TV Tuesday 3/12/24

I thought it had been a long time (just over six months) since I published a Mystery Monday post, but it has been even longer — close to a year — since my last TV Tuesday post. Again, it wasn’t that I wasn’t watching TV (or reading mysteries), but that I haven’t been moved to write a post about it.

The most notable thing in my TV world is that Netflix finally added the tenth and final season of the NBC show The Blacklist. The show ended last year, and I’ve been waiting to see the final season.

And because I watched it on TV (Netflix, in fact), I’ll tell you about an excruciatingly bad movie I watched. It was directed by Renny Harlin and stars Pierce Brosnan, so I had high hopes, but it was a real stinker.

I’ve written, usually somewhat in passing, about The Blacklist (2013-2023) quite a few times here. The premise is that the world’s most wanted master criminal, Raymond “Red” Reddington, in the first episode walks into the FBI to give himself up. He proposes a deal where, for immunity, he’ll work with a special secret FBI task force, giving them names and information about master criminal operations they don’t even know exist. As part of the deal, he insists they include FBI agent Elizabeth Keen (but won’t say why). Each episode has them chasing down another evil criminal. It quickly becomes apparent, though, that Reddington has his own agenda and wheels within wheels (within wheels within wheels).

The first time I wrote about the show was back in 2014 [in this post] where it was part of a parenthetical comment in a post that started off about baseball and ended with a rant about NCIS: Los Angeles — a show I ultimately gave up on [see Not My NCIS and The End of the Affair].

[I’ve given up on both the first two NCIS spinoffs (Los Angeles and New Orleans) and wouldn’t even give the Hawaii one a chance. Ultimately, I finally gave up on NCIS itself (see NCIS: Over and Out).]

I mentioned The Blacklist again in 2015 as part of an overview of shows I was watching at the time [see Too Much TV?]. That time I gave it three paragraphs and was enthusiastic about the show.

The third time was in my Blindlist & Blackspot post where I compared another NBC show, Blindspot, unfavorably to The Blacklist. I only watched ten episodes of Blindspot before I bailed. The point of the post is that it was a poor and pale imitation of the much superior The Blacklist.

I didn’t write about The Blacklist again until 2020 when I wrote about shows that had aired their final episode (the star of the piece was The Good Place, one of the best sitcoms, if not best TV shows, I’ve ever seen). [See The Good Place of Oz and TV Endings.] This time I gave it five (short) paragraphs, but it starts off:

One show that, in my view, has gotten very tired is The Blacklist.

The bloom was definitely off the rose. The draw has always been the star, James Spader, whom I’ve long enjoyed. Unfortunately, I grew to seriously dislike the costar, Megan Boone (playing FBI agent Elizabeth Keen).

This was in February of 2020. The next mention is that November [in this post], where I wrote:

And, OMG, would The Blacklist please finally die so I can stop watching? The damn show just keeps going on and on. I love James Spader, and I’m determined to stick it out, but I lost interest in all the damn secrets seasons ago. And I can’t stand Liz. I really can’t stand Liz.

And that was the only paragraph I gave it. And incidentally, no slam to the actress, it was the character I loathed. If anything, kudos for a performance that had a big, albeit negative, impact on me.

That theme persisted the final two times I mentioned it (based on the tag — I may have mentioned it elsewhere but didn’t tag the post). Loved watching Spader play Raymond Reddington, hated Liz Keen, and got really tired of the weird twists and turns they dragged viewers through about who Reddington really was and what really was his relationship to Liz Keen. In fact, I got lost in those twists and turns and ended up not caring anymore.

I rejoiced when they killed off Liz Keen at the end of season eight. [Oops. Um, spoiler!] By that point she’d become a master criminal just like her dad. [Oops, there I go again.] Reddington and the FBI task force were, of course, devastated by her death.

The ninth season picks up two years later. After Liz’s death, Reddington fled the country, and the task force was disbanded. Dembe Zuma (Hisham Tawfiq), Reddington’s long-time bodyguard and confidant has joined the FBI and is badly injured by a suspect. This forces Harold Cooper (the outstanding Harry Lennix), the former head of the task force, to regather the task force and attempt to find Reddington to enlist his aid. Most of the season has to do with a traitor in Reddington’s worldwide criminal organization.

I found the season quite watchable, and it renewed my interest in the show. But it was around then that I got seriously fed up with YouTube TV and chucked them [see NCIS: Over and Out]. I can’t say I’ve missed access to what amounted to cable TV (plus local channels plus DVR), but it did cut me off from The Blacklist. And South Park (which I miss) and Doctor Who (which I did at first, but as it turned out, good riddance to overly woke garbage and bad writing).

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Which brings us to now. Netflix carries The Blacklist, but with a year delay before they release previous seasons. I’ve been waiting for what I knew to be the tenth and final season. The ninth season renewed my interest, but after waiting a year, I mostly just wanted to see how it all turned out.

I gotta say, they went out with a bang! I enjoyed the final season as much as I did the first few. Perhaps even more, since I never really took to Liz Keen. There were a few episodes that I’d have to call emotional and excellent. And the ending, the final episode, is exactly what it needed to be.

I won’t spoil anything here just in case someone liked the early episodes but bailed at some point during the run. To anyone in that position, I’d say it’s well worth coming back for season ten. It isn’t even necessary to see season nine (let alone earlier ones) if you’re already familiar with the show (although I do recommend season nine).

If you’re not familiar with the show, well, ten seasons is a commitment (22 episodes each, except for season seven which has 19, so 217 episodes). I would recommend watching the first three and the last two (only 110 episodes). One could probably get away with just seasons one, nine, and ten. (Or even maybe one and ten.)

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Not many shows go out on a strong note. Many fade in one way or another, and some lose their way. (I’m thinking about doing a post about shows that “stayed good to the last drop” to quote an old commercial.) The Blacklist started with a very original premise, had high production values, was dark and violent (and often preposterous), lost its way during the middle seasons, but sure pulled the bacon out of the fire in the final two.

Given those middle seasons and tendency towards violence and utter absurdity, I can’t give it a Wow! rating (although I would give it a weak Wow! rating for season ten). All-in-all, I give it a middling Ah! rating, largely on the strength of the last two seasons.

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Because modern TV has become so excruciatingly bad (most of the time), I’ve been taking some solace in some of the good old shows of the past. What’s a little funny is that, despite owning the DVDs for two of them, I’m streaming them. It just seems easier somehow.

[So utterly spoiled by current technology and the internet that using DVDs now seems more pain than it’s worth. I’m even getting to the point that paper books seem a pain — pretty much all in on ebooks now.]

The first old show I dived into was Cheers (1982-1993), although Hulu for some reason only has the first four of eleven seasons. And, of course, it’s the one where I don’t have the DVDs.

What impresses me about Cheers compared to so many other sitcoms is the way the characters react to each other. If someone says something funny, they laugh. When Carla slams Diane (or vice versa), they react. In many modern sitcoms gag lines are treated as normal speech. No reaction.

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Another great show, one of my all-time favorites, is M*A*S*H (1972-1983) [see Hawkeye & Margaret]. I have the DVDs, although I wonder if they’ve held up all these years. Almost all our modern media is perishable (in contrast to paper, which can last for centuries, or stone, which can last for eons).

M*A*S*H is one of two shows where I spent a lot of effort in the 1990s recording every episode to VHS tape. I tried to pause the recording during commercials, which was aggravating because I had to anticipate unpausing it in time to not miss anything. At some point I just gave up and recorded the entire half hour. (The other show was Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

The irony is that I never watched any of those VHS tapes, eventually bought the DVDs, and tossed the VHS tapes in the trash years ago. All that effort for nothing. So it goes. The other irony is that I never managed to get my two favorite episodes — the two-part story (S6E13 and S6E14) where Hawkeye and Margaret briefly become lovers.

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I’m almost through watching Northern Exposure (1990-1995) — I’m on the last season now. This was another favorite (I have the DVDs) — quirky, strange, metaphysical and philosophical. Quite unlike any other show I’ve seen.

It centers around Dr. Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow), a young doctor from New York who must repay the state of Alaska for paying his way through medical school. He expects to serve his four years at a big hospital in Anchorage, but it turns out he is to be the town doctor for a variety of oddballs in the rural (imaginary) town of Cicely (actually Roslyn, Washington).

It’s a fish-out-of-water “dramedy” with major spiritual and philosophical overtones (it’s way dualist).

Find it on Amazon Prime. If you enjoy quirky and have never seen it, I highly recommend checking it out.

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The movie I mentioned in the lede is The Misfits (2021), directed by Renny Harlin and starring Pierce Brosnan. Costars include Tim Roth and a bunch of people I don’t know. I had high hopes because I’ve always liked Brosnan and Roth, and Renny Harlin has directed several movies I’ve liked — in some cases, a lot. Among them are Cliffhanger (1993), Cutthroat Island (1995), and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).

It’s a caper film that’s long on elegant locations but toothless and unbearably stupid. I give it an Ugh! rating — my lowest possible, the one that means ‘this film should never have been made.’

And that’s not just me saying that. It has a 17% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic gives it a 25 out of 100. It earned three nominations for the 2022 Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Director, Worst Supporting Actor (Nick Cannon), and Worst Screenplay. Certainly, the last one is well-earned.

Honestly, I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. From about the fifteen-minute mark I began asking myself why I was still watching. I’d gladly erase the experience from my mind if I could get that 94 minutes back. One way to describe it is: Hallmark does a crime caper movie (exactly as bad as that sounds). It has Good Guys stealing from Bad Guys. It’s on Netflix, but I recommend avoiding it.

Nuf sed about that!

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Stay blacklisted, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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