Posts by Gino Sassani

With streaming working the way it does now, every studio in the world is churning out hours and hours of television to please a growing number of viewers on multiple platforms. There's more material produced in one year today than was produced in any decade leading up to the day Netflix opened the door on a new trend. It's changed the way we watch television, and that extends to the networks that still operate over the airwaves. We no longer sit and watch an hour or two of television in what was once called prime time. Now we binge. The latest statistics tell us that the average person watches a minimum of four hours at a time, usually the same show. That means not only more content but a greater range of content types. A-list actors and filmmakers are joining the trend, and they're now able to cater to pretty much every taste or genre. Along comes AMC+ and the first effort to bring the Spaghetti Western to "television". That Dirty Black Bag hearkens back to the Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone collaborations of the 1960's. All of the trademark elements are there. But is it as good? The short answer is no. But it's not quite fair to let the evaluation stand there.

The Western town of Greenvale is populated more by characters than stories. For pretty much the bulk of these first eight episodes, the story doesn't really connect. The longer you watch, the more some things tie together, but when it's all said and done, what stays with you the most are the characters and their unique worldviews. I guess you could call this a sit-west, along the lines of a situation comedy. The drama and the entertainment come from a series of situations that are obviously contrived to give these characters a place to live, breathe, and yeah ... die.

"All I know is that it was a tragedy. A terrible tragedy. I probably shouldn't say this, but some of those kids, eh ... no big loss, if I were honest. But those girls were special. They were champions."

What happens when you take a concept like Lost and sprinkle in a little Lord Of The Flies, the 1993 film Alive, and work in a bit of Pretty Little Liars and a heavy dose of pretty much any reality series out there? You'd get Showtime's latest creepy entry, Yellow Jackets. The new drama is one of those shows where they pack on the secrets and teases and then try to walk that tightrope of giving you enough resolution to keep you from giving up but maintain enough promise of more shockers to come so that you keep coming back for more. It's not an easy thing to navigate, and there are times that Yellow Jackets does that pretty well. The problem that I see in the show's future is how long can you keep this pace going? Ages of the actors is going to quickly become a factor, so I suspect this show will have to take advantage of what time they have and try to get another season or two out of the material.

"Space ... the funniest frontier?"

Star Trek: The Animated Series first aired in September of 1973, four years after the three seasons of what is now referred to Star Trek: The Original Series. It was a straight sequel that continued the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise. All of the original cast lent their voices to the characters they played in the live-action series with the notable exception of Walter Koenig. Chekov was replaced with an alien that had three arms and legs named Arex, who was voiced by James Doohan, as were many of the other guest characters throughout the two years the series ran. There were episodes that served as direct sequels, and so we were treated to the likes of Harry Mudd, tribbles, and the Guardian of Forever once again.  Now Paramount and CBS have brought us a second animated series, and the second season of 10 episodes arrives on Blu-ray straight from its running on the network's streaming service.

"There is an old saying that blood is thicker than water."

We've had Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Gene Simmons with his Family Jewels, and even Snoop Dog's Father Hood. It's become a bit of a trend to follow these celebrity families around and watch the drama of their privileged lives unfold on our television screens. You might think it's a relatively recent phenomenon, but would you believe they were doing it back in the infant days of television when we followed around a musician named Ozzie and his wife way back in 1952? No, we're not talking about Ozzie Osbourne and his family. I'm talking about Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. They were television's darling family before we ever heard about Lucy and Desi. The show actually started on radio like many of the fledgling industry’s early hits including the likes of Gunsmoke. Four years after the radio brought us The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, they moved to television. While their two sons were played by actors on the radio, both David and Ricky Nelson joined the television show, and it went on to make television history, breaking records, some still held today. It was the first television series to ever hit 10 seasons. It lasted from 1952 to 1966 with 436 episodes. Until The Simpsons, it was the longest running scripted television comedy and remains still the longest live-action scripted comedy ever on television. And while the stories were, of course fictional, most aspects of the show were quite real. Their television home was modeled after their real home. Many of the family's life stories found their way to the series. The four family members were quite real, and you just couldn't fake these relationships.