The Comedy Store
Back in the early 1970s, Mitzi Shore got a comedy club in Hollywood as part of a divorce settlement. She named it the Comedy Store and transformed it into a pivotal part of the stand up comedy scene.
The Showtime documentary series "The Comedy Store" tracks the shifting fortunes of the various comedians who forged a career within the darkened walls of the this storied club. Tales of booze, drugs and sex weave in and out of the tales of stand up comics who commanded the microphones of the Comedy Store like rock stars, always pushing to redefine the limits of what people find funny.
A lot of these comedians drive themselves hard, too hard. The series tells of the demons that drive Freddie Prinze to suicide and the full bore push that was Sam Kenison's life that led to his terrible and violent death in a car crash on a Nevada desert highway.
Mitzi Shore flits in and out of the story, making and breaking dreams. Oddly, she has not been at the center of the narrative given her importance to the Comedy Store.
The Comedy Store series does suffer from a lack of a cohesive narrative structure. Series writer/director Mike Binder moves from subject to subject with no real pattern.
Next week's episode is being billed as a "season finale" which might suggest the Comedy Store series is an ongoing project? As much as the club has a very long history with Comedy over the last 5 decades, I don't think there is that much story to be told.
Fargo
The death of Doctor Senator is one damn death too many for Loy Cannon. He's turning up the heat on the Faddas.
He co-opts Odis, the nervous cop with all the PTSD who is in the Fadda's employ. Loy informs Odis that he works for him now.
Odis gives up Gaetano's location and Loy Cannon uses two other resources he recruited last episode. Dressed as whores, Zelmare and Swanee gets the drop on Gaetano's men. Our two larcenous lesbians are on a mission to bring in Gaetano alive but things take a turn when Swanee shoots Gaetano in the head.
How thick headed is Gaetano? He survives being shot in the head. He wakes up chained to a chair where Loy Cannon has one of this men beat the crap out of Gaetano. Repeatedly.
Justo, under pressure from the crime family in New York to finish of Loy Cannon once and for all, orders Loy's son Satchel to be killed. Satchel is the son being held hostage by the Faddas after the son swap in the first episode. Thankfully Rabbi is able to save Satchel from being shot.
Meanwhile, the letter that Ethelrida Smutney wrote last week exposing Oraetta has been received by Dr. Harvard. Oraetta charms her way out of trouble with her employer. But the evil grin on her face at the episode's end means Oraetta is going to kill someone.
Elsewhere on TV....
I am trying to avoid spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery and it's 3rd season while my family continues its slow slog through season 1 and I presume eventually season 2. But my efforts on remaining spoi9ler free have not been completely successful. I know things. But by the time my family finishes getting through the first two seasons, I may have forgotten the things I know about the 3rd season.
On my own, I am watching Star Trek: Enterprise, the prequel series that followed Voyager. I have over the years caught various episodes from the show's 4 seasons but I am making an effort to watch key episodes to follow the narrative of the show. Right now, I am to season 3 as the Enterprise chases down the Xindi, an alien race that has launched an attack on Earth. I'll have a more detailed analysis of ST: Enterprise in a future Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Until next time, stay safe, remember to be good to one another and keep it down, will ya, I'm tryin' to watch TV here.
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