a couple of years of difficulty adapting to abstinence, Fox got back into TV, with Spin City, and his life began to get back on track. Still, he constantly fretted about when he would need the next pill and what would happen if the last one wore off while he was in the middle of acting. 

Fox knew there was no way out of Parkinson’s. He would punch holes in walls. He had to tell people who would tell him to be careful that “there’s no being careful. You get Parkinson’s and you trip over shit and you fall down.” He finally disclosed his disease on national TV to Barbara Walters. “If you look at me long enough, you get used to it,” he says. It’s kind of an “Axl Rose” thing, he adds, recommending that people envision “Paradise City” when they look at him. Kids would say, "will you quit moving around?” And he would say “I’ll give it a shot.”

He decided he wanted to be in the world and not have Parkinson’s force him to hide from the world. He and Muhammad Ali testified on the Hill and continued to raise the importance of the issue and for finding a cure. 

The ending is really touching and shows his family supporting Fox as they all walk down the beach together. He lurches along and it makes you think about how important it is to take care of your loved ones who, as Vampire Weekend sings in the end credits, “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die.” Fox is a stunning example of someone who can inspire all those touched by Parkinson’s.

5 out of 5 stars

This Fool strikes comedy gold in South Central L.A.

Everyone is rightfully talking about The Bear (including me). But they should also be talking about Hulu’s amazingly hilarious This Fool, about a kid who grows up on the straight and narrow in South Central L.A., then as a grownup still lives at home helping operate an unorthodox rehab center calls Hugs Not Thugs for ex-cons.

With a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it truly is surprising that not enough people seem to watch or even know about This Fool. I have yet to watch the 10 episodes of Season 2, but the 10-episode first season is as close to perfect as TV gets. Chris Estrada is the mastermind. Working at a warehouse and as a stand-up comic, he developed the show (mainly about how we love our family and friends but also how they drive us nuts) and Hulu bought it, with Fred Armisen later recognizing the brilliance and executive producing the series and starring in some episodes as a rich freak who might help fund Hugs Not Thugs.

Estrada, as Julio, begins the show going to prison to pick up the just-released cousin who bullied him as a kid. The cousin is wacky Luis, played lovingly by Frankie Quiñones, a comedian who previously gained some acclaim for his Jane-Fonda-for-gang-members web series Cholofit.

Some of Season 1's highlights include episode 2 when Luis gathers a group of ex gangsters to (try to) get in a fight, episode 4 in which Julio tries to avoid his birthday and can't shake his feelings for ex-girlfirend Maggie (also played excellently by Michelle Ortiz), and episode 9 when the head of Hugs Not Thugs - Minister Payne (in a cult-leader-like offbeat performance from Michael Imperioli of Sopranos and The White Lotus fame) - is caught up in some awkward situations with the potential rich funders of his non profit.

Do yourself a big favor and get on board with This Fool.

Season 1: 5 out of 5 stars

RIP Norman Lear

When little Norman Lear was a kid growing up in Connecticut, his dad Herman would say “stifle!” to his mom Jeanette when he didn’t like what she was trying to say to him. But her advice, in reality, had usually been wise and he, in turn, had ended up going off to jail for the things she had tried to dissuade him from doing. No longer would Norman’s dad be sitting in his “throne” chair controlling the radio, much as Archie Bunker would do with his own chair and TV some 40 years later.

These are some of the opening anecdotes from Even This I Get to Experience, the 2014 autobiography from Norman Lear, who died this week at the age of 101 as perhaps my favorite producer in TV history. He was able to turn these seemingly minor slices of everyday life into monumental TV moments and brought TV comedy sitcoms to a whole new level of societal importance throughout the 1970s and 80s.

All in the Family is my fourth favorite show of all time. And while The Jeffersons, Maude, One Day at a Time, and Good Times, didn't make my top-TV list (but Sanford and Son did - at #59), they paint a portrait of a legendary, storied career of amazing work. Using his dad as an inspiration for Archie, Lear was able to somehow find lovability and occasional redeeming qualities in a massive bigot. I somehow never really saw his other major sitcom Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, possibly because I grew up in a market (St. Louis) that might not have wanted to air the controversial show. It was shown more prominently in some places bcause Lear personally footed the expenses to run it.

Remembering 9/11 all these years later

9/11: One Day in America was sitting on my DVR for a long time. The 2021 six-part National Geographic documentary (that they show at the 9/11 Memorial museum and that’s also available on Disney + and Hulu) is still something that is painful to sit through. But it is important to watch and remember one of the darkest days in this country’s history.

I was living with my girlfriend, soon to be wife, at 12th and N Streets NW near Logan Circle in Washington D.C. She had already gone to work in Rosslyn and I was getting ready to leave for my job at the World Resources Institute. I had the TV on and started following the news, never to leave for work that day. Meanwhile she would exit work and, with a plane crashing in sight from her office into the Pentagon, the Metro closed and she had no choice but to walk home from Virginia. We would go out to somberly meet friends that night at the Townhouse Tavern, making our way through silent streets reminiscent of what a nuclear zone must be like.

The show follows events in a generally chronological order, with emotional interviews of key people from that day. There’s the TV crew that were lucky enough to get turned away by first responders, almost surely in turn saving their lives. There are people who were saved from being trapped in offices and under rubble. There is a woman who survived after a piece of one of the plane’s landing gear sheared off her back as it fell from the sky. There’s the woman whose son was one of the small group that attempted to fight the terrorists on the plane that landed in Pennsylvania, which was later suspected of heading towards the U.S. Capitol Building.

The footage, shown from seemingly as many angles as exist, of the planes again and again hitting the two World Trade Towers is - there are hardly words for it - extremely powerful and still so sad.

The series doesn’t go into other types of details, such as where President George W. Bush was that day (reading to school children in Florida) or the political and military hunt and war that was about to be launched in the fight against the Al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the attacks. You’ll have to go elsewhere for all that. But what you get here is more than enough.

5 out of 5 stars

Unstable Season 1 is a very funny quick watch from Rob Lowe

I’ve been a big fan of Rob Lowe’s podcast Literally! for a while now. He's a funny and likeable actor who has lots of famous friends and his discussions with them are always insightful. 

So I figured his new show on Netflix, Unstable, had to be great as well. And it is.

Lowe plays the CEO of a sustainable plastics company also working on trying to capture carbon pollution into cement and his wife of 30 years has recently died, putting him and his son in fragile mindsets. He successfully gets his son to give up the music lessons he’s teaching in New York City and move back to L.A. to work as one his scientists.

The father-son relationship takes center stage, but there are several other funny interactions taking place throughout the quick-to-watch, eight-episode first season. Anna (Sian Clifford) tries to keep Lowe's company, called Dragon (his character's name is Ellis Dragon), together while its owner falls apart with a litany of eccentricities. One of my favorites is when he attempts to become a chainsaw-wielding tree trimmer. Ruby (Emma Ferreira) and Luna (Rachel Marsh) are hilarious working in the lab. And John Owen Lowe is pretty much the epitomy of his dad and is caught in the middle of everyone. Oh, and of course Fred Armisen keeps showing up in possibly even-more-bizarre-than-usual fashion.

I recommend Unstable for a wide audience demographic. For one, these episodes are barely 20 minutes each, which makes for a thankfully brief commitment compared to much of today's must-see-TV. And for another, it's one of the best comedies available on Netflix.

4 out of 5 stars

RIP Matthew Perry

Matthew Perry has sadly joined the list of celebrities with varying levels of depression who passed away in tubs, including Jim Morrison, Bobby Darin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Whitney Houston.

Perry detailed his struggles with mental health in his recent memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. He had battled with alcohol and prescription drugs and claimed he was basically high throughout the Friends days.

Believe it or not, I’ve never been a big Friends fan, although I did enjoy watching several episodes in Thailand, where the show is wildly popular.

Perry, before moving to Los Angeles at 15, was from Ottawa, Canada, and became almost Beatles-famous as Chandler Bing in the 1990s.

Some of his other career highlights included the play he wrote and starred in called The End of Longing and Go On, a one-season TV show in which he played a sports talk radio host. But I probably know him most from frequent appearances in late-night talk shows, where he was often a pretty entertaining interviewee.

And much like me, Perry was obsessed with playing tennis.

The Bear - Season 2 makes the case for history's "best fictional TV show about a restaurant"

I waited a little while to watch The Bear - Season 2 after its release. I wanted to anticipate and savor my enjoyment of the show.

There probably is no arguing that this is the best-ever fictional TV show about running a restaurant. The only thing that I can think of that comes close is It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but that's about a bar and is hardly "run" by the owners. Alice? Nope.

Back in the first season, we met Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), who returned from his wildly successful chef career to take over the operation of his Chicago family's restaurant called The Beef after his brother Michael committed suicide. Those episodes were more about Carmy's struggles re-acclimating to where he grew up and our unique view into the kitchen to witness him teaching a bunch of restaurant workers how to make food magic.

Season 2 keeps some of the kitchen battlefield moments, but now we get a chance (often among a great soundtrack including the likes of Wilco, R.E.M., The Breeders, Taylor Swift, and much more) to learn more about Carmy's team. They work to secure funding to turn The Beef, a fairly run-of-the-mill sandwich eatery, into The Bear, an elite dining experience with high ambitions.

In the lead up to opening night, Carmy struggles to keep his eye on the prize when he succumbs to an actual non-restaurant-related relationship with old acquaintance played by Molly Gordon. But it doesn't seem like he can keep that together.

Meanwhile, the best episodes of the season focus on other players. 

Carmy's second-in-command Sydney, played by an award-worthy Ayo Edebiri, goes on a quest across Chicago to taste other potentially great foods and see if this restaurant direction she's taking her life is a big mistake in a world of daily restaurant failures and economic downturn.

Pastry chef Marcus, played by Lionel Boyce, goes to Copenhagen to apprentice in some of Carmy's former footsteps. 

And Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) transforms, through an apprenticeship he is temporarily sent to across town, from a divorced loser to an exacting and essential component of The Bear's hope to succeed.

In the conversation for best TV episode ever is the Christmas family dinner one, when Carmy's mother Donna, played by a very-high-intensity Jamie Lee Curtis, in maybe her best perfomrance of many great ones, cooks, drinks, wallows, and crashes. But not without inspiring Carmy through food.

The character development and the acting had me fully invested after Season 1, but now the creators have upped it another level. Season 3 can't happen soon enough.

5 out of 5 stars

RIP Suzanne Somers

In my tweens, one of my very favorite things was ABC's Tuesday-night lineup. I watched Happy Days at 7 Central, Laverne and Shirley at 7:30, Three's Company at 8, sometimes I took a break during Too Close for Comfort at 8:30, then my mom and I finished the evening with Hart to Hart.

Arguably the highlight each week would be the nutball situations Jack, Janet, and blonde-haired Chrissy Snow would get into at or near their Santa Monica, California apartment. Suzanne Somers, who played Chrissy, died Sunday at 77 of breast cancer in Palm Springs.

Really oddly, I got a Regal Beagle (the restaurant/bar frequented in the show) t-shirt from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law just hours before getting a breaking-news alert about her passing. She died a day before her birthday (she and I shared a birthday, October 16).

Somers ditzy persona was mesmerizing and hilarious, but in truth she was a powerhouse, getting fired from the show for demanding the same pay as John Ritter (she was getting $30,000 per episode and he was receiving $150,000) and later becoming a successful business leader, especially with the ThighMaster excercise product that she seemed to endlessly be hawking in TV infomercials.

I'll always fondly remmber her many so-dumb-they're-hilarious lines, like ""Eat your salad before it gets cold" and, when the landlord Mr. Roper showed up the shampoo the trio's rug, she asked, "Why? Does it have dandruff?"

Great Magazine Reads: Lost may have been a huge hit on TV but it sounds like it was truly lost behind the scenes

Malcolm David Kelley as Walt
and Harold Perrineau as Michael 

If you've never watched Lost and don't want to go down that 121-episode rabbit hole, the least you can do is watch the pilot episode, which supposedly cost $13 million alone and was directed by the show's co-creator J.J. Abrams. I think it's still the best first episode of any show I've ever seen, and there are many other great parts of the series, even if it dovetails at the end into complete nonsense.

Now, horrendous details have arrived that probably had something to do with the unevenness of the show's latter half. Entertainment writer Maureen Ryan's new book, BURN IT DOWN: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, has been released and it details how unhappy some of the writers and cast were during their time with the show.

In an excerpt from the June 2023 issue of Vanity Fair, "it’s clear that the landmark series played right into Hollywood’s most long-standing patterns, in which auteurs wield enormous power with very little oversight." Here are some of the most interesting details from the article:

• "Part of it was [executive producer Carlton Cuse and co-creator Damon Lindelof] really didn’t like their characters of color."
• "The cast ended up in a series of compensation tiers and ... the highest tier was occupied solely by white actors."
• Actor Harold Perrineau says it became pretty clear early on "'that I was the Black guy. Daniel [Dae Kim] was the Asian guy. And then you had Jack and Kate and Sawyer,' all of whom got a good deal of screen time, as did Terry O’Quinn’s Locke."
• In season 2, Perrineau talked to Cuse about the lack of depth for his character and that he was unhappy that it was written to seem he didn't care much about Walt, his son who has been kidnapped. After season 2, Perrineau's character did not return.
• One writer intererviewed says, "I can only describe [the atmosphere on set largely led by Cuse] as hazing. It was very much middle school and relentlessly cruel. And I’ve never heard that much racist commentary in one room in my career." Some of the stereotyping statements one writer heard included jokes about Asian's eye shapes, Blacks being thieves, anti-Semitism, sexism against women, and one Asian American writer who people simply called "Korean," as if that were the writer's name. "There was so much shit, and so much racist shit, and then laughter. It was ugly."
• Actor Michelle Rodriguez got arrested for drunk driving and "instead of having empathy or sympathy for her situation, [the showrunners] were just like, 'Well, we’ll just get rid of her.'"

Ryan interviews Lindelof and Cuse at the end of the magazine article and they both deny all the accusations or that they set the tone for a very unhealthy set.

Break Point serves the masses a view of the draining pro tennis tour

I love playing tennis and watching pro tennis, so it goes to follow that I would think Break Point - Season 1 on Netflix would be great. And it is pretty great, but I think people who don't follow tennis will find it even more eye opening. I already understand that life on the tour is pounding and often lonely, and matches take superhuman strength. I play two or three times a week and I would never win a game against a male or female player in the top 100. Neither would you. (Take it from Serena Williams' former coach Patrick Mouratoglou.) The gulf between amateur and pro in tennis is about as big as it gets.

Nick Kyrgios gets a helping hand

All that said, it is really cool getting to know the featured batch of players a little more. Nick Kyrgios offers the high point of the season, with episode 1 almost exclusively featuring his run at the January 2022 Australian Open. He receives loving support from his girlfriend, not an easy task for someone whose mental game has been the only thing to hold him back from being among the greats. You probably love or hate him, but I thought the show did a good job of helping his image by seeing things from his perspective, having fought a long battle upwards from being a little overweight boy growing up in Australia.

During the same tournament, Matteo Berretini and Ajla Tomljanovic are dating and working to help each other advance as far as possible. Their relationship eventually doesn't survive the stresses of the tour, but Tomljanovic has an exciting 2022, highlighted in the show by when she knocks off Serena Williams late in the season at the US Open. Berretini can't take advantage of the absence of tennis legend Novak Djokovic from the Australian Open because of vaccination issues, and ends up fading over the course of the season.

In episode 3, California's Taylor Fritz wins Indian Wells (the fifth biggest tournament in tennis) and secures a hold on the claim as the top U.S. player out of an exciting group gaining prominence. He is a California kid with a lot of power and a lot of promise. Maryland's Frances Tiafoe (he trains at one of my regular haunts) becomes another lovable character over the course of the season, as a crowd exciter and a victor over Rafael Nadal in the 2022 US Open.

Other highlights: Spain's Paula Badosa offers a glimpse into how mentally draining pro tennis can be, and Ons Jabeur shows how her status as arguably Africa's greatest player ever and definitely Tunisia's finest unfolds.

The show could have definitely benefited from more of the game's true greats Nadal, Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, and Daniil Medvedev. But that is a minor complaint because the characters featured are indeed worthy characters.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Kiernan Shipka is Totally Killer in new Halloween movie

The people who cast the actors for Mad Men all those years ago really knew what they were doing. Exhibit A is Kiernan Shipka, who played Don and Betty’s little girl. She was great as a neglected soul in that TV show and she returns to really hold her own in a new star-making vehicle on Amazon Prime called Totally Killer.

Arriving in time for the Halloween season, the movie is more funny than it is scary, but it still offers a few jumps as a cross between Back to the Future, Scream, and Halloween, even including a reference to the revered Michael Myers.

Shipka plays Jamie, the 17-year-old daughter of a woman (played by Julie Bowen of Modern Family) who survived the 1987 triple murder of her best friends by the Sweet Sixteen Killer, who wears a mask inspired by 1980s stars like Kiefer Sutherland, Rob Lowe, and Dolph Lundgren. 

One of Jamie’s friends creates a machine that Jamie uses to go back in time to - hopefully - change the course of the murders. The plot goes a little off track at times, but it’s funny and entertaining and maybe the plot doesn’t much matter in a tale like this. Totally Killer definitely makes for a solid entry into the October entertainmentplex.

3.5 out of 5 stars