Reviews by TrekMedic

Channeling my inner Rod Serling,...

Imagine, if you will: the year is 1964. The United States is still basking in the afterglow of Kennedy's visionary Camelot society. At the cinemas, the Western World was being introduced to that entertainment juggernaut of a suave, British spy with the three-digit moniker.

Well, this is post-WWII America and anything that Europeans can do, the Americans can do better, right? Well,...

The premise was terrific: take the premise of Bond's role as a righter of wrongs at any cost and serialize it. Give the main characters a numerical ID like Bond! Make the setting what was then arguably the West's center of entertainment, finance and politics, New York City, and nestle it into that center of global politics, the United Netw,...um,....Nations! (Originally, the "U.N." was meant to be ambiguous, but the show's producers feared legal issues with the real UN and fleshed out the name).

The first season, in black and white, as well as the technicolor second season, achieved the show's objectives: despots, dictators and any organization, such as THRUSH (a nod to Bond's SPECTRE) that threatened to disturb the UN's attempt to sow peace and self-reliance throughout the world were usurped by Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin and a who's who of the 60's character actors. And they were done in a cold, dramatic style that made many believe these were real global exploits. And, like SPECTRE, THRUSH was originally meant to have a leader who could easily change identities. Lee Meriwether's character, the ice-cold Dr. Egret, was meant to be the original, but the idea was never fully fleshed out.

The show rapidly became a global, iconic success. But like much of the entertainment industry of the latter 60s, the show because both a victim of its own success. Numerous TV shows and movies, like Dean Martin's Matt Helm and James Coburn's Flint made the concept all-too-ubiquitous. Then there was the acid-dropping silliness that infused Western culture. A poorly-made spinoff, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., failed to launch. The show devolved away from it's original plan. Now, lunatics with outlandish, camp visions of godhood and global domination often fell victim to their own gimmicky plans, simply with the help of U.N.C.L.E.

Ratings took a nose dive. The 4th season attempt at returning to the more serious, real-world escapades failed to recapture that early glory and the show limped off into the kaleidoscope sunset of 1968.

Sigh,...oh, what it could have been if it maintained the laser-like focus and discipline of similar shows like Mission Impossible!! And that 007 guy? Yeah, he's still around at the movies, isn't he?

Superb! David Mack fleshed out the Season 4 two-part throwaway episodes [Link removed - login to see] into a timeline that spans hundreds of years into the future of an alternate Star Trek universe, featuring some of your favorite ST characters in completely different roles.

Interesting book! Here we are, well into the 21st Century and many of the cartoons from the 1960s New Yorker magazine are still relevant today. I guess history really is doomed to repeat itself if we keep forgetting it?

Luc Besson, a bunch of Euros with throwaway money and a 21st Century remake of The Fifth Element (with some Star Wars nods thrown in). I don't know if this was intended to be a franchise, but the all-too-abrupt ending makes me think those Euros ran out of euros.

Nom-nom-nom! Sweet corn, salt, pepper and butter! Thrown on the grill wit your favorite proteins to accentuate the flavor and you're in heaven!

How do you take top-tier action-movie actors like Vin Diesel, mix them with other reliable box-office favorite actors (Elijah Wood and Rose Leslie, fresh off her star turn in Game Of Thrones) and a smattering of box-office greats like Michael Caine and NOT have a winner on your hands?  This had the look and feel of a guaranteed profitable franchise! What went wrong? Too much CGI, Vin Diesel's one-note performance, sub-plots going nowhere,...and the final chapter/plot wrap-up pretty much killed it for me.  Makes you wonder if the production team realized this wasn't the hit they wanted and re-wrote the end to cut their losses?

Dear Saint Florian: in the past decade what have we US firefighters and paramedics done to displease you so much that first, you dump the moderately-realistic Chicago Fire on us, then 9-1-1, with it's cougar dispatcher, now this dreck??  I've been told by my eldest daughter that it's a spin-off of Grey's Anatomy, but I've managed to be spared from the so-called "Shondaverse" for all these years. 

But I digress...where do I start explaining the flaws in this show?  The cancer-ridden captain (and father) having the sole authority to pass station command off to his daughter when he becomes too ill to continue?  No, wait, let's have her compete with her boyfriend for the promotion while the Battalion Chief referees? The "afternoon delight" between firefighters? The never-ending female empowerment themes ("Can you believe I'm a grrrll and driving this big-ass ladder truck? Yee-ea-ah!!")? The ubiquitous/mandatory gay character (not that there's anything wrong with that,...)? 

I could type up a whole dissertation on the differences between East Coast and West Coast firefighting, but I've already done that for my degree and instructional certifications. 

Bottom line?

 - parents almost NEVER have direct command over their children in a major fire department

 - promotions ALWAYS go through the civil service process

 - I'm truly surprised the City of Seattle and the Seattle FD are approving the use of their name for this mess (copyright or brand approval denotes tacit support)

 - For partial disclosure (I can't disclose my department location, per City and union rules), we DO have female firefighters (both career and volunteer) in our department and one of my lieutenants (and friend, trusted aide, and fellow instructor) is openly gay.

Thank God I'm retiring in 2 years!

By the mid-50s, The Three Stooges' popularity was waning: Curly Howard was sidelined by health issues and Howard brother Shemp was a reluctant fill-in.  Most of Bubble Trouble was re-used from previous shorts.  Near the end, Christine McIntyre is shown hiding behind The Stooges. Why? It's actually an uncredited body double!! Sorry, didn't mean to burst your bubble!!

I'm not sure how many times I'll have to post WTF? to satisfy the 50 character minimum requirement for posting reviews. So many things wrong with this picture: the incoherent plot that seems more like an excuse to see beautiful woman dance around in leotards and fishnets (hey, maybe this wasn't such a bad movie),....vampire bites leaving no marks, no back story on the vampire antagonists. It was in Italian and even the English subtitles were occasionally wrong (words misspelled and incorrect translations). I'll stick (or is it shtick?) to the 60s made-in-Italy Hercules movies from now on!

First, do be fooled: GFE isn't in the vein of Fifty Shades of Grey.  Hell, there don't seem to be ANY shades of gray with GFE.  It's either black or white. The show's atmosphere swings from sparse and sterile to carnal and depraved. From the immaculately-clean, high-end apartments with state-of-the-art everything that are the setting for the sexual activity, the five-star bars serving top-shelf vodka, bourbon, and the driest of martinis that are the settings where assignations are arranged, and the Michelin-starred restaurants for pre-and post-coital meals to the boardrooms and business offices that are the backdrop to the GFEs' artifice, the scenes and acting are one moment taut, dull conversation and the next flesh pounding against flesh. In almost all scenes, the shots are wide, but filled with only two or three actors, uttering a sparse, clipped dialogue to match the sparse surroundings.

In season 1, the show highlighted Riley Keough's Christine, playing a classic trope: the law school student who's dalliance in high-end prostitution is funding her education.  But Christine is a temperamental, tightly-wound, high-strung young woman who's failing to live up to her family's expectations. As an intern at a well-to-do law firm, she's caught up in a conspiracy simultaneously involving her boss-slash-john. That plot alone would have made great fodder for a law firm drama but, like Christine's failings, it was undone by her inability to control her own temper. Eventually, Christine's two worlds collide and she comes crashing down to Earth.  In the end, she makes a choice to live only one lifestyle and it leaves her soul as empty as her surroundings.

In season 2, the show ran two separate plot lines back-to-back each week.  First was Anna Friel's Erica, a functionary working for a political action committee during an important election campaign and lesbian on the rebound from a recent break-up. The second was Carmen Ejogo's Bria, a gangster's moll in the witness protection program.  Anna Friel was brittle, dowdy and drab in her role, evoking little sympathy for her character Erica, while Carmen Ejogo, as Bria, brought some life to an otherwise poorly-written season.  Bria, now working a dull assembly line in Albuquerque, New Mexico, eventually falls back into GFE mode to not only break up the monotony of her life, but save up enough money to escape from under the Draconian thumb of her Federal Marshal handler.  Neither plot had a clean ending, especially Bria's "is this a fantasy or not?" finality.

I don't know if the show was renewed for third season, but I'm hopeful for a return to the first season.