Frasier's Listening

Frasier (1993-2004)
Created by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee
Starring Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin, John Mahoney, and Moose (as Eddie the dog)

My son (né 1996) and I watch a lot of movies and television together, though he'll only watch t.v. shows that overlap his life.  So 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001) and Frasier he loves, That Girl (1966-1971) and Remington Steele (1982-1987) not so much.  The nineties was the decade of the singles sitcom, most of the Peter Pan ilk, i.e. Friends and Seinfeld, but Frasier, a Cheers spinoff, is a sitcom for adult singles.

Frasier Crane, who lived in Boston when he was a character on Cheers, moves back to his hometown of Seattle, where he lives with his father and works as a radio psychiatrist.  As befitting an adult, everyone on Frasier has a career.  Frasier's brother Niles is a practicing psychiatrist, Daphne a home health care worker, Roz a radio producer, and father Martin a retired cop.  Much of the show's comedy comes from the dichotomy between Frasier and Niles, the two most pretentious conspicuous consumers ever to grace television, and the more down to earth Martin, who loves sports and beer, Daphne, a working-class girl from Manchester, England, and the promiscuous Roz.

Though all of the characters are usually alone or in the wrong relationship, everyone is looking for that one true love.  Frasier sums up the point of their lives in the last episode with his interpretation of the last stanza of Tennyson's "Ulysses" (see below):  "While it's tempting to play it safe, the more we're willing to risk, the more alive we are.  What we regret most are the chances we never took."  All of the characters on Frasier are willing to take big risks to find real happiness, no matter how many times they fall flat, and none are willing to settle for less.  Most of us could learn from that.

From Ulysses:
"It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."



Amazon links:
Frasier: The Complete First Season
Frasier: The Complete Series

Mad Men

Mad Men (2007-)
Created and written by Matthew Weiner
Starring Jon Hamm, Elizabeth Moss, and Vincent Kartheiser
Costarring January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Aaron Staton, and John Slattery

I'm late coming to the Mad Men party.   Nevermind that it's won Golden Globes, been nominated for Emmys, is the most watched show ever on the AMC cable channel, and features one of the hottest actors on the big or small screen:  I'm just now seeing the show for the first time.  Of course, I don't have cable, so I can't watch cable programs until they come out on DVD.  My daughter has been trying to get me to watch Mad Men for quite some time.  Likewise I've been trying to get her to watch Boston Legal.  Finally, we settled on getting together once a month to share DVDs.  First up was Mad Men.  We watched a few episodes from Season One, and now my 15-year-old son and I are trying to cram four seasons in before school starts; we are that hooked.  As my son says, this show is really addictive.

Mad Men is "a term coined in the late 1950s to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue.  They coined it."  So begins the cable soap opera, which opens at the dawn of my favorite decade:  the 1960s.  It's no surprise that the ad execs would promote themselves with such a dashing turn of phrase.  Says Roger Sterling, co-owner of Sterling Cooper, the ad agency in which Mad Men is set, ad execs are shameless self-promoters.  All of them save our hero Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who keeps his head down where his personal life is concerned and his past well buried.  Good thing his talent speaks for him.  A veteran of the Korean Conflict, Don is a hard-drinking, smoking philanderer.  Oh, and he has a wife and kids in the 'burbs.  But despite the glamor in this most prestigious of advertising agencies--or maybe because of it--sexism and racism are rampant.  And yet Don's secretary Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) with a little help from Don and a lot of talent manages to rise from lowly secretary to lowly copywriter.  She has plans for her life that include a lot more than the traditional marriage and children.



Amazon links:
Mad Men: Season One
Mad Men: Season Two
Mad Men: Season Three
Mad Men: Season Four

Dancing in the Moonlight (and Starlight)

Take a peak outside at the billions of stars splattered over the black summer night.  If you want a meteor show, the Perseids Meteor Shower is visible from July 23 to August 22, peaking August 13-14.  If you're more of a moon person, the next full moon is August 2.  I try never to miss a full moon, but I don't do as much star gazing as I used to--though I aim to make a point of seeing the Perseids Meteor Shower this year.  These days I spend most summer nights in air conditioned-comfort, but time was when the sultry nights beckoned me.  My friends and I dragged Main with the tunes blasting from the radio, gathered at the Dairy Queen, drove along country roads in a pickup truck, and swam in the lake outside of town, usually in our underwear, though not always.  We did our share of star gazing and dancing in the moonlight, too.  I'll be away from my blog for a couple of weeks for vacation.  Enjoy the video and see you at the end of July.

The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
Vintage (1991)
110 pages
ISBN:  0679734775
Middle-School and High-School Readers

Originally published in 1984, The House on Mango Street is a coming-of-age story set in the Hispanic section of Chicago.  This quick must-read is a series of vignettes, character sketches mostly.  With very few, but very exquisite, words Cisneros paints vivid pictures that breathe life into these characters.  Aunt Lupe, Rosa Vargas, Angel, Vargas, Marin...they step off the pages.  Life is hard for these people; they suffer from poverty, disease, spousal abuse, child abuse, desertion, loneliness, lack of education, but for the main character, Esperanza, whose very name means "hope," there is a chance she'll escape the fate of those around her.  For unlike the other women and girls of her neighborhood, she is free.  She has no men to feed; she is allowed to leave the house, and she is getting an education.  What's more, Esperanza is determined to have a better life, but she promises to come back for those she leaves behind.  You can't help but root for Esperanza to prevail.

To order from Amazon, click The House on Mango Street.

The Andy Griffith Show: What's Your Hurry?

The passing of Andy Griffith comes just weeks after a conversation I had regarding humor on television.  The 30-something person with whom I was speaking said that many people today feel that before Monty Python there was nothing funny on t.v.  I, of course, disagree.  Yes, Monty Python was funny, but so were the less jaded television programs of the 50s and 60s.  I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy Griffith Show, which pays homage to the radio program Lum and Abner, were all quite funny in their day.  And, indeed, still today can hold their own with any contemporary comedy.  I can remember watching all of these shows for the first time and laughing out loud.  (I still do laugh out loud, in fact, when watching most of them.)

The Andy Griffith Show was set in a slower, simpler time--in those days long before computers and cell phones.  Though it was a touch anachronistic even then, the message was clear:  Slow down and take time to enjoy life.  A spin-off of The Danny Thomas Show, the pilot demonstrates the waning days of languid rural living.  City slicker Danny Williams blows through a stop sign on his way back to New York and is arrested by small-town sheriff Andy Taylor.  Danny is quite rude to Andy:  He calls him a rube and, pulling a wad of cash from his jacket, slaps a five-dollar bill on Andy's desk and commands that Andy use the money to "buy a comb and rake the hayseed out of his hair."  Andy levies a hefty fine on Danny, as he feels the fine should hurt a bit so that a miscreant feel the weight of the law.  Danny is outraged.  He takes the ten days in jail instead of the $100 fine and brings a television crew down and pleads on live national television his wrongdoing at Andy's hand.  Of course, it is Andy who prevails, and in summation he waxes on about people being in a hurry all the time, going from one city to another.  He says they should slow down because there's a whole lot to see between those cities.  So, if you're looking for some really funny entertainment, take the time to watch a few episodes of The Andy Griffith Show.  (But steer clear of the later color episodes; the black and white episodes with Deputy Barney Fife are far superior.)

Incidentally, the last few weeks have seen the passing of many classic television stars, including Richard Dawson (Hogan's Heroes' Newkirk), Frank Cady (Petticoat Junction and Green Acres' Sam Drucker), Don Grady (My Three Sons' Robbie Douglas), Doris Singleton (I Love Lucy's Carolyn Appleby) and now Andy Griffith.  Rest in peace and thanks for the entertainment.




To order from Amazon, click on links below:
The Andy Griffith Show: The Complete Series
The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete First Season
The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete Second Season
The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete Third Season
The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete Fourth Season
The Andy Griffith Show - The Complete Fifth Season

The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls

The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls
by Julie Schumacher
Delacorte Books for Young Readers (May 8, 2012)
240 pages
ISBN: 0385737734
Ages 12 and up 

Their mothers meet in a yoga class and start a mother-daughter book club, throwing together four teens who, were there anyone else still in town, would never dream of spending summer evenings together.  Julie Schumacher's The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls brings together Adrienne, a bookworm; CeeCee, one of the high school's royalty; Jill, whose main concern is her SAT scores; and Wallis, a brilliant outcast.  All four spend their summer hanging out at the pool and reading books for their upcoming AP English class and working on the class's required literary essay.

A friend of mine reviewed this book on Goodreads, and, though she gave it only two stars, I wanted to read it to find out what books the book club had chosen.  (Nothing I like better than a good book list.)  The unsinkable girls read the following:

1. The Awakening by Kate Chopin,
2. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros,
3. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, and
5. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Actually, I did kind of enjoy the book.  Schumacher uses literary devices to structure the book.  Each chapter begins with Adrienne's definition of a literary device, and then the chapter explores that device in terms of their story.  Chapter One's device is setting, and we find the girls in their setting:  the city pool.  The girls do more than read, getting up to some typical teenage behavior:  rebellious running around, drinking, and cliquish exclusion, with some atypical tragedy thrown in.


To buy from Amazon, click on titles below:
The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls
The Awakening
The House on Mango Street
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Left Hand of Darkness
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus

Steele Smashing

Remington Steele (1982-1987)
Created by Robert Butler and Michael Gleason
Starring Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist
Featuring Doris Roberts

There's not much to recommend the eighties, that decade of rampant greed, big ugly hair, and garish fashion.  But there were a couple of bright spots for me:  my daughter's birth in 1981 and in 1982 the premiere of Remington Steele.  A vehicle for Stephanie Zimbalist, Remington Steele instead made a star of Pierce Brosnan.  Rumor has it there was much jealousy over the "bags and bags" of fan mail that Brosnan received.  How could anyone care about something as trivial as mail when she's lucky enough to work with Remington Steele, er, Pierce Brosnan?  Those piercing blue eyes and black hair.  That tall thin physique that clothes hung so well on.  That English accent with shades of Ireland.  Pierce Brosnan plays a rakish international jewel thief/art thief/pickpocket--just when you thought he couldn't be any hotter--who steps into the shoes of the imaginary Remington Steele and goes straight.

You see Laura Holt (Zimbalist) is a woman detective in a man's world.  Nobody takes her seriously, so she invents a male superior.  Now she's got clients lined out the door.  They all want to meet the mysterious Remington Steele, but, she tells them, "Mr. Steele works best in an advisory capacity."  In Episode One, The Remington Steele Detective Agency is hired to transport some rare gems, and the client insists on meeting Mr. Steele.  Pierce Brosnan's character, a charming career thief whose real name is not revealed, is posing as South African Special Agent Ben Pearson.  Evading some thugs leads to his assuming the Remington Steele identity.

When Laura does some detective work in "Pearson's" hotel room to learn his true identity, she discovers five passports, all with five different aliases, aliases which, she realizes, are all characters from Humphrey Bogart movies. Our charming con man cum Remington Steele is obsessed with classic cinema and turns to old movies repeatedly throughout the series to help solve their cases.  In the second episode he employs The Thin Man dinner scene to expose the killer of his good friend Wallace, a reformed criminal who was running a mission at the time of his death.  Says Remington of Wallace, "He was a nice man--and a hell of a burglar."

Remington Steele was the first detective show to blend romance, comedy, and mystery, often drawing from screwball comedies and film noir of the thirties and forties.  It was the first television program to employ the "will they or won't they" romantic device that has become so common in both television drama and comedy.  Think Niles and Daphne in Frasier.  Maddie and Davis in Moonlighting, the Remington Steele rip off.  In Season Two, Remington Steele acquires Mildred Krebbs (Doris Roberts aka Marie Barone of Everybody Loves Raymond) a middle-aged IRS employee who comes to work as a secretary/junior detective.  Mildred stands in for the every woman in the audience.  She's excited to find herself in the P.I. world.  Although she's over 50 and too old for Remington Steele, she's as captivated by him as anyone and fondly and reverently calls him "Boss."  Laura she treats as a mere coworker.

These days Stephanie Zimbalist works mostly in live theater.  Pierce Brosnan, who for a time was James Bond, still acts in films, though now he usually plays somebody's mean dad.  Still I go to all his movies, and I remember when he was Remington Steele.  For me--and Marge Simpson and probably countless women of a certain age--Brosnan will always be Remington Steele.   I remember how young he once was.  And I am reminded of how young I once was.



Click on links below to buy from Amazon:

Remington Steele: Season One
Remington Steele - Season Two
Remington Steele: Season Three
Remington Steele: Seasons Four & Five
Remington Steele - Seasons 1-5