It's still difficult to type, but that's just how it's going to be until this damn finger heals. If you would have told me when it first happened that my pinky would still be purple and swollen a month later, I never would have believed you. It felt like a few-days type of thing -- a week tops. That's probably a big part of the problem. I didn't think it was that bad, so I didn't go to the doctor immediately like I should have (despite the urging of a colleague and my wife). I have a follow-up with a sports injury specialist on Tuesday, so I'll just keep it splinted and make do until then. Not much else I can do. Man, getting old sucks.
In other news, there is a lot going on in the world right now, so naturally I'm going to write about a TV show that went off the air nearly four years ago. We recently finished watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine as a family -- all 153 episodes. I probably watched "only" about 140 of them, because when I was away they would watch without me, but somehow I was always able to hop right back into the story, hardly missing a beat (which reminds of one of my favorite The Onion headlines of all time). Overall, I found the series quite funny and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Captain Raymond Holt, played masterfully by Andre Braugher (RIP), is an all-time great sitcom character, and Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) was a hit with the kids.
Also, kudos to Stephanie Beatriz who plays Rosa Diaz. It's not that Rosa is such a tremendous character (although she is funny); it's that I've seen Beatriz in other things, and I can't believe she's the same person who plays this laconic, streetwise detective. I mean, she's the lead in Encanto, which just doesn't compute to me. There are really good actors, who are just kinda always versions of themselves -- like Tom Cruise is always Tom Cruise and De Niro is always De Niro -- and then there are others who cause a mental disconnect when you see them in different roles. It's why I thought Bryan Cranston should have won the Emmy every season for Breaking Bad. His sizzle real should have been clips of Walter White ("I am the one who knocks!") interspersed with reminders that he is the same guy who played the dad in Malcolm in the Middle. Beatriz is definitely in the Cranston camp, and it's super impressive.
The only major demerit on Brooklyn Nine-Nine is that the final season is straight trash. This happens to almost all great TV shows (*ahem* The Office), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine follows the same "jumping the shark" playbook -- the big names leave the show or take diminished roles; a bunch of characters start having babies or getting married or getting divorced; the small things that worked previously get brought to the forefront and played to death -- but it also had the added weirdness of unfolding in 2020 and 2021, when we were all kinda losing our minds with Covid restrictions and performative social justice expectations. It's so cringey to watch these episodes now. You can just feel the struggle of the writers trying to cater to the du jour anti-police sentiment while making a show in which cops are the explicit protagonists. Every stagy scene of self-flagellation (and there are plenty of them) made me think This is why Trump won reelection. I don't actually believe that, but I don't not believe it either. The kids were dead-set on finishing the series or else I would have applied my ABE principle of TV viewing: Always Bail Early.
In other TV news, the White Lotus Season 3 finale dropped last Sunday night, and despite being exhausted from helping to administer the ACPT again, I watched it as soon as it was available. This season has been pretty heavily criticized in the media (at least the media I consume), and having some time to reflect on it all, I must reluctantly admit: The haters are more right than they are wrong. I mean, I still enjoyed this season, but it's a B-, whereas the first two seasons are an A and A+, respectively.
One of the major knocks on the season is that it's way too boring and slow, even by Mike White standards. It could have been two episodes shorter was a common refrain. I typically don't mind a slow plot as long as the characters move and grow, but therein lies the biggest problem I had with this season. With a few exceptions (e.g., Saxon), I didn't feel like any of the major characters had fully realized story arcs. They all had isolated moments of excellence -- great one-off scenes and pull-out dialogues (Mike White is a master of this) -- but within the overall narrative context, it often felt like they were just running in place. I swear Mook and Gaitok have the same basic conversation every episode until the finale. It's like c'mon, we've already seen this, multiple times. What's next? And that was the entire series for me. I kept thinking Okay, here we go! This is when they're really gonna pull me in! But it just never happened. It almost did, in the finale, which I quite enjoyed, but there was too much to do at that point. It was all so unsatisfying. Almost every character felt undercooked or subject to a forced, unearned resolution.
Also, there's just so much throughout the series that doesn't make sense, from a basic human behavioral standpoint -- people doing things that nobody would ever do just because it's needed for the plot. I can't really say any more than that without giving major spoilers, which I don't want to do. If you've seen the season, you surely know what I mean. It comes off as lazy storytelling. I don't think it was, but that's how it comes off. I'm a big Mike White fan, but this one was a swing and a miss -- well, maybe not a miss, but it was weak contact to be sure. It happens. Nobody bats a thousand.
Until next time...
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