Keep Black Mirror to Yourself

The three unspoken rules of dinner party etiquette have always been Don’t Talk Politics, Don’t Mention Religion, and Don’t Laugh at the Vegans Eating Parsnips.  It’s time to add a fourth - Don’t Talk TV.  In this era of streaming and binge watching, everyone’s always asking, “What are you watching?” Responses can dictate future friendships or fallings out - your love of Two Broke Girls means you’d hate me for never missing a moment of Master Chef Toddler.  I also now know it’s never a good idea to discuss Black Mirror with dinner guests.  

If you’re familiar with this British TV import, you understand.  Created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror is mesmerizing, each episode a self-contained film, with accomplished actors, taut writing and riveting storylines.  The plots occur in the near future, the common thread a complicated view of technology set against the backdrop of human nature’s best and worst instincts.  The series is a modern-day version of The Twilight Zone, but instead of pig noses, broken eye glasses and aliens hoping to serve humans, Black Mirror shows us how technology has so permeated our lives that we’re only steps away from a rapid disintegration into losing our freedoms, our memories and our dignity because of what our technical advances have wrought.

What’s most chilling are the plots’ plausibility.  An implant that lets you record your entire life and rewind at your own peril; mechanical drone bees to help save the real ones from extinction; artificial intelligence so advanced you’d buy it a beer and a sandwich.  Watch this season’s premier, a world where social media rating means everything.  In “Nosedive,” the main character, Bryce Dallas Howard, tries improving her social standing to experience the finer things in life until things go awry.   Every interaction earns her a rating - friends, co-workers and strangers swipe away on their phones after exchanging greetings in the coffee shop, the elevator or the airline ticket counter.  Fast forward to real life in China, 2016.  The Chinese government recently announced plans to assign ratings to its citizens that will impact their ability to apply for loans and jobs and to gain access to higher-end hotels and faster government service.  The plan, already in place in a few cities, uses credit histories, tax records and criminal records and will expand nationwide in 2020, incorporating social media and online shopping patterns into what is known as a “social credit system.”  In a few years, Howard’s nosedive may seem quaint by comparison in downtown Shenzhen.

Or consider the “The Waldo Moment”  - the scariest forty three minutes of television I’ve seen in a long time.  Waldo’s a snarky cartoon bear, a regular guest on a late night TV talk show, voiced by a young man who’s desperately trying to find happiness and companionship in his life.  Things change quickly for Waldo as he becomes a national political phenomenon.  Viewing this episode is like watching the recent campaign with Trump playing the role of Waldo, substituting his papery orange skin for Waldo’s blue cartoon flesh.  Waldo’s disdain for the normal order of things, his impatience, his desire to foment fisticuffs and his ability to give a voice to those who’ve been unheard for too long are very familiar.  Waldo is our future – and our present.

And then there’s Black Mirror’s first-ever episode, “The National Anthem.”  This taught me the Don’t Talk TV rule while enjoying a lovely meal with friends.  After fun chats about holiday plans and gardening tips, I felt the sudden urge to ask the question, “So what are you guys watching?”  I listened and then began to recount the story of my experience with Black Mirror.  I explained how I’d never heard of the show until my boss mentioned it to me months ago.  “I won’t even describe it – just see the first episode and you’ll know what I’m talking about,” he said to me.  So I watched and was so enthralled I begged my wife to catch it with me.  

We’re always exhausting shows we can watch together – Big Love, Six Feet Under, Last Man on Earth – the list we’ve enjoyed together is small.  For every Real Housewives of Mordor for her, there’s a Better Call Saul I can’t miss, and rarely do we agree on the same show.  When she let me make her breakfast on Mother’s Day and watch “The National Anthem,” together, I was giddy, forgetting, apparently, what the next sixty minutes held for her viewing pleasure. 

We sat on the couch as “The National Anthem” began.  A few moments into it, between mouthfuls of eggs and sips of coffee, I spied my wife engrossed, and I figured I’d nailed it – good food, better TV and quality time together.  But as the plot revealed itself, she recoiled in horror.  “You watched this already?  Are you sick?  Your boss told you to watch this?  What kind of freak is he?  My God, this is terrible!”  She watched for another twenty minutes, and as her coffee went cold, so did her interest in my Black Mirrorexperiment.  As she stood to leave, she said, “You’re sick.  Who would make a show like this?  Nice Mother’s Day,” leaving her unfinished breakfast on the table.

When she and I recounted the story of the Mother’s Day Miscue to the table of dinner guests, there were initial chuckles, but when I described episode’s plot, in some detail, one guest, a local physician, dropped his jaw down below his knees.  Another stood up, thanked the host and walked out, breaking into a slight jog as she reached the door, appalled I lacked the good sense to resist telling my story.  The words of William Shatner came to mind as she sped away – “It’s just a TV show!”  But I swallowed my words with my final bites of dessert.  Lesson learned.  

As for the actual plot of “The National Anthem,” it involves the British Prime Minister, a kidnapped member of the royal family and themes of immoral newscasters, swelled political egos and an obsession with public humiliation.  And a rather large pig.  Come to think of it, we were eating pork tenderloin at the dinner party – maybe that’s what did it.  Either way, I encourage you to watch Black Mirror and judge on your own.  Just keep it to yourself.

(Black Mirror is available on Netflix in all its twisted, prescient glory.)

Give Thanks for Great TV

It’s Thanksgiving, a day to pause, breathe deeply and reflect on the good things in your life.  The usual stuff makes my list – comfortable shoes, dental insurance, lite mayonnaise.  But this year, I find myself thinking about the visual cornucopia of glorious TV at my fingertips.  I’m thankful for that more than anything.  The amount of high-quality television programming a remote control or touch screen away is stupefying, in a good way – like that third long sip of fortified wine.  At some point you just give in and let the images and sounds dance around your head as you lie on the couch, staring at the screen in the basement, hoping there’s more Mad Dog in the screw-top bottle and extra batteries for the remote.

As you look to celebrate all you’re thankful for, I suggest thanking television.  TV won’t talk politics over giblet stew, TV doesn’t judge one’s decision to wear Crocs, and TV would never make snide comments about one’s thinning hair, expanding waistline and a semi-rational fear of monkeys and dolphins (just wait until they start communicating – no one will be safe).

To help cultivate your own appreciation of how good television programming can change your life – and a few programs to actively avoid like a creepy neighbor with turnip stains on his Jets sweatshirt – here’s a short list of some of the best – and worst -  that makes me thankful I have TV.

Atlanta – I’m thankful for this 10-episode new series on the FXX network.  The show follows two cousins trying to get ahead in Atlanta. Earn and Paper Boi live their lives at what one might call a “casual” pace, and their decisions may be rooted in what Red Staters may describe as “clouded” judgement.  This makes for 30-minute episodes that careen from angst and emotion to guffaws and snickers.  These guys are funny – even when participating in the less savory aspects of life in and around Atlanta.  Keep an eye out for the 10-year old pizza boy and look for Darius, one of the best characters to arrive in a long time. (On demand on FXNow app and SlingTV)

Stan Against Evil – Something is very wrong in Willard’s Mill, New Hampshire.  John C. McGinley plays a crank former sheriff dealing with a nasty curse that ends up in dead law enforcement officers and lots and lots of blood.  This 8-episode series premiered a few weeks ago on IFC and is worth every second.  Where else can you hear the line, “I’m supposed to kill my wife because Hitler told me to do it on TV?”?  From demonic pigs to satanic priests to lazy coworkers and Bobby Orr’s hockey stick, “Stan Against Evil” is so much better than any creamed pearl onions served at your sister’s. (On demand on IFC)

Westworld – Cowboys?  Check.  Corporate greed?  Check.   Suppressed memories and violent fantasies?  Check and Check.  Robots – oh hell yes!  This new HBO series builds upon the 1973 Michael Chrichton film starring Yul Brenner where wealthy customers come to a western theme park populated with life-like robots who provide all means of escape.  But instead of riding the tea cups and eating churros, the park’s patrons murder, defile, steal, maim and terrorize the programmable inhabitants.  Watching the androids, one by one, remember their past encounters will send chills down your stuffing-laden bellies. (Sunday nights at 9 PM on HBO and online at HBO Go)

But just as too much turkey, candied yams and Uncle Coot’s prison yarns will surely dampen your Thanksgiving spirit, so too will a few TV shows that are nothing to give thanks for.  Avoid indigestion, put down the gravy boat and skip these:

Kevin Can Wait – In the distant future, the monkey-dolphin-human hybrid inhabitants of planet earth will uncover troves of Kevin James films and TV programs, and in their high-pitched squealing and repetitive clicks, they’ll wonder what type of god this Kevin James was.  Top-rated TV shows, hit films, photos with Adam Sandler – they’ll be convinced Kevin James was the greatest TV and film star of our sad, laugh track-inebriated culture.  Do not contribute to this charade.  Avoid CBS Mondays at 8:30 PM. I beg you.  Our survival as the dominant species may depend on it.

Pro Football – Pro football is boring.  Neutral Zone Infraction.  Holding.  Twelve Men on the Field.  More Holding.  Offsides.  Personal Foul.  Extra Holding.  Punt after punt after punt.  When you can record a three-hour football game and distill the entirety of excitement into seven minutes, you know that’s bad TV.  Of the three games on today, I’ll bet you a fistful of Jell-O mold that none warrants more than an, “Oh, he should have fielded that kick” level of excitement.  But then again, Tom Brady isn’t playing today so he’s exempt from this entire conversation.  Tom Brady is better than the whole bunch of those losers.  Tom Brady just gets it.

Local TV News Promos – “Have vultures taken control of a local school?”  “Are your house plants trying to kill you?”  “Do monkeys plan on ruling the world?”  Watching the local news is an exercise in panic, suspense and dashed imaginations.  The deep, gravelly voice suggests the world itself may indeed be ending, but as the 7 News Night Team begins its broadcast, you learn that no, local carrion-starved birds haven’t seized control of PS 218 and that Ficus plants make a terrible pork loin garnish.  As for monkeys’ plan for world domination, that’s no joking matter.  In fact, burn this newspaper after reading, just in case.

Enjoy Thanksgiving and be grateful we have so many entertainment options to choose from.  It’s important to give thanks for the nice things we have – who knows when or our monkey-dolphin overlords make us read books instead.  Can you imagine?

Fab Four Fantastic

It’s been 50 years and one month since The Beatles played their last concert in public – a blustery night in Candlestick Park on the western shore of San Francisco Bay.  After five plus years of constant touring, the four musicians were hurried away from 50,000 screaming fans in the back of a van, their bodies heaving to and fro as the steel truck sped across the grass and through outfield gates towards the exit.  It was at that point, according to Paul McCartney, the four bandmates realized playing for crowds wasn’t worth it – the steady grind from city to city, the terrible sound systems and the constant din of teenagers shouting louder than the music they played convinced them to cease touring for good.  The world’s greatest band - the group that was and remains a cultural phenomenon like no other – called it quits, opting instead to pursue loftier goals inside the recording studio.

Ron Howard’s new documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, was released this month, both in theaters and online via Hulu.  The film focuses on the Fab Four’s touring years, beginning in their days in Liverpool clubs, through Hamburg, across England and Europe and as they arrived in New York City in February, 1964 to throngs of fans at the newly named Kennedy Airport.  Using still photos, news clips, handheld movies and newly found footage discovered by fans after Howard’s public plea for anything Beatles-related, Eight Days a Week captures the frenzied crowds, the crying girls, the bewildered police and the staccato voices of old fashioned radio reporters saying things like, “This Beatlemania has swept the nation,” and, “Why do your fans scream so much?”  To which the four Beatles replied, “We don’t know!” as they laughed and mugged for the cameras.

Much of the sound from those concerts was remastered for the film, and listening to performances of “She Loves You” from 1963 in London and “You Can’t Do That” from a show in Melbourne, Australia in 1964 are fascinating.  Ringo Starr, his suit coat still buttoned, slams away at a drum kit that looks like you’d find it near a dumpster after a yard sale in Penacook, and you can see the sweat running down John’s, Paul’s and George’s make-up caked faces as they wail away on “I Saw Her Standing There.”  I learned The Beatles’ refusal to play at a segregated concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida had a lot to do with forcing large southern stadiums to rethink their segregationist approach, and hearing Whoopi Goldberg describe her surprise trip to see the band at Shea Stadium as a young girl obsessed with The Beatles is touching.

Howard does a skillful job of sharing something new about The Beatles, not an easy task for the most documented, filmed and dissected group in modern musical history.  I consider myself a true Beatles fan –perhaps not a Fab Four musicologist, but I know all the music, all the words and details about George’s love life that teeter on unnecessary.  My friend Sean and I would listen to hour after hour of the White Album, Revolver, Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Beatles for Sale and all the others from grade school up through high school and college.  I still listen to them at least once a day, and every song I hear – from “I Feel Fine” to “I’ve Got a Feeling” to “Tomorrow Never Knows” still makes me grin.  Watching this film showed me scenes I’d not caught before and outtakes of songs I’d never heard.  Watch when George holds a transistor radio to his ear in the Plaza Hotel or learn about how John felt about his career and the band’s trajectory while making the film Help – all of it compelling to any Beatles fan or fans of popular music and culture.

The four Beatles as well as their producer George Martin, their manager Brian Epstein and their road managers and roadies help paint a picture of the sheer speed at which the band went from a local favorite to a worldwide force in a handful of years.  Howard keeps the lens on touring and performances, showing their growing disenchanted with life on the road and how, only three months removed from their last concert in San Francisco, they started working on what many consider the greatest album of all time – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a concept Paul created as a way to distance himself and the others from the idea of The Beatles as a thing bigger than themselves.

At one point in the film, a reporter interviews Paul, asking, “So what kind of impact do you think you’ll leave on Western culture?”  Paul stops, thinks for a second and responds, “It’s not culture – it’s a good laugh.”  I’d suggest it’s a lot of both – popular culture in its highest form and more than a good laugh – more like a smile ear to ear as we get to listen to what they left behind forever.

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week is available on Hulu and is showing for a limited time at Red River Theatre in lovely downtown Concord.  The film is rated PG but should be shown to toddlers and infants so that they might develop an appreciation for the best music ever written, despite Ringo’s incessant cheekiness.

Do not go gentle into that Fall TV season . . .

As summer dissipates into fall, our televisions will soon fill up with crime scene romance, wise-cracking nerds, vapid hunks in need of a hug and Season 54 of The Voice.  We’ll be saturated with football from Thursday to Monday, suffer through another Kevin James laugh-track hideosity and witness so many election ads that we’ll beg for bleach and rat poison smoothies to end the misery.  But do not go gentle into that dark fall TV season – there is still time to enjoy what the summer has to offer.  Skip the sunshine and embrace two new shows that are sure to help your summer end on a high note.

Stranger Things is an eight-episode masterpiece of ‘80’s outfits and haircuts, a thoroughly entertaining series about a missing boy, a little girl with special powers, alternate dimensions and Winona Ryder in various states of panic, agony and terror.  Matthew Modine, he of such ‘80s classics as Vision Quest, Full Metal Jacket and Married to the Mob, plays a government scientist trying to keep his secrets intact before a group of meddling kids ruins everything.

Created, written and directed by the Duffer Brothers, watching Stranger Things is like slipping back into your parents’ basement in 1987 and getting that bag of new Cool Ranch Doritos scared right out of you.  From the theme music and opening graphics to the spot-on banter between the Dungeons and Dragons-playing kids to the ominous phone calls (from inside the house!), Stranger Things mixes a little Stephen King horror with ET-like wonder, then adds a dollop of afterschool special where the cool kids always ruin everything.  The end result is memorable television.

Winona Ryder is riveting as a distraught mom searching for her missing son, and the little girl at the heart of the story, Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, evokes so much emotion by saying very little that you can’t help root for her escape.  By the time the last episode ended, I wanted another season to start immediately.  So as you reach for the remote to tune into that first episode of CSI Schenectady, pause and redirect yourself towards Netflix.  Stranger Things is there, waiting for you.

While Stranger Things should be watched with the whole family, the latest HBO hit series – Vice Principals – should not be viewed with spouses, partners, children, dogs, lizards, parrots, cats, siblings or other familial relations.  It should be watched alone with a cold beer in the dark with the door closed.  It’s that good.  Rarely has a show used vulgarities in such a creative, rapid-fire manner – listening to the two vice principals jaw at each other is like grabbing a front row seat at the Gutter Poetry Slam Olympics – never have adjectives been delivered with such debased grace.

Vice Principals follows two scheming colleagues at a high school in South Carolina, both devastated by losing out on the principal’s job, who team up to destroy their new boss.  Danny McBride, from HBO’s Eastbound and Down, created Vice Principals and plays Neil Gamby – divorced, lonely, angry and clinging to his role as school disciplinarian in the face of his crumbling life.  His counterpart, played by Walton Goggins, is Lee Russell, equally as awful and tortured as his co-worker Gamby.  From a nefarious friend in the TV series Justified to his turn as a plantation owner’s henchman in the Tarantino film, Django Unchained to this role, Goggins is remarkable.  He inhabits his character so completely- from his gait to his smarmy smile to the way the vitriol rolls off his tongue - Goggins makes us love Lee Russell.  Watch him handle a noisy neighbor or make a very special cup of coffee or try sabotaging the big game.   Goggins’ performance alone is worth watching Vice Principals again and again.  Never has such a terrible person been so fun to watch.

While the rest of your neighborhood says goodbye to summer with barbeques, lawn dart tournaments and yard work, you should instead hole up at home and watch Stranger Things and Vice Principals from start to finish.  You’ll feel better about the change of seasons and will learn a few new noun-adjective combinations in the process.

Stranger Things is available via streaming through Netflix.  Rated TV-14 for scenes of mild terror, telekinetic temper tantrums, lying to parents and government overreach.  Vice Principals is available on HBO and is rated TV-MA and should be viewed in a solitary manner so as to avoid embarrassment in front of church-going folk and your more decent relatives.

Do not go gentle into that dark fall TV season . . .

As summer dissipates into fall, our televisions will soon fill up with crime scene romance, wise-cracking nerds, vapid hunks in need of a hug and Season 54 of The Voice.  We’ll be saturated with football from Thursday to Monday, suffer through another Kevin James laugh-track hideosity and witness so many election ads that we’ll beg for bleach and rat poison smoothies to end the misery.  But do not go gentle into that dark fall TV season – there is still time to enjoy what the summer has to offer.  Skip the sunshine and embrace two new shows that are sure to help your summer end on a high note.

Stranger Things is an eight-episode masterpiece of ‘80’s outfits and haircuts, a thoroughly entertaining series about a missing boy, a little girl with special powers, alternate dimensions and Winona Ryder in various states of panic, agony and terror.  Matthew Modine, he of such ‘80s classics as Vision Quest, Full Metal Jacket and Married to the Mob, plays a government scientist trying to keep his secrets intact before a group of meddling kids ruins everything.

Created, written and directed by the Duffer Brothers, watching Stranger Things is like slipping back into your parents’ basement in 1987 and getting that bag of new Cool Ranch Doritos scared right out of you.  From the theme music and opening graphics to the spot-on banter between the Dungeons and Dragons-playing kids to the ominous phone calls (from inside the house!), Stranger Things mixes a little Stephen King horror with ET-like wonder, then adds a dollop of afterschool special where the cool kids always ruin everything.  The end result is memorable television.

Winona Ryder is riveting as a distraught mom searching for her missing son, and the little girl at the heart of the story, Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, evokes so much emotion by saying very little that you can’t help root for her escape.  By the time the last episode ended, I wanted another season to start immediately.  So as you reach for the remote to tune into that first episode of CSI Schenectady, pause and redirect yourself towards Netflix.  Stranger Things is there, waiting for you.

While Stranger Things should be watched with the whole family, the latest HBO hit series – Vice Principals – should not be viewed with spouses, partners, children, dogs, lizards, parrots, cats, siblings or other familial relations.  It should be watched alone with a cold beer in the dark with the door closed.  It’s that good.  Rarely has a show used vulgarities in such a creative, rapid-fire manner – listening to the two vice principals jaw at each other is like grabbing a front row seat at the Gutter Poetry Slam Olympics – never have adjectives been delivered with such debased grace.

Vice Principals follows two scheming colleagues at a high school in South Carolina, both devastated by losing out on the principal’s job, who team up to destroy their new boss.  Danny McBride, from HBO’s Eastbound and Down, created Vice Principals and plays Neil Gamby – divorced, lonely, angry and clinging to his role as school disciplinarian in the face of his crumbling life.  His counterpart, played by Walton Goggins, is Lee Russell, equally as awful and tortured as his co-worker Gamby.  From a nefarious friend in the TV series Justified to his turn as a plantation owner’s henchman in the Tarantino film, Django Unchained to this role, Goggins is remarkable.  He inhabits his character so completely- from his gait to his smarmy smile to the way the vitriol rolls off his tongue - Goggins makes us love Lee Russell.  Watch him handle a noisy neighbor or make a very special cup of coffee or try sabotaging the big game.   Goggins’ performance alone is worth watching Vice Principals again and again.  Never has such a terrible person been so fun to watch.

While the rest of your neighborhood says goodbye to summer with barbeques, lawn dart tournaments and yard work, you should instead hole up at home and watch Stranger Things and Vice Principals from start to finish.  You’ll feel better about the change of seasons and will learn a few new noun-adjective combinations in the process.

Stranger Things is available via streaming through Netflix.  Rated TV-14 for scenes of mild terror, telekinetic temper tantrums, lying to parents and government overreach.  Vice Principals is available on HBO and is rated TV-MA and should be viewed in a solitary manner so as to avoid embarrassment in front of church-going folk and your more decent relatives.

Only the Popcorn is Free . . .

“It’s no secret our world is in darkness tonight.”  I heard those U2 lyrics for the first time in late 1991, Bono singing them in a static monotone over driving bass, howling guitar, and a frenetic beat.  We had ample reason to believe him.  The first Gulf War ended a few months before, the Soviet Union crumbled from within, and LA police officers beat Rodney King for the world to see. IRA bombs exploded in downtown London, and a lunatic with a grudge and two handguns killed 23 people at a Texas diner.  I’d just finished college and was teaching fifth graders about medieval England, struggling to pay my bills, wondering where I’d find the cash to buy a ring and convince my girlfriend to marry me.  Things felt precarious and unsettled, aided in no small way by the first airing of Barney and Friends in early ’92, a sure sign of societal chaos.

Twenty five years later, things are no less precarious.  The news is a steady swirl of war, upheaval, financial meltdowns and Caillou reruns.  We careen from one disaster to another, often from our own hands.  Our institutions and leaders struggle to feed our fix for immediate answers, and we’ve lost the collective patience to trust anyone who doesn’t watch our Snapchat stories within the hour.  Spend enough time watching TV or pecking at your phone, and you’d think the darkness Bono sang about over two decades ago is deeper, inkier and scarier than we’d feared.

Then along comes an artistic expression to capture this mood and reflect it back like a funhouse mirror of our collective neuroses.  Mr. Robot, a TV show like no other, hits our basic cable screens next week with its second season.  Season One was a ten-episode force of nature, taking a slice of that darkness and dissecting it through the eyes of Elliot Anderson, a troubled, drug-addicted IT worker in Manhattan who spends days working on cybersecurity and nights hacking into people’s lives in a twisted effort to make sense of his own.  He knows more about his therapist than she does and keeps secret tabs on his childhood friend and co-worker, knowing her boyfriend’s a lout, and a gullible one at that, well before she draws the same conclusion. (Note to self – always cover up your laptop camera . . .)

Elliot, played by Rami Malek (with the most expressive cinematic eyes since Marty Feldman), stumbles into a hacker collective, hidden away in an abandoned arcade in Coney Island, whose mission is to bring down the mega-bank E Corp, a symbol of all that is amiss in corporate America.  Led by an anarchistic enigma in the titular role, Mr. Robot, (played by Christian Slater, in an award-winning effort) pushes Elliot to open his eyes to the mess all around him, soliloquizing about the miserable state of society as he munches on free popcorn, manipulating his hackers into halting the gears of American finance by pulling an intricate series of intertwining, morally ambiguous levers.

As Elliot begins questioning his grasp on reality, his newfound mentor thrusts the doubt back in his face, saying, “Is any of it real? I mean, look at this.  Look at it! A world built on fantasy. Synthetic emotions in the form of pills. Psychological warfare in the form of advertising. Mind-altering chemicals in the form of food! Brainwashing seminars in the form of media. Controlled isolated bubbles in the form of social networks. . . You have to dig pretty deep before you can find anything real. We live in a kingdom of bulls**t.  A kingdom you've lived in for far too long.”  The show is filled with poetic ruminations on the world around us, and as Elliot slips deeper into the darkness, I found myself hanging on every moment of each episode as they crescendoed into a riveting ending.

               Elliot’s world is in darkness, and he doesn’t embrace it as much as he seeks survival, fighting his own monsters along with the corporate demons of greed, ambition and soulless profit.  Mr. Robot is not a whimsical, laugh-track wild ride about crazy nerds and their kooky lives – it gives us one man’s desire to make sense by taking action to bring about change, regardless of the consequences.  

That song from 1991 – U2’s “The Fly,” ends with the line, “There's a lot of things if I could, I'd rearrange.”  In Mr. Robot, Elliot’s fitful, tortured desire to rearrange society into a different reality is not complete at the end of Season One, leaving him and us demanding a torch to cut through the darkness.  Season Two holds that promise, and I cannot wait to see how bright the torch burns.

Season Two of Mr. Robot premiers on the USA Network on July 13^th.  Hold off watching until you’ve binged on Season One.  The show contains adult themes, like mean dog owners, odious bosses, confused sexuality, bad parenting, drug use, violence, bankers, lawyers and free popcorn. 

Mockument This!

Popstar, the new film by the comedy trio Lonely Island, wont’ make much money.  It won’t be in theaters for long, has zero chance of winning awards, and I’ll bet you’ll never see it, at least on purpose.  But as Teresa Giudice is my witness, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is the greatest mockumentary about our nation’s vapid obsession with fame for fame’s sake ever made, eighty-six minutes of inappropriate songs, celebrity cameos, turtle funerals and Michael Bolton.  I implore you to see it – my son and I were two of seven people in the theater last Sunday, so there are plenty of tickets left!

 Andy Samberg is Connor4Real, a dim yet enthusiastic popstar whose rapid ascent to fame is followed by an equally speedy decline.  After leaving his best friends and their rap group, Style Boyz, behind to chase solo success, Connor’s first album, Thriller Also, goes platinum.  But his follow-up effort is a dud, and after hitting rock bottom, Connor slowly pieces things back together through horse-drawing therapy and his former bandmates, although his mom appears to be a lost cause, as is Seal, although he has angry wolves to blame – it’s a long story.  With Taylor Swift’s arrest for murder, Connor finds the opportunity for redemption.  The Donkey Roll makes a comeback, the caterer dons a fish costume and everyone except Seal goes home happy.

Popstar is not high art – the Citizen Kane of mockumentaries it’s not – it’s not even The Amazing Mr. Limpet of pretend documentaries, but it’s good enough to keep you entertained and serves as a reminder that we have no one to blame for the Real Housewives of Kenosha, Justin Bieber and TMZ except ourselves.  Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is worth seeing – consider it a reminder that sometimes a good book is the best solution for quality entertainment. 

In the spirit of equally fantastic mockumentaries, here are a few worth watching:

This is Spinal Tap (1984) – this remains the standard by which all mockumentaries are judged, and one of the top five funniest films of all time.  The dialogue has worked its way into our culture (“This one goes to 11”), and the film helped launch a series of almost as equally great films from Christopher Guest and his kooky pals, like Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind.  I’ve seen Spinal Tap at least 75 times from start to finish, and it never gets old.  Just remember that a cricket bat can be both totemistic and rather handy in the topsy-turvy world of rock and roll.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014) – a documentary film crew follows three New Zealand vampires for a year as they try living together without driving each other batty.  Jermaine Clement, from the landmark HBO comedy series, “Flight of the Conchords,” portrays Vlad the Vampire, and he and his cohorts battle the modern world and a murderous but polite gang of werewolves (“Remember – we’re werewolves, not swearwolves”).  This movie is brilliant – the best vampire documentary you’ll ever see.

Real Life (1979) – comedian and filmmaker Albert Brooks plays himself making a documentary about an ordinary family in Phoenix, and he manages to put himself the center of every scene.  Between the crew wearing space-age camera helmets on their heads to the veterinarian dad, played by Charles Grodin, losing a rather large patient on the operating table to Brooks dressed as a clown as he plumbs the depths of a nervous breakdown, Real Life is priceless comedy.  The statement uttered near the end, “Reality sucks – the audience loves fake,” captures the essence of this late ‘70’s masterpiece.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) – If you watch only one scene in this film, catch the moment when the bear greets the children hoping for ice cream.  Or the scene when Borat’s producer runs through a crowded hotel in his birthday suit or when Borat sings the national anthem at a rodeo or when he takes driving lessons or . . .  Good lord this film is insane.

Documentary Now! (2015) - SNL alums Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers created a TV series both mocking and paying homage to legendary documentaries.  Watch Hader and Armisen as the two old women in “Sandy Passage,” based on the famous documentary Grey Gardens, and witness things go terribly wrong for the film crew.  The episode spoofing the in-your-face style of Vice’s HBO documentaries, called “The Search for El Chingon,” does not have a happy ending but is riveting nonetheless. 

(Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is in theatres for probably another nine days; all other films are available for online rental or on-demand; Documentary Now! is available on IFC on-demand)

Purple Rain Will Set You Free

            In the late summer of 1984 I was lovesick and broke.  I’d spent the summer at a boys camp, my first as a counselor after seven seasons as a camper, an enviable transition for any camp lifer – that first summer you get dibs on the better breakfast cereals, are asked to call balls and strikes, and earn money for something you’d do for free if anyone had suggested it.

I’d just finished my junior year in high school– confident, thin-ish, tan and oblivious to life’s complications waiting for me in the years to come.  I coached tennis, hiked mountains, swam in the lake and managed a 10-year old baseball team.  It was a great summer, but I’d made one mistake – I left Long Island in late June, convinced my girlfriend Beth and I would stay together, the two of us apart for ten weeks but connected by the good people at AT&T long distance.  I was sure our “love” would transcend time and space.  We promised to write letters, and I dedicated myself to calling her as often as possible.

This being 1984, the idea that I could text Beth before video-chatting her was like a scene from an absurd science fiction film.  Instead, I had a pay phone on the wall of the Counselor Shack, a tiny cabin in the woods where we’d listen to music, drink beer, play air guitar, drink more beer and sing along to every cut on Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp album.  I’d stand next to the weathered door, its hole-filled screen no match for New Hampshire’s mosquitoes, and talk to Beth whenever I could.

I don’t remember the substance of a single call but do recall things slipping away as the dog days of July arrived.  Beth had her job, her friends and college to prepare for, and any experience I shared meant little to her.  I’m sure we talked about how much we cared for each other, but the calls became less frequent, and Beth ended it at some point in early August.  When the season ended, I was sad not only because Beth and I were on the outs, but I also knew I’d squandered so much time on that pay phone in the middle of the woods.

To make matters worse, I learned I’d just spent my entire paycheck for the summer’s efforts on my dad’s long distance calling card.  Four hundred dollars gone, spent minute by minute on that wall phone as I swatted away bugs, clutched a can of beer and begged my friends to stop singing “Is She Really Going Out With Him” as loud as they could in the background.

Once the summer ended, I was at our family cottage a few miles from the camp, trying in vain to defend to my mom how I wasted every penny of my salary. “All for a girl?  How dumb was that?” my mom asked, in a somewhat rhetorical way.  Feeling lonely, sad and sorry for myself, I was convinced I was the biggest teenage loser in the history of teenage losers.  And that’s when I was rescued by Purple Rain.

My sister Molly, a few years older, measured my misery and suggested we take a drive.  “Let’s go see that Prince movie in Meredith.”  My only exposure to Prince to that point was my 1999 cassette I’d hid from my friends.  We were music snobs, and in high school we only listened to New Wave – Elvis Costello, Squeeze, The Clash, The Pretenders.  No one could know I kinda dug this guy from Minneapolis - admitting I’d memorized the lyrics to “Lady Cab Driver” or “Delirious” was as close to social suicide as getting the “Flock of Seagulls cut” from my local barber, Mr. Snips.  

Purple Rain was like nothing I’d seen before.  With no internet or YouTube, I might have caught a video on MTV or maybe a Saturday Night Live performance, but this was two hours of music, major drama and Apollonia.  I was mesmerized.  Sure, the story’s a little predictable, and no one ever confused Morris Day with Sidney Poitier, but the scenes of Prince and his band on stage were magic – Prince’s singing, his gyrations and his eyes – even the little cookie duster mustache – all of it was spectacular.  Wendy and Lisa?  A guy in surgical scrubs on the keyboard?  A purple motorcycle?  The dude from The Mod Squad?  Pirate shirts and high heel boots?  What was this?  I could have watched the six-hour version of Purple Rain if it had been playing.

I remember heading home in the pouring rain as my sister drove.  I felt alive, confident, renewed.  If Prince could put himself out there and get the girl, maybe my future wasn’t so bleak.  So what if I blew my entire salary on long distance calls?  Who cares I told Beth I loved her to have her cast it aside?  Purple Rain wasn’t even that great of a movie, but Prince’s pure dedication to his music and his performances were enough for me to start accepting that emotion is a good thing, that feeling my own passion for something enough to make me hurt inside was okay.  When I hear “I Would Die 4U” or “Let’s Go Crazy,” even these 32 years later, I think back to that wide smile on my face in the passenger seat, the rain beating against the windshield, my entire life ahead of me somewhere down that road.

(Purple Rain is available for online rental, in select theaters nationwide in tribute to Prince’s death – including Red River in Concord -  and airing on MTV tonight in all its purple glory.)

Macro and Micro Misery

I met Harry the Mortgage Guy through Sarah, my sister-in-law.  It was 2003, and I was ready to buy my first house.  “I’ll hook you right up,” Harry said, his voice so gravelly I was sure I smelled the Camel No Filters through the phone.  Sarah told me Harry wore gold chains and strong cologne, and I kept a mental image of the man in my mind whenever we talked on the phone.  I pictured him in his smoke-filled office at the Saugus Federal Credit Union, a half-filled bottle of Drakkar Noir on his desk, next to piles of financial reports as he scoured the internet for the best mortgage he could find for me.  I knew absolutely nothing about buying a house.

When my numbers came back from the bank, Harry was exuberant.  “You could buy something over $600k!  Live a little.  You’re good for it,” he told me.  “We’ll set you up in something we call an ‘adjustable rate mortgage.’  It’s perfect for you.”  No one ever confused me with Milton Friedman, and for years I thought a Laffer Curve was the perfect pitch on a 1 and 2 count, so when Harry explained it didn’t matter that my wife would lose her job when we moved, I trusted him.  “Just as long as she works now, you’re fine.  The bank won’t bother checking once you move.”  I reasoned Harry had no reason to sell me a lousy mortgage, and we bought a house and moved to New Hampshire.  We didn’t listen to him about what we could buy, choosing a home far cheaper than what he told me we could afford.  In hindsight, it was one of the best decisions we ever made.

Midway through watching the film 99 Homes, I felt sick.  Homeowner after homeowner gets evicted, and as Michael Shannon, the bank’s hatchet man, and his key henchman, played by Andrew Garfield, talk to the families getting tossed from homes they no longer own, I hear over and over how no one knew what they were signing, not comprehending their mortgages would adjust to unaffordable levels.  If not for a few gut instinct decisions a few years after buying our house, I could have been in that exact situation, ducking the Sherriff, pleading for one more day, blaming the bank and, of course, Harry, for putting me and my family in this mess.

               Two recent films, 99 Homes and The Big Short, are an excellent view into this nation’s worst financial mess since the 1930s, capturing the causes and effects of America’s Great Recession, a societal, economic and political monsoon of ignorance, greed and blame.  The films use micro and macro perspectives of the housing crisis at the root of the entire mess.  The Big Short looks at the macro forces at work, telling the story of a handful of investment bankers and fund managers who realize before anyone else that America’s housing market and the big banks’ aggressive decisions to invest in mortgages are built on soggy ground.  The movie tackles very complex topics (mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, synthetic collaterized debt obligations) and compares them to things we simpletons can grasp, like fish stew and blackjack.  Halfway through the film I couldn’t help but think of Harry trying to sell me a mortgage I didn’t qualify for and could never afford.  The Florida real estate brokers in The Big Short are portrayed as a notch below seagull guano, and when they brag about how they earn only $2k on a fixed rate mortgage but $10k on an adjustable mortgage, Harry’s friendly coaxing seemed less so in retrospect.

               99 Homes takes the up-close, micro stance of the housing crisis.  The depiction of evictions is so visceral you can’t help feel anger, sadness and resignation.  Rick Carver, the film’s chief antagonist played by Shannon, says things like, “I know this is a very painful time,” and “I didn’t kick you out – the bank did,” as he, together with sheriffs and his crew of day laborers, give families two minutes to gather their things before they’re told to move to the other side of the sidewalk because they’re now trespassing on the bank’s property.  The film paints a dark picture of the human side of the Great Recession, and it’s one that’s tough to forget.  When Carver says, “America doesn’t  bail out the losers – America was built by bailing out winners,” I realized the same line could have been used at the end of The Big Short when Ryan Gosling’s narration explains that even after 6 million families lost their homes to foreclosure, and over 8 million jobs were lost, leading to a loss of $5 trillion from everyday people’s savings, retirement account and investments, very few systemic changes were made to help avoid the same mistakes in the future.

   

My generation grew up with “Greed is Good” at the movie theater and “Poverty Sucks” posters on our dorm room walls, and maybe that’s why the bankers, brokers and government officials lost their collective minds more than a decade ago, making one bad bet after another, ignoring the reality that millions of lives were at stake in their gambit for profit.

A few months after I’d fixed everything, just as the rest of the housing market was cratering, I called the bank where Harry worked.  I wanted to connect and see what his perspective was on what was happening.  They told me he was long gone, only the smell of cologne and cigarette smoke lingering over all the bad deals he made for would-be suckers like me.

(The Big Short and 99 Homes are available through online rental or on-demand through your cable provider; both are rated R for language, adult situations and terrible decision-making by said adults regarding grand financial schemes built on fantasy or borrowing money they could never pay back.)

Kevin James Must Be Stopped

The Golden Raspberries, or “Razzies,” are given annually to the worst that Hollywood has to offer.  Awarded the day before the Oscars, the 36^th annual Razzies will be presented this Saturday evening, given to a handful of deserving actors, directors and screen writers, each of whom I’d imagine won’t show up to receive their fist-sized golden trophies for a special place in cinema ignominy.

With this year’s Oscars apparently devoid of racial equality, I embrace the Razzies for welcoming cinematic efforts of all hues, from turgid movies to terrible performances to laughable screenplays to onsite couples with zero chemistry.  Nominees compete in nine categories, and with a handful of truly cruddy movies released in 2015, there are sixteen films that divided all forty five nominations between them.  Watching all sixteen could have plunged me into the bowels of insanity, so I first narrowed down my choices to any film with multiple nominations (sorry, Human Centipede 3 –Worst Picture only isn’t good enough), leaving seven films with at least three Razzie nominations each.  I took Mordecai, a Johnny Depp-Gwyneth Paltrow turd of a film and Alvin and the Chipmunks 9 – Into the Wood Chipper off the list and landed on five Razzie-nominated films, two with five nominations (Pixels and Fantastic 4) and three with six total nods (Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, Jupiter Ascending and 50 Shades of Grey).  I then braced myself and watched every second of these non-masterpieces.

Viewing ten-plus hours of celluloid dreck wasn’t easy, the saving grace being able to watch them from home where I clutched my therapy pillow and wept for this nation’s future.  Here are my impressions of each and my prediction for who’ll be Saturday night’s big loser.

Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 – when ruminating upon this, I recall the words of Chinese philosopher Confucius, who wrote, “Why a second bag of dog poop when the first has ruined your sandal?”  PBMC2 stars Kevin James, he this year’s thrice-nominated Razzie actor (Paul Blart, the President in Pixels and Channing Tatum’s left bicep in Jupiter Ascending), doing his mustachioed Segway-riding mall cop routine who gets tangled in the middle of a Las Vegas art heist.  I’d feared Kevin James from afar for a decade, avoiding his nine-season run on The King of Queens like I’ve avoided cottage cheese and ground hornets.  Sadly, Mr. James was unavoidable in this movie, rolling on the floor, eating with a vibrating fork, hiding in luggage and uttering the line, “Always bet on Blart.”  You know a movie’s beyond redemption when its best line is stolen from an equally bad movie from 1992 starring tax-dodger Wesley Snipes.  This film’s finest performance was given by a peacock trying to peck Kevin James’ eyes out.  I’d like to think the large, flightless bird wasn’t acting.

50 Shades of Grey – let me get this straight – it’s OK for a member of the 1%, a billionaire with a helicopter and chauffeur, to say things to a woman like, “I exercise control in all things,” and “I enjoy various physical pursuits,” as he ties her up, whips her and demands she sign a weird sex contract to be his bondage slave/roommate?  We men in the remaining 99% who drive 2003 Honda Accords and lust for Pizza Night at Planet Fitness would be arrested as malingering perverts the moment we mentioned zip ties and duct tape in the same sentence.  Thanks Trump.  I saw this alone in my basement on Valentine’s Day, qualifying me for the Paul Blart Loser of the Year Award.  Even the supposed scintillating moments were tedious - I’ve watched better sex scenes on Meet the Press. 

Fantastic Four – Just stop it.  For God’s sake, stop.

Jupiter Ascending – When the brother-sister director team of Lana and Andy Wachowksi said, “Let’s make a movie about a maid from Chicago and a wolf-hybrid man soldier from outer space with jet-powered roller blades and anger issues,” I bet the Key Grip asked for his cash up front.  The Jupiter-based royal family at the center of this drama is named after a Santana album (“Abraxas”), and I now realize “Oye Como Va” really means “crap movie” in Spanish.  Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum struggle with boilerplate dialogue like, “We’re not getting off this planet without a fight,” and “We all do things we can’t explain,” which is what the cast of this rancid dreck will be saying for years to come.

Pixels – Growing up on Long Island I watched a lot of movies on TV – the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9, the 4:30 Movie on ABC and the Sunday movies on WPIX, Channel 11 – and I never understood the appeal of Jerry Lewis.  The Nutty Professor, Cinderfella, The Bellboy – I’d see these films over and over, wondering why people loved Jerry so much.  The movies were silly, in a forced, annoying way, but I’d heard the French just loved him so I let it go – maybe there was a deeper meaning to Jerry’s goofball antics I was too young to understand.  I’ve often wondered what the obsession is with Adam Sandler as well.  Is he this generation’s Jerry Lewis?  Inane movies with thin plots, lots of bad dialogue and terrible acting are Adam’s trademark.  Maybe there’s a secret film appreciation society in the basement of le Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, where beret-wearing scholars debate the religious subtext of Happy Gilmore’s plot or the subtle socio-political messages of You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.  After watching the two-hour kidney stone of a movie that was Pixels, I’m convinced Adam Sandler is no Jerry Lewis and should be encouraged to take up pig farming.  Pixels has a compelling popcorn-movie premise – aliens interpret ‘80s video game transmissions as hostile acts and send real-life versions of Pac Man, Frogger, Centipede and other arcade favorites to conquer earth.  And then Kevin James shows up and the movie descends into disconnected chaos, breaks in plot logic, predictable dialogue (“See you on the other side”?) and Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones fame reminding us that buckets of money will always convince good actors to make bad decisions.

               I predict a huge night for Kevin James – if he doesn’t win Worst Supporting Actor for his turn as a hapless President in Pixels, he’ll take home the Golden Raspberry for his best actor efforts as an equally inept mall cop in Paul Blart 2.  Perhaps Kevin will stride onto the stage, accept his trophy and promise to join his buddy Adam on a pig farm somewhere far away from Hollywood.  Only then will we be free.

TV's the New Reading

After my wife and children, I love television more than anything, and sometimes that’s debatable.  TV’s invention is the greatest achievement by humans in the last 400 years, with penicillin and Cool Ranch Doritos tied for a close second.  And now, in this the Golden Age of Television, we have more shows to watch and more ways to watch them.  Watch Breaking Bad in your boudoir?  Of course!  Master Chef Junior during Junior’s dance recital?  Certainly.  Every episode of Gilmore Girls next weekend?  No – absolutely not.  Have some self-respect for God’s sake.

 Gone are the days of Appointment Television.  I remember racing home, panicked I’d miss the first five minutes of Melrose Place.  Oh that Amanda – what a scamp!  Those days are over – with streaming channels, cable on-demand, network websites and good old-fashioned DVD rentals, you really have no excuse to miss any TV ever.

The choices are overwhelming.  On a quiet Saturday a few weeks ago, I caught an entire episode of Gunsmoke, rewatched Episode Nine from Season Three of The Walking Dead, enjoyed the tail end of The Rockford Files and ended the day with three episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, a show that finally answers the question, “How can I also get Type 2 diabetes?”

As winter continues its miserable quest to make us colder, fatter and less congenial, I embrace the time I have indoors.  For Christmas, I bought the family a Roku, a device that marries my streaming subscriptions with my television.  Now I can stop walking around with my laptop like I’m checking crop reports in my living room.  Streaming TV will alter what we watch more than anything – for a fee, I can avoid ads and watch thousands of shows and movies with a few presses of my thumb or by voice remote.  Watching Guy Fieri make a nine pound waffle cheese burrito by using only verbal commands may be what historians call the human race’s Tipping Point.  But I’d do anything for good TV.

I implore you to take advantage of this cornucopia of television – buy a subscription to Netflix or Hulu or HBO On Demand, find a comfy chair and settle in. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.  Here are some suggestions to get you started.

• Fargo - Remember the 1996 film about Jerry Lundegaard, a botched kidnapping and a wood chipper?  Forget the movie and watch Season One of this show.  Ten episodes of Billy Bob Thornton, an ice scraper and one henpecked husband pushed a wee bit too far.  Recently-done Season Two is even better.  (Hulu and Amazon Prime)

• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt – What do you get when you combine oatmeal with lima beans?  Who knows but that sounds gross – Kimmy Schmitt is the opposite of that.  These thirteen quick episodes of comedic zaniness ensure you’ll never see Times Square street characters, karate videos or bottled water in the same light again.  Even the theme song is a hoot. (Netflix original series)
• Ray Donovan – Ray is the only guy who gets things done in LA, and his methods are fun to watch.  Almost into its fourth season, this show has great story lines, awesome South Boston accents, and both Elliot Gould AND Jon Voight.  Voight as Mickey Donovan alone is worth the price of a monthly Showtime subscription.  (Showtime On Demand)
• Narcos – The story of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug kingpin, politician, father, lunatic and self-proclaimed genius.  Great viewing for those hoping to learn an impressive range of Spanish curse words and the history of the War on Drugs in the ‘80s and ‘90s.  (Netflix original series)
• The Man in the High Castle – This new series scratches that “What if Nazi Germany had won World War II?” itch.  The short answer is that an America run by Nazis is a total bummer, and the SS did not enjoy business casual Fridays.   (Amazon Prime original series)
• The Wire – At some point, everyone figured they knew what Moby Dick was about and didn’t bother reading it.  Soon The Wire will have the same cultural significance – stop lying to your family and friends and watch The Wire’s sixty episodes.  But skip Moby Dick - reading is for losers anyway.  TV’s the new reading.  (HBO On Demand)
• Friday Night Lights – What The Wire is to inner city America, FNL is to high school football and life in small town America.  Five seasons of football, romance, drama and relationships in Dillon, Texas.  Maybe the best network TV series ever?  I’m not saying I love Tammy Taylor, but I am saying I admire her – and not at all in a creepy way.  (NBC.com and Amazon Prime)
• Peaky Blinders – It’s 1919 in Birmingham, England and the Peaky Blinders gang is doing its best to balance post-war blues, union organizing, Irish nationalism and really bad opium-laced nightmares.  The Great War’s over, but the battle for criminal turf is just getting started.  (Netflix original series)
• Nathan for You – Canadian business school graduate Nathan Fielder helps small businesses find their customers in very unique ways – his idea for “Dumb Starbucks” still ranks as the most bizarre yet sensible thing anyone’s done in a long time.  (Comedy Central On Demand)
• Sonic Highways – A must see for lovers of rock and roll.  Dave Grohl and his band, Foo Fighters, visit eight American cities and explore their music through interviews and performances.  From Buddy Guy to Alan Toussaint to Willie Nelson to “Wind me Up Chuck!” Sonic Highways is a primer in rock and roll history. (HBO On Demand)