Disc Reviews

Ben Franklin once said that there are two things that no one should see made. He was talking about sausage and laws. In the 18th century most people had little exposure to the workings of their government. Campaigns were waged on the road in public squares, and seldom by the person running for office. Party nominations were held in halls attended only by the party faithful. It was here in the span of a few days that a nomination would be haggled out of the delegates who attended. Since the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the selection of nominees was handed to the registered voters, usually of the party in a series of primary elections that begin in January of each election year. The campaigning has become intense and now often begins nearly a year before that first nomination struggle. It gets earlier with each cycle. We may not get to see how our laws are made, but now we get a long look at how our presidents are selected, and I thing ol’ Dr. Franklin would have been shocked to bear witness to the 2016 primary season. And just in case you missed the weekly debates, attacks, flubs, scandals, and riots, Showtime put together a weekly recap of the events over a 26-week period. They called it The Circus, and it isn't hard to see why.

The show featured two veteran political reporters who work for Bloomberg. John Heilmemann wrote for The New Yorker and Wired over the years. His bias obviously showed toward the Democratic side. He often refers to Trump as running a racist campaign. He often works with Mark Halperin, who calls the Trump election at the show's end the single most catastrophic event in American history since 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. So you won't get any balanced coverage from these two guys. Unfortunately, for them the show doesn't get much of a chance to include the Clinton campaign, because it was the most restrictive to press during the cycle. So the Democratic side is mostly represented by Bernie Sanders, who offered a lot of access to the show. The third member of the show's touring troupe is political analyst Mark McKinnon, who has worked on many Republican campaigns including George W. Bush. It's kind of ironic that he's the one tapped as the analyst and offers less of the bias reporting.

Drunk History is a good example of a good idea that lost steam very quickly. I remember when initial idea was aired as a web series produced by Funny or Die in 2007, and it was a rather brilliant idea. The show was not picked up by a major network for six years; then in the summer of 2013, it made its premiere on Comedy Central. Granted, I remember being excited about this premiere. However, about midway through that first season, I realized how too much of a great idea can be a bad thing. The format just became tiresome and dull after a few episodes. Now, four years later, the show has returned for four entire seasons, but it definitely feels it has run its course.

If you are not familiar with the series, Drunk History was created by Derek Waters, and the format is as follows: Someone from the world of comedy is interviewed by Waters about some historical event as they are getting incredibly drunk. Meanwhile, the show cuts from the talking-head style interview to a dramatization of the event in question, being performed by other comedic actors. However, rather than actually using original dialog, the actors perform pantomime while lip-syncing to the voiceover provided by the drunken musings in the interview. It is this lip-syncing that really makes the show impressive, but the drunken musings provide the primary entertaining content.

With Season 8 gearing up, Season 7 of Archer makes its way onto DVD, for many to binge and catch up before the season premiere. I have to admit this was a show I had watched perhaps a handful of episodes but I could never quite get into.  I’ll admit at times I can be a bit thick-headed when it comes to watching an animated series. After repeated requests (or demands that may or may not have been at gunpoint), I settled in and binged a season of Archer.  To my surprise, I had a blast with the show and quickly devoured more episodes which finally caught me up to Season 7.  So what trouble has the former world’s greatest secret agent, Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) gotten himself into?

The season kicks off with a nice visual reference to Sunset Boulevard as a pair of detectives discuss the significance of a body floating in the pool of a famous Hollywood actress.  Unfortunately the body belongs to none other than Sterling Archer.  The show then quickly takes us back six months earlier to where Archer and his cohorts are now starting up their own private detective agency.  It seems like the logical jump since being international spies for a terrorist group, and being drug dealers didn’t seem to work out so well.