TV
Rel
The first new network show of the fall season Rel premiered last Sunday on FOX, with regular episodes scheduled to premiere Sunday, September 30. Last season that network did much the same thing with The Orville, premiering the first episode to coincide with the start of the NFL. But, whereas The Orville had an interesting first episode, Rel did not.
I really dug The Carmichael Show on NBC which was co-created by Jerrod Carmichael and co-starred Lil Rel Howery — and Carmichael is co-producing Rel which was created by Howery. But whereas The Carmichael Show was a series with bite, Rel is a relatively toothless.
I giggled a few times during this first episode about Rel, a nurse who’s wife’s left him and taken the kids to Cleveland after she slept with Rel’s barber, but overall the first episode felt like a standard sitcom with lots of jokes that come out of all the obvious places. I’ll give Rel one more try when the series returns in a few weeks since you never can be sure if the first episode is any indication as to where the show’s going to go from here, but otherwise I’ll probably be done with this one by the end of the month.
The Deuce
The second season of the David Simon/George Pelecanos series The Deuce premiered on HBO last Sunday and makes a jump in time five years in time from the first. Mostly gone are the grimy streets of New York City 1972 which have been replaced with nicer ones circa 1977. The grime might not be visible, but it’s still there hidden behind closed doors. Prostitutes and drug dealers still abound, but now they ply their trade more quietly and not in the open.
It’s a good time for people like ex-prostitute turned porn star/producer Eileen (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who’s off the streets and is now making money shooting dirty movies. Even people like Vincent (James Franco) who once made a living day-by-day tending bar now runs a successful establishment, even if behind doors the mob is really pulling the strings.
I thought the first season of The Deuce was interesting, if I lost interest in it towards the end. It might have been too dark and depressing for me, even if that’s how it really was in early 1970s New York. In the second season much of the darkness is gone, replaced with an interesting sort of late 1970s glamour.
The characters are still the same characters from the first season, they’re still prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers. But it’s like as long as they don’t look like prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers everything’s going to be okay, even as mayor elect Ed Koch and his decades long stint of cleaning up the streets looms on the horizon.
American Horror Story: Apocalypse
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about horror movies that used to turn up on TV from time to time but really don’t anymore. I remember seeing things like Dawn of the Dead and The Evil Dead on basic cable abet edited for content, but still on cable. But these days those movies almost never turn up on TV. Sure, maybe they’ll run on some premium channel now and then or make some special appearance in October, but for the most part those movies have been absent from public view the last 20 years.
I think I know the reason why, it’s because newer versions of those movies have been made, and when there’s screen time to show a horror movie the channels always go for the remakes.
And that’s what the latest American Horror story series American Horror Story: Apocalypse feels like to me, a remake.
Nuclear war and WWIII was a big subject of movies and TV shows in the 1970s and 1980s. There were things like the made-for-TV movie World War III, The Day After, and Threads that approached the subject matter with a bit of gravitas and there were also movies like Hell Comes to Frogtown, Radioactive Dreams and, while not directly about nuclear war, Night of the Comet that approached it in a more silly and fantastical manner.
But in the 1990s, 2000s and much of the 2010s fiction about nuclear war was passé and was mostly replaced with movies and TV series about zombies. However, as we enter a new age of fear of the “bomb,” comes American Horror Story: Apocalypse about just that.
Here, it’s seemingly a normal day in downtown L.A. when unexpectedly alerts begin going out and sirens wail of approaching nuclear doom. What follows is panic and chaos on the streets, but for a select few there are safe havens that exist, safe havens that come with a price.
Other than the costumes, the first episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse felt like bits of Miracle Mile, The Day the World Ended mixed with the colors and styling of a 1960s Hammer Films production. Which makes me wonder, while I thought the first episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse was interesting, if the episode is essentially one long “homage” of movies like these that have come before, why not just watch Miracle Mile, The Day the World Ended and virtually any of the Hammer Films from the 1960s instead?
Comics
Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics, Vol. 3
A third and final volume of the collection of the Star Wars newspaper comic strips is released this week. This collection covers 1982 to 1984, with the entire run of strips having been published from 1979 to 1984.
The concluding volume that reprints for the first time the classic Star Wars newspaper strip in its complete format. The only edition to include each Sunday page title header and bonus panels in meticulously restored original color. Featuring nine key stories from Star Wars Legends written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by Al Williamson.
Movies
Captive State movie trailer
What To Watch This Week
Sunday
The Bedford Incident_ The Bedford Incident from 1965 airs this week on Sony Movie Channel. Most of this flick just is okay, but it has one heck of a brilliant ending!
Monday
Mothra Insomniac theater — the Japanese giant monster classic Mothra airs very early Monday morning on TCM.
The Dark Crystal The Jim Henson and Frank Oz fantasy epic The Dark Crystal also airs on Sony Movie Channel this week. I remember being seriously creeped out by this one as a kid.
Tuesday
Sicario: Day of the Soldado Sicario: Day of the Soldado got hammered by the press last summer, though it did decent enough at the box office. It gets released on digital Tuesday.
The Reading & Watch List
- What it was like working at Apple to create the first iPhone
- Descend Into Great Britain’s Network of Secret Nuclear Bunkers
- The Art of “Star Wars”: The Force Behind the Most Iconic Image in the Cinematic Universe
Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week
Overlord 
Captive State