TV

Hammond, LA Day 3

No Boiled Seafood Allowed

How about fried seafood?

Spent most of the morning wrestling with hooking up a new LED TV for Sally’s mom. It is a Fire TV recommended by her son-in-law. The only way forward past picking out English for your language is signing into Amazon. She wasn’t sure she had an account. We tried signing up using her email – xxxxx.webtv.net – and she had some vague idea of a password once used many a year ago. This, of course, did not work. So I signed in as me, and after setting everything up, I logged out.

The real fun began when I had to replace the small TV in her bedroom, which looked like a 17″ computer monitor, with the 32″ Sharp-Roku TV from the living room. First off, she really doesn’t use the Roku end of it; everything comes in via the HDMI cable from the Direct TV box. To turn on the TV, she uses the Roku remote, then uses the DIRECTV remote to change channels, and then goes back to the Roku remote to control the volume.

The way this TV was working was, they’d turn it on, and when the Roku TV showed the “installing update” whirly thing, the TV would be turned off and then back on to get rid of the update prompt. Unfortunately, there was no way to get to the Roku settings to fix this; the TV booted up to the HDMI input, and hitting the Home button did nothing. When I moved it to the bedroom, for some reason the sound would come on at a level, and it wouldn’t vary with the remote like before. I tried unplugging it for a minute and plugging it back in with no success. I next tried to reset the TV by holding the power button for a minute, but that caused the TV to come back on with a controllable volume but no PICTURE! This went back and forth a couple times, and I threatened to go to Best Buy and get her another new TV.

The internet had told me to reset it by unplugging it for 30 seconds and turning it back on by holding down the power and volume down buttons while plugging it back in; her TV didn’t have any buttons except the power one. So I tied a modified version of it by plugging it in while holding down just the power button. Bingo, bango, bongo; Roku home screen. I hooked it to the wireless network and updated the TV. It now works as it’s supposed to.

Phew, it was touch and go for a while as to who was going to prevail.

The afternoon went much smoother; we took a trip to Home Depot, Sally got her haircut, we took a walk in the park next to the VRBO, and a pizza for dinner.

What’s Next?

Sometime last December I started rewatching The West Wing again. Donna and I used to rewatch the series every couple years, hey we like the show. I got about to the end of Season 6 or the first couple of episodes in Season 7 before I disappeared for 2 months.

I didn’t miss it on the road trip and figured maybe when I got back I’d just stop and not do those last 20-25 shows. Then COVID hit me, so I really had nothing to do, but, watch TV so I picked it back up. As I’ve done the last few times rewatching the show, when I get done with the TV episode I listen to corresponding episode of the The West Wing Weekly podcast.

I was doing fine just watching one episode a day, but when I got down to the final 6 episodes of the show I accelerated. Two days ago I watched two episodes and yesterday I binged the last four. I’ve still got the last 2 podcast episodes to finish. I might listen to one of them when I get finished here.

The post title of “What’s Next?” comes from the show, it was President Martin Sheen’s catch phrase for when he was done with one problem and it was time to start solving the next problem. It is also how Josh Molina and Hrishikesh Hirway sign off at the end of a podcast.

So what’s next for me, TV-wise, don’t know, but reading-wise, I’m waiting on my copy of What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service to arrive from Amazon.

Wait, Where’d It Go?

I’m rewatching The West Wing for maybe like the 20th time and I’ve been watching it on MAX because why not, I’m paying for it just to watch one different show. I’m up to about the middle of season two. This morning when I went to watch an episode there wasn’t anything sitting in my Continue Watching row. The row wasn’t even there. And I checked, by spending way too much time endlessly scrolling up and down looking for it. Eventually it dawned on me to search for it. The only result was for a West Wing Special from 2020 about getting out the vote.

Would have it really have been too much trouble MAX, to let me know you were losing the rights to show? Fortunately, I still have the digital copies of all the episodes.

The Diplomat

While watching Jimmy Kimmel Live the other day (on YouTube, so not really live) Allison Janney was telling him about her most recent acting gig. She has a 2-episode run at the end of the second season of the show The Diplomat as the Vice-President. She likens the show to an old favorite, The West Wing, because it is set in the world of high-level politics. She was also enjoying working with the creator, producer and writer of this show, Debora Cahn who was an Emmy Awarding writer while working on The West Wing.

Coincidentally that same night, the star of The Diplomat, Kerri Russel, was on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Okay, it probably wasn’t a coincidence because the shows second season had just come out the week before.

The show is on Netflix so I thought maybe I should check out season 1 and see if I’d like to watch the show. I’m three shows in and I’m hooked. It is very The West Wing like in that there is a lot of smart dialogs, a lot of walk-n-talks and a lot of very fancy English settings (its filmed in London.) My only complaint is, at the beginning there is a chyron telling the shows rating, TV-MA, and the reason why it is rated at that level, Language, Nudity, Sex, Violence and so far, there hasn’t been any of the Nudity or Sex. đŸ˜‰

Update: The nudity and sex showed up at the end of episode 5 and there was a little more of it in the middle of episode 6.

Tagged:

Rumpole of the Bailey

During meals Donna I will fire up Discovery+ and watch something while eating. A few days ago we saw that Be My Guest With Ina Garten had a new episode, this one had a British actor Emily Mortimer on. Never heard of her, but her most famous bit, at least in America, is she was in Mary Poppins Returns. About 10 minutes in Ina starts ask her about her family and mentions her famous barrister and writer father John.

Cue the depths of Brian’s hazy memory – John Mortimer created and wrote a long lost favorite British TV show of mine about, surprise, a barrister called Rumpole of the Bailey. I enjoyed them back in the previous century on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery. I rewatched them again in the early aughts on Netflix discs. Somewhere along the line I managed to rip the entire series into cutting edge AVI files. Well, I still have them saved in the depths of my PC’s hazy memory.

While doing a little Internet sleuthing for the image above I found an article about how Emily and her younger sister Rosie are updating Rumpole and it may feature a female in the lead. Good luck to them, I wouldn’t be able to watch that and not because of the female lead (if it happens), but the show is to beloved in my heart.

Anyway, can you guess what I have been watching for the last few nights?

Fire in the Hole

In the early seasons of Justified this was Boyd Crowder’s favorite saying. It comes from an Elmore Leonard short story that served as the genesis for FX’s series Justified. I have watched all 6 seasons of the show a few times now and I also recently watched the new Justified: City Primeval. But this post really isn’t about that, it is more about the last couple of days where I have been sucked into an Elmore Leonard movie hole.

While stumbling around looking for something to watch on Peacock I saw the movie Out of Sight from 1998 and thought, “Ooh, I remember that. Might be fun.” How is i that Jennifer Lopez does look and any older after a quarter of a century, but George Clooney does?

I wondered if I could find some other of Mr. Leonard’s work. Nice, Get Shorty from 1995 is available on Max. This is a masterpiece of casting, all the actors totally inhabit their characters and the comedy tamps down the violence just the right amount.

There was a sequel of sorts 10 years later called Be Cool that had John Travolta’s character, Chilli Palmer breaking int the music business like he did the movie business in Get Shorty. I seem to recall that I did start to watch it on DVD back when it came out, but quit part way in because it was disappointing compared to the first flick. Hey, it is available on Max too, maybe I should try it again. Maybe.

I found the much newer Life of Crime on Frevee and once again I’ve seen it before, but is worth a watch again, if just for the big switch at the end. And Switch is the title of Elmore Leonard book that the movie is based on.

Another late 90s gem of an Elmore Leonard movie is Jackie Brown. A somewhat restrained Quentin Tarantino directed it, but it is only on Netflix and that is one of the streaming service I don’t subscribe to, so I can’t rewatch it.

Doing this research I discovered that Elmore is also responsible for 3:10 to Yuma. Wow, I have a digital copy of the 2007 version with Russel Crowe and Christian Bale. I have also seen the 5 decade older version with Glenn Ford and Van elfin. I’d rewatch the 1957 version if I didn’t have to pay $4 to rent it on Amazon.

Holiday Viewing

Did you know that Iron Man 3 is a holiday movie? I didn’t and I have watched it, albeit several years ago, and don’t remember any Christmasy stuff in it. Well, Plex remembers. When I open the app there on the home page was a section entitled “Home for the Holidays” and Iron Man 3 was right there.

I cued up the movie and watched it. Sure enough there are several scenes that have Christmas decor in the background. In my humble opinion there was not enough to push this to be classified as a holiday movie. I probably last watched it on DVD way back in 2013 when it first came out. Maybe I even got the DVD as a Christmas present that year…still not a Christmas movie.

There were 3 other titles, of the 150 or so movies I have digital copies of, in that “Home for the Holidays” category. And one of those is also a controversial pick, Die Hard. I say no, but the listing gave me an excuse to watch the movie again. Yippie-ki-yay.

Movie number three was definitely a Christmas movie, Elf and this movie is a yearly watch. And we watched it on Thanksgiving weekend when Donna’s brother and family were here.

The last of the four, but not least, was Bad Santa. And I didn’t watch this one this year.

What was conspicuously missing from that list, it even has the word Christmas in the title, was A Moody Christmas. There are two possible reasons for its non-inclusion in the “Home for the Holidays” list. IMDB lists its title as The Moodys without the C word. But probably it is because it is an Australian TV series and TV is already home viewing. This is also a yearly must watch for me during the holidays. There are just six half hour shows with each one covering a dysfunctional family’s annual Christmas lunch in 6 consecutive years.