Bring the Funny Season 1 (2019) Rankings

 “Bring the Funny” was a 2019 reality TV show (halted during COVID) encompassing all kinds of comedy from magic to puppetry to sketch to pretentious guitarists and mixing them with the traditional stand-up variety. And I’m obsessed with it. It’s one of those things that’s like apples and oranges but wouldn’t it be fun to judge apples and oranges (along with some cantaloupes and pistachios) along the same scale and see who moves to the next round with sudden death battles and audience picks?  

One problem, however, is the show’s three judges—Jeff Foxworthy, Chrissy Teigen, and Kenan Thompson—don’t give very much nitty-gritty critique. They likely are prevented by the rules of tact from being too harsh on the contestants (no Simon Cowells in this bunch, which is its own plus). They also don’t have very much reaction time or much time on the whole to articulate exactly what’s wrong and right with the comedian. Fortunately, I have more time to spare and don’t care.

My pick for the top twelve (where the show demarcated semifinalists out of the original 40) in order::

The Valleyfolk-(Competition winner)-The 4-person sketch group had premises that ranged from simple (an outcast at a mutant school) to pretty clever (an incomprehensible cowboy, a monster under the bed who wasn’t good at scaring) but they really had the ability to execute. The four best sketch actors in the whole competition were the four members of this group, so they’re lucky they found each other…..except six days after winning the entire competition, three of the sketch members fired the other member after working together for five years. They have a humongous Patreon and YouTube following but about 98% of it is not sketches and the band broke up so why follow?

Andrea Lopez-(Second rounder)-Fun fact: Melissa Villasenor once had an act like this on America’s Got Talent where she did a lot of voices on stage. She catapulted from that to Saturday Night Live making her (possibly) the only reality show contestant to land on the iconic sketch show. Lopez is far more clever and made complete sketches from her voice imitation talents and appears to have a wider range.  

Erica Rhodes (Semifinalist)-Somewhat reminiscent of Maria Bamford, Rhodes wraps thirty-something female singledom into a bundle of self-doubt and insecurity with a sharpness and authenticity that made her one of the strongest voices on the show. You just wanted to jump onto the screen and give her a hug. Many of these comedians who latch onto loneliness in their routines might not necessarily be lonely in real life but they do those routines because lonely people in the audience need someone to reassure them they're not the only lonely person in the audience. 

Frangela-(Semifinalist)-I’ve known about this duo since the mid-2000s with their hilarious takes on pop culture news on the VH1 show “BestWeek Ever.” With their powers combined (like Captain Planet), they are one of the best voices in comedy, let alone this show. Why they didn’t reach such high heights was because their comedy is largely reactive and they were entrusted with being the main stunt here. In their first outing, for example, they were the people talking too loud in the movie theater and while it was pretty funny, one had to wonder what the actual movie was that they were reacting to. It’s unclear why they decided to go sketch rather than stand-up where they could have killed it more, but watching them take their talents in new directions and their final sketch (possibly the best in the whole competition) was extremely well-suited for their immense talents from start to finish. 

Drennon Davis-(Second Rounder)-A manic impressionist who models his act off a shock jock with occasional hand puppetry thrown in. You have to see it to believe it. He’s a little raw but I found most of his material to be very cleverly conceived. His impressions always have a good twist to them. The best comparison might be the shock jock played by Jimmy Fallon (when he was funny) on SNL. But it's hard to find a really good comparison because this guy's a true original.

JK Studios (Semifinalist)-Originally called Studio C, this BYU-based sketch group has a popular YouTube following among the Mormon community and random people who like sketch comedy because they have pretty clean material. Six of those members appear to have broken off into a new group (including the best actors like Matt Meese and Natalie Madsen, fortunately) and showed off a proficiency in writing and performance that made them stand out. Their best sketch was a man who matched with Emma Stone on Tinder causing his long-lost father to want to reunite with him, a priest to lose faith in the lord, and a friend to come out of the closet. The sketch does a lot of zigging where you expect it to zag and adds a lot of great twists.

Kristin Key (Second Rounder)-The comedy guitarist had two catchy ditties that were great at taking things that seem pretty obvious and showing you they were under your nose the whole time like the fact that Cinderella is likely an ungrateful floozy. She really knows how to write a song. 

Morgan Jay (Semifinalist)-The comedy guitarist knocked Kristin out of the competition but it was a very close call. Morgan (who is Latino) has a falsetto and the musical stylings of a mariachi guitarist but when he sings about the traps of long-term relationships and the pain of whether to split a check on the first date, he turns those romantic tropes upside down. His tunes are a little simplistic (good parody rests on imitating the original with precision which is why I give Kristin the edge) but he also has a very good knack for crowd work which is hard to add on top of song.

Ali Kolbert (First Rounder)-She had an ingenious comedy bit comparing dating styles to Amazon and the Postal Service. The “Why can’t I find a guy” routine gets old but she found a really good spin. Check her out on the YouTubes and she’s performed on Fallon. Her comedy never hits easy targets.

Chris and Paul Show (Finalist)-This pair are masters at physical humor and can even make miming hilarious. They can also tonally shift sketches from lightweight to dark humor or chatty to a sexy dance between a man and a giant chocolate chip cookie (you had to see it for yourself, though it was a bit gross), on a dime. I felt there were slight tweaks that could have been made to not make situations as melodramatic but it was hard to deny their talent was insane.

Mandy Muden (First Rounder)-Magician/Comedian Jared Fell made it to the semi-finals and he had a certain manic energy that worked but his actual magic was a little thin. Mandy had a persona that was a little less manic but she had a faster pace to her actual tricks which moves the energy. Muden also had a strong persona described by Chrissy as something like a  sophisticated yet horny old lady. Pretty accurate. I personally wanted to adopt her as my grandmother.

1.      Matt Rife (Semifinalist)-A 23-year-old with a little bit of a douchey image who’s very clever tight with his sets. He relies a little too heavily on “oh you thought I was A, I’m actually B” but his jokes are strong, his act has a through-line, and he can talk about a lot of different things.

My Picks for the Second Round:

Michael Longfellow (Semifinalist)-Because he didn’t have a personality, he lacked a strong safety net in case a joke failed, but pretty much every joke hit. He would be my first runner-up.

Candice Thompson (First Rounder)-Had a lot of personality, the story about waxing didn’t end in a punchline but it was a tight set and most of her jokes hit hard.

Daphnique Springs (First Rounder)-A comedian talking about OCD issues. Her joke about the microwave needed more work but I found her highly intriguing

Mister Zed (First Rounder)-A robot who really committed to the bit. His work was slightly satirical of stuff like hackneyed crowdwork and made me massively curious. We also saw him in the finale.

Jared Fell (Finalist)-I probably would have put him through if there was room for two magicians

Jesus Trejo (Second Rounder)-Jesus Trejo did an extremely tight set about how their grandparents had 21 kids. I got the impression that he didn't use all the time allocated but every word was used well.

Lost Moon Radio (First Rounder)-Their full sketch about passive-aggressive Lewis and Clark was a little over 30 seconds of dialogue and that’s too short, but I was curious

Ali Siddiq (Finalist)-He made it farther than I would have liked but his act was solid and well-researched.

Ian Lara (First Rounder)-A comedian with a bit about going on a cruise that had a decent amount of energy and punctuation

Audrey Stewart (First Rounder)-She was a bit loud and obnoxious in a way that’s unusual for white comedians (I’d rate her intensity level as 60% Kathy Griffin) but I found her unapologetic energy attractive.

Armando Anto (First Rounder)-We didn’t see much of him, but I’m curious to see how a comic violinist would fare in the second round. He might even have more widespread appeal than Lewberger

Room 28 (First Rounder)-Their sole sketch almost felt like an excuse for impression-o-rama like SNL’s Family Fued. Still, the sketch followed through to the end.

Over-rated:

Lewberger (finalist)-The trio who I’ve seen before doing better stuff on Buzzfeed (history of misheard lyrics is a must) (did they quit?) are a good niche market if you like operatic parodies of musical theater with a modern twist (hence, YouTube popularity). In order to make it play to a broader audience, I would have preferred a wider range of styles

Harry and Chris (second rounders)-They were convincing enough in the opening round to show potential, but their second act performance was like a lounge act and more like an encore than a main act. Their subject was differences than British and American English and they completely missed that mates means a different thing across the pond. They used up too much of the song time thanking the audience for being there and saying they wrote a song (when I assume they write all their own songs). A major step back.

Ali Siddiq (finalist)-He was clever, but I was not a fan of the sitting down approach and it was indicative of a slight lack of energy.

Orlando Leyba (second rounder)-Comedy should be uplifting at heart. It’s ok to show miserable people to make you feel like your life could be worse. Leyba had some solid material in the second set but his comic persona felt kind of depressing

ISMO (second rounder)-This Finnish stand-up comedian has been very successful in Finland. In fact, he’s one of just 8 contestants (out of 40) with a Wikipedia page. However, in both his sets, he only had one joke. It’s a tremendous amount of set-up for a moderate punch line.

Willie Appleman (second rounder)-Appleman had two one-man sketches where he monologued and imagined the other members of the room. In the first sketch, he did some light crowd work with the judges but didn’t leave enough time in their responses to show he’s a great improviser. His second sketch lacked coherence as it combined two contradictory ideas (he’s a dentist trying to be cool and he’s in trouble with a cartel making him quite cool). It should also be noted that Upright Citizens Bridge has monologues going on all the time.

Post-election 2020 reactions and resolutions in the Post-Trump era

I have been hoping to get back to writing about films and I am working on something but I wrote this on the night of the election and want to post some of my political thoughts

I've been tuning out the news because it's so stressful. I'm praying that this country did the right thing and put in a president who respects the law and his fellow human beings.

I believe there generally can be a silver lining to every tragedy, but the universe simply has to even out this way if it makes sense.  There's really no silver lining to more years of Trump: It doesn't mobilize good people more than they've been mobilized and it doesn't serve more people in a good way. I've been begging to see how exactly this makes sense.

 

Additionally, I'm not much of a futurist and sadly so little of what people do every four years matters that our voice really only matters every two or four years in this system. 

 

I accept that some people might be better served by a Trump administration, but there are a lot of people who aren't and campaign strategists consciously misled those people into thinking that Biden represented socialism which was the root of all evils and used every smear in the book. I welcome Arizona and Wisconsin and hopefully Michigan and Pennsylvania to the side of reason, while several  other states have let us down as a nation.

 

However, this is also a wake-up call for us that democratic messaging isn't well-received by many in this country for some legitimate reasons. and that sense we had in the immediate aftermath of 2016 of outreach was lost by some of the more extreme fringes of the left in the years after 2020.

We've spent a lot of the last four years not just fighting for the rights of the "disenfranchised" but turning into bullies ourselves. It's one thing to advocate for transgender or gay rights, but it's another to want to destroy anyone who attends a church or has advocated for people on both sides to speak up about these issues. It's one thing to want to uplift black people, but it's another thing to actively rail against anyone who doesn't share your platform on affirmative action. I've been banned from forums on movies simply for having the views of a white male or for having a view on the merits of Thomas Jefferson that differed from the people in my board.

People talk about the disenfranchised in historical terms as if they're permanently affixed labels that work 100% of the time on a macroscopic level when every interaction and inequality needs to be taken in context. The terms "People of Color" and the "Patriarchy" are inherently alienating terms to disenfranchised white people and for a few years, the language of liberal people in certain self-segregated spaces has posited the world through an over-simplistic "white straight men verses everyone else" as if the source of Hispanic, South Asian, diaspora African and African-American struggles in this county are all traceable to the same root causes and consciously created by white people who wanted to maintain supremacy. 

A lot of these people think my problem is with the "disenfranchised" but it's really against jerks. Being a caped crusader for your narrow definition of the "disenfranchised" does not give one liberty or recuse from being a jerk. It was my treatment in this spaces that caused me to contribute roughly eight or nine articles to right-wing publications (alongside people I don't agree with politically) on the topics of intellectual exclusivity and misunderstandings of racism: https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/20/wont-solve-racism-blacklisting-liam-neeson/

This does not mean in any way it is acceptable to vote for someone who ignores facts, demonizes immigrants, never accepts personal responsibility, promotes incivility, and acts like he's above the law.

But it does mean that the responsibility still falls on us as the disenfranchised or as Democrats to explain our views to others if we want them to be convinced, even if that constitutes a micro-aggression or two. It also means that civility and allowing a climate of free speech still applies.

I wrote this a couple days later on how much I'm willing to forgive and forget

 

For the last four years, if you voted for Trump in 2016, I didn't hold it against you as long as you weren't still riding the Trump train. If you weren't calling out a dishonest lawbreaker who was scapegoating Americans for being dishonest, breaking rules, and scapegoating Americans, than that was a problem with me. 

 

Now, whatever you feel about Trump doesn't matter. You don't have power, so I don't have a grudge anymore. You just held some batty ideas during an incredibly unnecessarily dark period of our national history. 

 

Unless you are going to be excessive in not respecting power now (in an extreme version: hatch plots to kidnap Democratic governors or whine about how you feel scared under an administration that I'm guessing won't deport you, defy UN laws to not accept your rightful refugee status, or institute a religion-based ban, I'm not going to care about you until maybe 2024.

 

Yeah, you can tea party all over the place, and I won't like your views, but I don't think the government is in a place of existential crisis. 

 

However, if you were a politician who directly enabled this reign of terror, I will hold it against you. 

 

Every senator, representative, cabinet member, governor, campaign advisor (looking at you Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani) and especially white house spokesperson who enabled Trump or didn't oppose him loudly enough is responsible for turning us into a third world country.

Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Rod Rosenstein, the McCain family, Jerome Mattis, Sally Yates, James Comey, Michael Cohen, Rex Tillerson, and Justin Amash get passes. There might be a couple others I'm forgetting but the rest don't deserve to hold public office.

My Journey to Save the Democrats in North Carolina: Part I

I am normally not a travel writer, but I thought I would share some of my work. I was able to raise $590 by crowd-funding to North Carolina this past week to work for the state's democratic party and wrote about my travels.

Post One:

The “organizer”* of our mission, Josh, has mentioned that this is a really unique grassroots movement because a lot of its members weren’t active in politics before Hurricane Trump. In fact, I’m not sure if I can remember much about my political leanings before November of 2016 and, to be entirely honest, I found people who posted about politics on their facebook walls to be irritating. But if the government is extreme enough and tangibly damaging lives, you have to react if you have empathy.

*Full disclosure, I don’t know who is organizing this mission. Josh just sent me the initial email and when I spoke with him, he denied being the organizer of anything almost as if it were a criminal liability. He attempted to explain me the hierarchy of how all this works but it was a snoozefest, so I tuned out, sorry.

At the same time, it’s another thing to get into. For about a dozen years I followed the NBA closely but as the players with whom I was most familiar retired and they kept having so many drafts where people who were younger than me kept entering the league whereas my ability to jump, dunk, and run got worse. Kind of depressing. Apparently, the people you’re voting for being younger than you will pretty much never be a problem in this sport.

In that same sense, I’ve devoted much of my energy in the past four years to learning the names of the 100 senators and familiarizing myself with where they stand, because: 1) Let’s be honest, 435 Represenatives is way too many so screw them and 2) We unfortunately couldn’t do anything about the executive branch for four years, but congress had the power to keep him in check. I also called, visited the offices of, and wrote emails to the offices of senators who sucked at their jobs (and wouldn’t you know it, they were all Republicans).

Fun fact: I was sort of kind of named for one of those 100 senators, Orrin G Hatch, and I had the pleasure of delivering a hand written letter to his staffers somewhere in 2017 about how I was ashamed to be named after him when he absolved filibuster rules to confirm a corrupt Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who (wouldn’t you know it) resigned in disgrace.

In all honesty, following the NBA and following the Senate isn’t actually that different. Instead of box scores, you can check voting records or polls or scores. It’s also interesting to note that there are several Senators like Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, and Ted Cruz who the average person knows of because they make the news often, while there are several of them who get by under the spotlight. Have you heard of a guy named Ron Wyden or Deb Harris? Or maybe her surname is Fisher? She’s a Republican from Nebraska and I actually met her through Capitol Hill but I can’t remember.

In 2018, I was a member of the press club and surrounded by a more politically active group of people and one introduced me to a site called Real Clear Politics where you can follow the polls day-by-day and I started realizing that about eight states were in play in the Senate race (we ended up winning Nevada and Arizona while losing Florida, Texas, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, and Tennessee) and wanted to make a difference there. I originally decided to phone bank, but looking for creative ways to take vacations, I considered possibly getting employment in Tennessee or Florida and moving there temporarily. The getting-paid-to-go plans fell apart and I contemplated travelling to Florida anyway and staying in a hostel.

Not doing that was a big regret I’ve had over the past two years. And to think Floridian Senator Bill Nelson lost by 10,000 votes to a guy who distanced himself from Trump at the time and claimed bipartisan credentials but voted to deny even hearing evidence at the impeachment trial and has blamed the failure of things to get done in Washington on a leftist obstructionist agenda. Think of how the  Supreme Court battle or the impeachment trial or several other issues  would have changed in the last two years if we’d had one more Democratic seat in the house.

So I’m going to North Carolina this week. Everything is in play here. A close senate race, the governorship and more. I don’t have clear instructions of what I’m doing (I blame the orientation for being so boring) or how much of a difference I’m making, but it’s an adventure.

Darren Keeps His Distance From Us

Post Two:
If I’m going to attract people to my writings here, it behooves me to paint myself as a heroic crusader to protect the integrity of the vote, but so far I've felt pretty unheroic in the first two days.

A party organizer named Gary explained that a lot of the rural districts where things lean very red is where voter suppression is most likely to happen which is where I am not.

The main things to look for in voter suppression are lines being too long, rejecting ballots that shouldn’t be rejected, an unnecessary police presence, misinformation being given to voters, and intimidation. The “intimidation” call is a fine line that I’m not sure if I’m trained to make.

 

I’m not sure if it’s Southern hospitality or a small sample size but I didn’t seen too much of anything but civility.

On the first day, I encountered an African-American democrat named George and his white Republican counterpart Darren.

AJ told me that the Republicans lie and something like we’d be screwed if the Republicans win but he also said that Darren is fine people. I was too tired of wishing the Republicans dead at this point so I tried to make a peace offering to Darren by saying that I hope we’d have a more bipartisan country when the election is over, but he responded that he didn’t trust the other side. At the same time, he softened over time.

Because I was sitting farther away from the stream of people on the first day, I was left to hear the conversations of AJ and a security guard who had an hour break and went to go hang out with us. They talked about how the KKK was nearby and when I asked if there was a lot of fear of growing up black in this area, they said well, there is racism, but there’s just a lot of crime around here. Also, this is 2020 and the blacks have guns now. Touche!

 

More than anything else, this is an economically depressed town. Racism is alleviated a fair bit through the military presence I’m told, but the military can’t fill all the empty storefronts.

Fayetteville doesn’t have a lot of local investment in industry like the nearby research triangle (Durham-Chapel Hill-Raleigh) so it’s struggling. It does have the largest military base in the country up the road and everyone loves the second amendment no matter who you are. This metropolitan area ranks among the highest in gun ownership. The security guard is on duty (which I’m presuming grants him a gun already?) and still his own gun in his car while Mike had eight guns.

A number of people at the polls who were first-time voters were very celebratory and were taking selfies. A group of four (three adults and one kid, I’m guessing two of the adults were a couple) came out of the polls asking a poll worker to take their picture because it was their first time voting. Wanting to commemorate the occasion is more than I’ve ever done but I can get that. What I don’t understand is if you have that much excitement about voting, why didn’t you do it before? Strangely enough, many of these people were older than 22. I’m not surprised that people aren’t passionate about politics; I’m more surprised they didn’t step up to the plate when  voting itself doesn’t require a lot of effort.

I asked these people a couple questions and the general consensus is that they didn’t vote before because they didn’t feel as strongly. The missing piece of information I had is which candidate roused you to action? I didn’t feel comfortable asking that piece of information (and it might have not been legal, anyway).

 

One young woman I spoke with was pretty defiant of her mother who said “I’ll take the Democratic literature, thank you” while her mom said “don’t worry her mama’s a Trump supporter.” For some reason, being at the polls made me number than I would have been in cyberspace to see an enthusiastic Trump supporter. Maybe knowing the polls favor Biden helps? The daughter said health care was the biggest factor in her vote.

George’s niece and her family came by and they were talkative (Southern charm?) with me which was pretty surprising not just because it seemed like an inappropriate place but because, well, I read as white. To the degree that I’m scared of white Republicans, I’m also a little weary of engaging in serious talks with black people with such a climate of micro-aggression policing.

 

What everyone could agree on was that I was “way out in the country” but I was within five miles of city limits. Apparently, if it’s a small North Carolina town, there really isn’t much in the way of suburbs. I could have run a 10K race to get back to Fayetteville and they treated me like I was on the movie Cast Away when I told them I had Ubered. At the end of the night, Darren, my enemy, kept worrying about me and telling me to get an Uber back.

First-time voters taking a selfie

Post Three:
Today I stopped by the makeshift headquarters and met Ronnie. She is a young, overworked desk jockey who will give you a free t-shirt and stickers if you’re nice.  

As Trump is saying more and more ridiculous things, I keep getting the motivation to want to work and beat him, but I had a thought: What happens when that motivation is gone? If he loses, where do we put our political energy? One certainty is that as I talk to people here who have a “what has government done for me lately” attitude, I realize that the solution is to have a public who knows exactly what government does and doesn’t do, and what it is currently doing. Then they won’t be willing to toss aside a very real functioning institution for an abstract vision sold to them by a madman who yells louder than anyone else.

Today, in my quest to know “what is voter intimidation”, I had to contend with a Vietnam veteran for Trump named Mike who I didn’t know how to classify. One of the first things he said was how he wanted to rip up those  Biden-Trump signs and had torn down 250 of them this past week. Exactly what you’re supposed to not be doing! It turns out that he and his democratic counterpart at this station, AJ, had been here for almost two weeks together and developed enough of a camaraderie that they could make jokes like that. I still cautiously sent a note through the reporting system.

If you’re not sure what constitutes voter intimidation, Mike is your worst nightmare. He also is a bit rough around the edges. He engaged in some “locker room” talk about the female voters passing by and made an off-color joke about San Francisco and gay people that was probably 15 years away from being considered acceptable.

But had an interesting history. Mike was a Vietnam War veteran who illegally voted four times against Ronald Reagan and is still a registered Democrat. He enthusiastically voted for Obama because he grew up with mostly black friends, but he was disappointed with Benghazi. When I pointed out that most prominent military leaders have broken with Trump, he said that he knew Mattis and John Kelly (the DHS Chief and Chief of Staff) and they were both not well-respected (which brings the follow-up: Why did Trump hire them?). At the very least, Mike could list me some prominent generals he liked.

When I said that maybe it was best to not discuss politics, he asked if it bothered him that he was smarter than me. I wasn’t really in the mood for argument and felt the need to try to talk about how I’m for bipartisanism and talk about stuff I might politically have in common with him.  

Eventually, I saw the good in Mike. As a sign of the camaraderie between AJ and Mike, the latter offered to give the former a lift when the banks closed and asked me to distribute pamphlets of both parties. In fact, Mike and AJ agreed to distribute each other’s pamphlets when the other took a break.

I had the feeling that Mike was just an elderly extrovert who really needed to talk to people for his own health. When I started ignoring him and putting on headphones, Mike talked harder to me in desperation to have someone to talk to and asked about bars in DC or if it’s easy to see the monuments in DC. Besides he knew the rules: He never explicitly campaigned for Trump and engaged both democrats and Republicans.

On the second night, Gary gave me a ride home and said Mike was harmless. There had really been one report of a legitimate threat in the 12 polling stations that day so I missed out.

Post Two:

If I’m going to attract people to my writings here, it behooves me to paint myself as a heroic crusader to protect the integrity of the vote, but so far I've felt pretty unheroic through two days of poll observing.

A party organizer named Gary explained, while shuttling me between polling stations, that a lot of the rural districts where things lean very red is where voter suppression is most likely to happen. The other poll observers didn’t really have much to report either except for a Trump.

The main culprits are lines being too long, rejecting ballots that shouldn’t be rejected, an unnecessary police presence, misinformation being given to voters, and intimidation. The “intimidation” call is a fine line that I’m not sure if I’m trained to make.

There was a military veteran for Trump who seemed kind of mouthy and obnoxious at first and I didn’t know how to classify him. One of the first things he said was how he wanted to rip up those  Biden-Trump signs and had torn down 250 of them this past week. Exactly what you’re supposed to not be doing! It turns out that him and his democratic counterpart at this station, AJ had been here for almost two weeks together and developed enough of a camaraderie that they could make jokes like that. I still cautiously sent a note through the system alerting them to him.

His name was Mike and he was a Vietnam War veteran who illegally voted four times against Ronald Reagan and described himself as a registered Democrat who voted for Obama but was disappointed with Benghazi. When I pointed out that most prominent military leaders have broken with Trump, he said that he knew Mattis and John Kelly (the DHS Chief and Chief of Staff) and they were both not well-respected (which brings the follow-up: Why did Trump hire them?). At the very least, Mike could list me some prominent generals he liked. When A.J. spoke about how he and Mike have a good system of respecting each others views, I’m not sure what he was talking about at first.

When I said that maybe the best way to do that was not discuss politics, he asked if it bothered him that he was smarter than me. I wasn’t really in the mood for much argument and felt the need to try to talk about how I’m for bipartisanism and talk about stuff I might politically have in common with him.  He voted for some Democrats but he had a lot of loud opinions including the congresswoman incumbent that was paying AJ. He also engaged in some “locker room” talk about the female voters passing by, but he knew the laws and was pretty careful to not break them. It turned out he was joking about tearing down the Biden signs because he knew that was against the law and how long he’d go to prison here.

For the most part, he and AJ had truly gotten along. When AJ lamented that he had to go to the bank before it closed, Mike offered to give him a lift and asked me to distribute pamphlets of both parties, and the two agreed to distribute each other’s pamphlets. I had the feeling that Mike was just an elderly extrovert who really needed to talk to people for his own health. He never explicitly campaigned for Trump and engaged both democrats and Republicans about anything and everything worth talking about, including military health plans, medics, what to do about when you get old and your bones fail you, tattoos, etc.

When I started ignoring him and putting on headphones, Mike talked harder to me in desperation to have someone to talk to and asked about bars in DC or if it’s easy to see the monuments in DC.


At least things were better here than on day one where I had almost no idea what I was doing. I am not a resident of Cumberland County, NC, so I can’t be put on the official poll watchers list received by the county board of elections. I can coordinate with inside poll watchers but I’m sort of a rogue free agent.


I was told before going down that this was a seamless operation but a lot of people (most of whom are volunteering) are simply playing catch-up to a logistical reality they were never that educated on. I’m not suggesting this means that Biden and the Democrats won’t perform awesomely on election day. Nothing that’s been messed up with my logistics has really impacted any voters because I’m not seeing much disenfranchisement at all. It’s just little details. Today I’ve been outside of the democratic headquarters for an hour typing this up because my two-step verification and password won’t go into the app that is supposed to contain the script and everything for me to go GOTV canvassing (knocking on the doors of the half million registered democrats who haven’t voted yet and trying to pump them into action).

 

Oscar Best Picture Nominees of the 10s by Setting

I often enjoy taking quizzes at Sporcle and sometimes I create my own. This is about the settings of Oscar-nominated films. The idea that the Oscars are more in love with the definite past than the indefinite present and the future is especially prescient in a listing like this.

Eight Observations about Cobra Kai

1.      Cobra Kai can best be thought of as a time capsule of the 1980s and that’s its appeal. Particularly in an era of endless reboots, Cobra Kai is carefully constructed to appear like something that would have been released in 1990. The way of drawing heroes and villains; the imagining of a school administration that hasn’t been re-educated post-Columbine to keep an eye on bullying; the synthesizer-heavy score and filming cues, are all very '80s. 

 

 

2.     Shows that are meant to preserve the old-school feel of their source material— I’m thinking prequels like Gotham (Tim Burton’s Batman universe) and Bates Motel (Psycho)—often attempt a middle ground by stripping away the modern elements like showing cell phones and other signs of 21^st century culture in the frame. This results in an odd anachronistic stew, whereas  Cobra Kai has the opposite (and I think better) approach of acknowledging that it is set in the present day while centering on two characters who are technologically stuck in the 20^th century. Of the pair, Johnny simply never learned to adapt technologically (and symbolically beyond) whereas Danny is aware that the 21^st century exists (particularly in the form of his bratty son) but wants to champion getting off the grid and sees karate as a means to that (a meta-commentary on how the show itself wants to celebrate karate)

3.       What might be best about the 80s fight scenes is the lack of special effects involved and distinct fighting styles. Again, popularity isn’t in a vacuum. When we have been inundated with special effects and CGI, watching fighting this pure is twice as appealing.

4.       The show is being championed for the shades of gray with which it paints Danny and Johnny. TV is a medium that is now being recognized for its ability to develop characters at a multi-layered level that a two-hour movie won’t be able to achieve. What’s genuinely impressive is that two high school rivals who haven’t let go (to various degrees) of their glory days is a great set-up for a show’s central relationship and Cobra Kai keeps the circumstances realistic.

5.       The '80s component of this series is that pretty much everyone they (and their students) encounter turn out to be jerks worth beating up. Otherwise, how can you keep these characters root-able through several violent turns? It’s a lot of straw-manning and plot contrivance but, hey, I like the plot, so I’m not complaining. Part of the subtext of the universe, where they’re constantly running into thugs like an eight-bit Nintendo game, is that the (now discredited) war on drugs and other media messaging of the 80s had us believe that to survive in poor, urban parts of the country (like Receta), kids had to have fighting ability. Films like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stand and Deliver, and the Terminator series seemed to enforce this narrative.   

 

6.       That being said, a lot of the main characters change at such lightning speed that it’s pure whiplash. Robbie suddenly turns from delinquent to All-American role model in five seconds? Moon bullied Asha in Season one without batting an eyelash and then her entire character backstory is that she’s all about peace and love? At least Hawk’s 180 from having too little to too much confidence were met with a self-awareness in-universe through Dimitri. Change in Golden Age TV is great and what keeps us going but generally shows like The Americans, Homeland, Ozark or Breaking Bad feature characters who are pushed to change through intense circumstances and those changes are gradual. Because the circumstances are far less extreme, it can come off as jarring. 

7.       The second season finale was just sublime. It bears so much resemblance to the conclusion of West Side Story that one has to wonder if the writers were conscious of that connection. Before the big (and extremely well-choreographed) fight, the stories were told from the melodramatic points of views of the characters. When actual damage was done, there was a major focus pull back to the real world as the kids woke up to the fact that kicking and punching can actually hurt people. Worth asking: Miguel was the obviously the biggest casualty of the fight, but how many others besides Sam landed in the hospital? I bet it would have been interesting to see the news coverage of that event. 

8.       Lively debates need to be had over whether Daniel LaRusso is a dorky or cool dad and whether the actors who play the LaRusso family have good chemistry with each other. There’s a certain schmaltzy, TGIF quality to the Amanda-Daniel scenes as well as the Daniel-Samantha scenes, but it’s genuinely convincing that Samantha is somewhat of a daddy’s girl. The dialogue in these scenes can seem a little stilted but Daniel is an impressive enough character to overcome it.

Reviews: Teenage Bounty Hunters, The Boys Season 2, Umbrella Academy, Schooled, Teenage Bounty Hunters, Transplant

Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix)-With 13 Reasons Why, Sex Education, The Society, Never Have I Ever, Lost and Found, Derry Girls, and The Politician (which began in high school), Netflix is really going all in on the CW formula of attracting teenage audiences. 

The story revolves around two twins, Blair and Sterling, who go to a strict Christian school in Georgia where a lot of the rules of teenage coolness are inverted. Being celibate, getting good grades, and showing your love of God are all in. There's a great deal of contrast between the twins in that Blair has a conscious urge to rebel against the establishment whereas Sterling is pretty much the establishment is fellowship leader of the Christian prayer group and begins the series as half of the school's royal couple.
In the pre-credits sequence in the first episode, Sterling loses her virginity with her long-time boyfriend while Blair has a hook-up that arrives at, shall we say, a lesser base and talks about how she's going to go all the way this year with a hint of pride that she's farther along than her sis. There's a friendly jealousy between the pair.

On top of that, the two have some family drama and deal with Sterling's bratty rival April.

Oh yeah, and they get a side gig chase down criminals. It's kind of jammed in premise-wise but it works as it ties in thematically to the pair having to live a double life as sexual beings in a society that encourages teenage sexlessness.

The show plays around with hypocrisy of religion with a nuance that doesn't necessarily damn the Christain characters on the show. In fact, the virtuous teacher Ellen is one of the bright spots on the show. 

Transplant (NBC)-A great pilot episode followed by diminished returns. A Syrian refugee in Toronto is relegated to cooking kebabs because immigration's a bitch. Until one day.... An ambulance drives into his kebab joint and he cleverly MacGuyvers his way through three life-saving procedures including the most prestigious head surgeon in Toronto. Kind of a coincidence, but whatever. The pilot is really exciting because the protagonist is this unknown guy going rogue in the hospital to give more medical assistance and evading police who want to racially profile the hell out of him for the crime. 

I cover this show weekly, so please check it out here at TV Fanatic:
https://www.tvfanatic.com/2020/09/transplant-season-1-episode-1-review-medicine-and-immigration-mi/



Schooled (ABC)-There have been other high school sitcoms  comedies focusing on teachers at a school, this one is a bit more sweet than snarky (Judy Greer was in a short-lived series called Miss Guided) with a female protagonist who has a lot of doubts about her life that she voices in voiceover. She has a long-distance boyfriend and a manic pixie dream guy at the school she falls for. Tim Meadows is a principal who's main trait is being too eager to please but he plays it well. 

Since the success of Modern Family, ABC has milked the genre into a new brand of edgier TGIF fare featuring families, nostalgic irony, and humorously tinged fables. Fresh off the Boat, the Real O'Neals, Speechless, Suburgatory, Blackish and two others I haven't seen (Middle and The Goldbergs).

Unlike some of those shows, however, the characters here are very static and their actions in each episode are predictable. There's also something just a little off-putting about the lead that I can't put my finger on. 

Lower Decks (CBS All-Access)-Both Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Lower Decks") and Star Trek: Voyager ("The Good Shephard") devoted an episode to people in the lower ranks of the ship which did wonders for filling out the character of each ship's crew. However, the TNG episode (which this series is reported to be based on in particular) highlighted the holes of Star Trek's supposed post-capitalism society more than it presented us with deep characters.

Those guys were all biting their nails for promotions but what motivated them to want them when there's no actual pay raise? My theory is we get attached to Star Trek as kids where we think of money in abstract terms and dream of status (AKA being one of the cool kids in school) so the motivations of those ensigns makes sense. However, as adults with real fiscal responsibilities, episodes like "Lower Decks" don't hold up as much on rewatch.

Wouldn't there be some slackers on board?

In the world of "Lower Decks" (which I believe it still canon), this is question is answered. Hallelujah!

Tawny Newsome plays Beckett Mariner who is among the most competent crew members on the ship but doesn't want to get involved with all the bureaucratic hassles of a promotion. She is quite probably the most competent member on the entire ship and most of the plots revolve around her saving the day without pesky protocols. 

If there's one person who can challenge her, it's the ship's captain (Dawnn Lewis) who also happens to be her mom. How appropriate. 

Another foil for her is her good friend Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid, The Boys) who exaggerates the conflictless (and oftentimes boring) world of TNG by angling so hard to be a promotion-loving goody two shoes that his number one motivation in life is to follow the rules. This goes double for Noel Well's Ensign Tendi who wants to be liked so badly, she's in-your-face about it. 

Aside from this, the show takes no prisoners in skewering Star Trek across the board and is so well-entrenched in the minutia of Star Trek, that a small niche of the coverage of the show has simply been  pointing out the Easter Eggs of each episode to the delight of fans. 

The show is easily one of the best parodies out there because, above all, it's extremely funny and extremely consistent with its jokes.

Umbrella Academy (Neflix)/The Boys (Amazon)-(through two episodes) Both superhero shows keep chugging along in second seasons that manage to keep the momentum going from the first despite massive shake-ups.

"The Boys" has lost a few key players to the mortal coil but has managed to add some interesting additions (particularly Aya Cash's Stormfront who speaks her mind to say the last). Unlike the first season, there's a sense here that Hughie isn't the central character but just one member of "The Boys" (perhaps the most privileged). On the Vought side, the focus is more on the psychotic Homelander and what it might take to stop in (so far, the boss of the company is keeping him in check).  

"Umbrella Academy" with all seven characters jumping through time to Dallas in the 1960s. Like much other speculative pop culture literature, this focuses on the "What if" of John Kennedy's assassination. The show is more of a stylistic extravaganza than something I watch for plot but that's the basic gist. 

25 Best TV Characters of 2018

Again, check out my patreon  to keep me in business. Don't worry. Though I'm posting this in 2020, I have a 2019 edition of this list lined up too. I also did these lists between 2012 and 2015 if you click on the top 25 character tab.

1.       Pete Holmes as himself, Crashing (HBO)-As opposed to most comedians (or the fictionalized TV versions of themselves) who just want to get ahead, this show has a protagonist who’s sincerely trying to navigate the changing boundaries of integrity as he gets a taste of success in the world of stand-up. The apologetic Holmes is gangly, awkward and sometimes wrong but there’s an underlying sweetness to him.

2.       Giovanni Ribisi as Marius Josipovic/Pete Murphy, Sneaky Pete (Amazon)-Watching genius at work is why we’re attracted to a character like Pete whose extroadinary abilities to think on the fly, read people, and work a con make him almost like a stateside Sherlock Holmes on the wrong side of the law. With a supreme expertise in his field, Pete is in the mold of the procedurals of the aughts (particularly Burn Notice but also House and Monk) but his backstory and the progression of his relationship to the Murphy clan make him fit into the serialized mold as well.  

3.       Julie Garner as Ruth Langmore, Ozark (Netflix)-Ruth feels like she wouldn’t fit in anywhere other than the Missouri/Arkansas border and that’s great for the show. She’s pragmatic and tough-as-nails but she doesn’t shy away from showing her emotions with her allegiance to her boss or her hope for a better future for her cousin.

4.       Kristin Chenoweth as Lavinia Peck-Foster, Trial and Error (NBC)-To fill in the shoes of John Lithgow’s unapologetically weird professor and carry the momentum of a sitcom into a second season with entirely different, Chenoweth had a high bar to meet. She’s not just a great caricature of disconnected rich privilege, but she also is a great example of the bunny ears lawyer trope (someone who shouldn’t be as effective professionally as they are) as killers go considering she seems to have so little awareness of reality.

5.       Manny Jacinto as Jason Mendoza, Good Place (NBC)-There is now depth to the stupidity of Jason Mendoza that can’t be mined for comedy. This year’s Jason-centered episode “The Ballad of Donkey Doug” proved quite a bit of impressive backstory for a guy who’s Jacksonville upbringing has sounded too ridiculous to be true.

6.       Wyatt Russell as Sean “Dud” Dudley, Lodge 49 (AMC)-Think of how great the world would be  if we had more people as open to other people (of all generations) and as curious about the world around them as Dudley. The seemingly dense surfer has had some bad breaks with the death of his dad and the decline of his pool business but he never stops seeing the glass as half full.

7.       Carla Jiminez as Alba, The Mick (Fox)-The opening scene of the pilot shows us a protagonist who saunters into a grocery store and uses the cosmetics aisle for her morning routine without even paying. But even then, she’s not the most id-driven character on the show. That would be the nanny left over from a past regime who will happily shirk responsibility and go on a bender if the situation calls for it. She’s also body positive.

8.       Juliett Lewis as Jandice, Camping (HBO)-Most suburbanites probably know a soccer mom or HOA member who resembles Jennifer Garner’s uptight camping trip organizer Kathryn. Likewise, most of those people wish that those Kathryns in their lives could be paired up with a foil like the boundary-pushing hippyish Jandice.

9.       Wilson Bethel as Ben “Bullseye” Pondexter, Daredevil (Netflix)-A fitting doppelganger to our title character, Daredevil’s powers are more fully spelled out than in any other iteration of this story which makes his fight scenes both cool (duh) and menacing within the context of this higher-stakes story.  

10.   Allisyn Ashley Arm as Heather, AP Bio (NBC)-Heather started as one of about  dozen students in  fraudulent teacher Jack Griffin’s teacher through which limited screentime has been divided. But Arm used every opportunity when the camera was on her and every line delivery to be spectacularly eccentric and a treasure in her own right.

11.   Dale Soules as Frieda Berlin, Orange is the New Black (Netflix)-The focus of the show’s sixth season was on two feuding sisters who turned the rest of the prisoners into competing gangs. The squirrelly Frida managed to show how far her survivor instincts had gotten her by quietly outsmarting the show’s main villains in Rube Goldberg fashion.

12.   Jordana Spiro as Rachel, Ozark (Netflix)-The kinds of characters in these high-pressure dramas (like Breaking Bad or The Americans) that get caught between conflicting sides with no way out are generally the innocent bystanders worth rooting for. Rachel is a resilient firecracker with good instincts and it’s wonderful to see her make it out alive.

14.   Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Daredevil (Netflix)-In my previous iteration of this list, I felt I had to make room for Foggy, Matt, and Karen as all three big something to the team besides being well-drawn characters themselves. As the stakes felt higher and the story became more gripping, Karen was the one who was most transparent with her dread and resolve. She also made the list the last time I did this.

15.   Nick Sandow as Warden Joe Caputo, Orange is the New Black (Netflix)-Obviously the main storyline of Season 6 is Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson but to see an ally say he’ll do something and then put his money where his mouth is, is quite cathartic. Yes, the white savior trope can be debated but that doesn’t necessarily mean Taystee’s story has been diminished or Caputo’s stepping up isn’t insignificant.

16.   Tony Shalhoub as Abe Weinberg, Marvelous Mrs Maisel (Amazon)-Poor Abe. Certainly not the most stringent and unreasonable of old-world Jewish fathers from the era but he’s been dealing with a world that’s changed too fast for his comfort. He should have given his wife more agency, and he should have been  less stubborn about his university , but Amy Sherman-Palladino’s shows aren’t built around tragedies: Hopefully, there’s room for Abe to grow in later seasons.

17.   Brandon Flynn as Justin Foley, 13 Reasons Why (Netflix)-While 13 Reasons Why can be tonally inconsistent and come across more like a typical high school show than something worthy of the topics it broaches, Justin has been written surprisingly strong this season. He’s dealt with guilt and remorse over enabling rape, a broken family, a drug addiction, threats from a step-mom and a betrayal by his best friend and it’s all been handled in such a way that I can’t take my eyes off the guy.

18.   D’Arcy Carden as Janet, Good Place (NBC)-Janet can literally do anything, but it’s the moments when she chooses to deal with the mundanities of, say, getting over an ex or dealing with people who aren't at her speed (like Michael typing at 6 wpm) where she shines. And bonus points for that bar brawl that she impulsively starts against Sean's demons in her dress and high heels. And even more bonus points for the creation of the second best character on the show in Jason Matzoukas’s Derrick.

19.   Carol Kane as Lily Kaushtupper, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix)-The final half-season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was a great showcase for the whole cast but count me in for more of the unattached Lily who has Tracy-Jordan-like namedrops to past chapters of past badassery. Kane gives the monologue of the season

20.   Hillary Anne Matthews as Diedre, Alex Inc (ABC)-An example of how an otherwise forgettable show can be watchable just to see a scene-stealing side character. Deidre is a scatter-brained assistant whose clinginess to her boss (Zach Braff) overtly borders on obsession.

21.   Cedric the Entertainer as Scott Joplin, Another Period (Comedy Central)-Part of the fun of this show has been the exaggerated cameos of historical figures who inexplicably make their way into the lives of the Bellacourt clan like Sigmund Freud (Chris Parnell), Albert Einstein (Matt Bessar) and Thomas Edison (Stephen Tobolowsky). Perhaps none of these comic characters is as cleverly constructed as the show’s version of Scott Joplin who’s presented as an aughts version of Kanye West (complete with self-worship and an Armenian bride).

22.   Libe Barer as Carly Bowman, Sneaky Pete (Amazon)-The Brendon de Wilde to Alan Ladd’s Shane, Carly is the kid of the family (if you can believe a 27-year old actor passing as 16) who stars agape at her older cousin who fascinates her with hints of a less provincial life. What’s interesting behind Carly is that she’s one step behind the others but you can never count her out as she has traces of Bowman ingenuity herself.

23.   Connie Britton as Abby Clark, 9-1-1 (Fox)-No harm in adding a pollyanna to a procedural. Abby is middle-aged and single with an aging parent to care for but there’s a certain upbeatness to her that makes her a quiet sort of stand-out. Her scenes, set apart from the rest of the cast, make her an interesting narrator of sorts.

24.   Jonah Hill as Owen Milgrim, Maniac  (Netflix)-One of the best portrayals of a depressed character to appear on TV. Jonah Hill does an excellent job at portraying the quiet surrender and numbness as he goes about his every day life and eventually enters into the world of fantasy.  

25.   Dania Ramirez as Jacinda/Cinderella, Once Upon a Time (ABC)-When introduced in her featured episode, Jacinda is a femme fatale disguised as a typical Cinderella. It matches well with her real-life persona who’s down on her luck but refuses to play damsel in distress with the two men vying for her affections.

Honorable Mentions:

Armen Weitzman as Garfield, Another Period; Beth Dover as Linda Ferguson, Orange is the New Black; Charlie Cox as Matt Murdoch, Daredevil; Danielle Brooks as Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson; Dascha Polanko as Daya, Orange is the New Black; David Koechner as The Commodore, Another Period;  Henny Russell as Barbara Dennan, Orange is the New Black; Jane Adams as Maggie Murphy, Sneaky Pete; Jayma Mays as Carol Anne Keane in Trial and Error;  Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop, The Good  Place; McKenzie Phillips as Carol Dennan, Orange is the New Black; Parker Posey as Dr. Smith, Lost in Space; Rachel Brosnahan as Midge Masel, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel; Sally Field as Dr. Greta Mantleray; Sophia Black-D’Ella as Sabrina Pemberton, The Mick; Scott MacArthur as Jimmy, The Mick; Ted Danson as Michael, The Good Place; Tituss Burgess as Titus Andromedon, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt