Tuesday TV Touchbase: Spider Noir

While Amazon Prime dumped the entire season at once, Andrea and I took our time with Spider-Noir, serving up one episode a week.  Just like it says in the Bible.

"Yea and the Lord sayeth unto thee, thoust should take unto thee a television series one episode at a time, less ye succumb to the pits of sin, depair and a numb posterior."

It's somewhere in... Deuteromony, I think?

Anyway...

We finished up Spider-Noir a week or so back.  

Set in Depression era 1930's New York City, life is hard for a stressed out populace caught between the machinations of Mayor Morris and crimes boss Finn Byrne, aka the Silvermane.

It's the story of Spider Man but with a twist in time and concept.

Let's talk about the look of Spider Noir for a moment.  The series was available in black & white as well as in color.  Below are two image of Ben's ascrebic, long suffering secretary Janet (my favorite supporting cast member) to compare the two formats. 

Andrea and I chose the B&W version which effectively conjures the film noir vibe of a classic Humphrey Bogart detective film. The B&W doesn't do as well with some of the latter effects heavy scenes with electrically powered Megawatt. 

But the B&W really works well when Ben Reilly is brooding in his darkened office or Cat Hardy is oozing sex appeal while seducing Ben. 

Ben should watch out.  As is the case with film noir, the dame is not to be trusted and will do him wrong.

Such as betraying Ben's identity as the Spider to Dr. Alethea Faber, a mad scientist type looking for a cure for metahumans. Cat only has eyes for Flint Marko and his Sandman powers are killing him. Perhaps Ben, whose Spider powers haven't killed him yet, holds to the key.

Episode 6 is a rough one to get through as Dr. Faber does all sorts of unspeakable things to a captured Ben Reilly to extract what makes the Spider tick and can it be used to save her son (whose mutation is prematurely aging him) and other metahumans as well.   

Ben manages to escape but not in the best of shape. His powers are on the fritz just as the war between the mayor and Silvermane is heating up.

For all the intensity of the drama inherent in Spider Noir, the show has a remarkable sense of humor.  A lot of this comes from Ben's snarky, irascible nature brought to ingenious light by Nicholas Cage. Cage mostly plays Ben Reilly like a repressed coiled spring  but then he cracks that veneer to go nuts. 

Lamorne Morris and Karen Rodriguez keep up the pace with the sharpy witten banter as Robbie Robertson and Janet Ruiz.   

Brendan Gleeson dominates the proceedings as Silvermane, a brutally cold calculating criminal mastermind who hasn't lived this long and gotten where he is in this life by playing nice.  

Spider Noir ends on a fairly positive note and if Nicholas Cage can be talked into it, I would very much like to see another season to explore this unique take on the Spider Man mythos.  

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Jeopardy ended it's 42nd season last week. Not much to say other than does that seem too long? It's the end of July and the show returns in September.  

 That is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Next time:   Stuart Fails To Save the Universe

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.   

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From Spider Noir to film noir, this Saturday's Movie Time post will be about an American film noir from 1947.   

StarTrekking: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 4 - “Valles Marineris”

Welcome to this week's edition of Star Trekking, my blog space dedicated to my Star Trek fandom.

After several weeks of indulging in nostalgia with look backs at Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, this time out we get some ALL NEW Trek.

The return of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.   

There is more than a little bit of burden on SNW as it begins it's 4th season. After two strong seasons, the 3rd season was not as solid and left a lot to be desired.

“Valles Marineris”, the season 4 premiere, gives some strong indication that the good ship Enterprise is back on track. 

• Captain Pike rides a horse! 
• Pelia drops another Doctor Who reference!!  
• There's cool space shit!! (An interstellar squall!!) 
• There's wibbly wobbly time travel!!! 
• Number One, Ortegas, and La’an fight a goddam dinosaur!!!
• La’an punches a raptor!!!!
• We get a new building block in the Star Trek mythos!!! 
• The Enterprise crew faces a terrible moral and ethical dliemna!!
• A whole planet blows up real good!!! 
• I must repeat: Pike rides a horse and La’an punches a raptor!

People, are you not frickin' entertained?!?!  

Kick Ass Action Girls of Star Trek 

The mission statement for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was to get back to the "planet of the week" structure of the original series. SNW sort of strayed from that plan in season 3 but  “Valles Marineris” marks a return to form for season 4.

Even if one of the strange new worlds turns out to be Earth, 65 millions years in the past.   

And the other strange new world is Mars.  

And instead of an asteroid belt, there is a third M-class planet between Mars and Jupiter, Dol’Drm. 

And Dol’Drm and Mars are at war.    

The Martians steal anti-matter from the Enterprise to use against the Dol’Drm homeworld.  

Well, that some serious temporal prime directive fuckery right there.  The Enterprise needs to stop Mars from using future tech to destroy the Dol’Drm.

Until Pike realizes something very crucial and orders the Enterprise to stand down.

The asteroid belt came from somewhere.

And thus we get the moral and ethical quandry facing Pike and the crew.

Yeah, this episode is filled with cool sci-fi stuff and great action sequences. (I cannot stress this enough: La’an stops a raptor by punching it!)  

But it's the gordian time travel knot at the center of the narrative and the resulting hard choices thrust upon Pike and his crew is what makes for the best Star Trek drama.  

This kind of though provoking philosophical problem is where Star Trek shines.

Next week, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with episode 2 of season 4,  "The Griffin Incident".

I have NO idea what we're in for.

We'll find out together in next week's Star Trekking.

Tuesday TV Touchbase: The Vampire Lestat

This weekend brought to a conclusion the lastest season of the Interview With A Vampire saga, The Vampire Lestat.

While the title change indicates the change in focus from Louis de Pointe du Lac to Lestat de Lioncourt, the shadow of all that occurred before still looms large over what is happening now.

Such as the terrible fate of their daughter Claudia.

After presumably killing Lestat at the end of season 1, Louis and Claudia booked it to Paris in the 1940's and became involved with a vampire community called the Théâtre des Vampire. Louis gets a new lover and mentor in the form of the Vampire Armand. 

Spoiler: Lestat ain't dead and was a patron of the Théâtre des Vampire. For Claudia's role in trying to murder their patron, the Parisian community sentence her and her vampire lover Madeline to death by sunlight.  

It was a horrible, violent death and watching a defiant Claudia, along with Madeline, crumble into dust is a terrible scene that remains burned into my memory. 

And Louis's biographer Daniel Malloy puts things together that Lestat was not the enemy Louis and Claudia thought he was and it was Armand who was working against Louis. 

Daniel completes and publishes his book "Interview With A Vampire" and gets turned into a vampire by Armand and that brings us to The Vampire Lestat. 

The Vampire Lestat is frontman for a punk rock band called "The Vampire Lestat".  He's on a bus tour of a various mid-sized venues, building a small but devoted cult following. 

Lestat is tapping into centuries of pain, loss, longing, desire, rage, guilt, yadda yadda yadda crafting songs for his big kick ass album.

Lestat is also in a love/hate/obsesssive/sexual relationship with his mother, the Vampire Sofia. Yes, Lestat is fucking his mother and we could try to explain it or just go with Lestat's excuse,"It's different for vampires." 

When Louis finds out about this relationship, he will not agree that "it's different for vampires." 

SIDE NOTE: Jennifer Ehle who plays Sofia was born in Winston-Salem, NC and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts.  

Louis, using various aliases, has built an empire of property, think Monopoly but with actual hotels and also vampires.  Louis has discovered Regina, a diner waitress who looks like Claudia. Louis acually pays Regina to pretend to be Claudia. 

In the background of all this is Armand who is up to sketchy shit, slyly plotting against Louis and Lestat. Helping him with all that is Daniel Malloy.

And the big thing rumbling through the vampire community at large is something called the Great Conversion, a plan to bolster the number of vampires in the world.  

And there's the Talamasca, a secret society that's trying to navigate the perils of a world with vampires and witches in it.

That is a LOT to keep track off.  

OK, back to Louis and Regina...

Regina's read the "Interview With A Vampire" book and gets the details right but this doesn't provide the closure Louis is looking for regarding his guilt over Claudia's fate.

So Louis and Lestat arrange a meeting with a Mayfair Witch (oh, do I need to start watching Mayfair Witches?) to conduct a seance.  The witch sommons the spirit of Claudia and she is not happy. At all.  Most of her rage is directed at Louis.

Yeah, Lestat is a total prick but he never hid that. But Louis tried to pretend he was better than that and it's his fault Claudia was condemned to existence as a vampire.  

Also wherever Claudia's soul has been since her death in Paris 80 years before, Madeline was not there with her and she's not here in now and this really pisses off Claudia as she screams Madeline's name before vanishing.  

Well, that was a lot. Sitting on a park bench, processing what they just witnessed, Lestat and Louis chat with a warm and gentle familiarity. Perhaps there's an actual chance for our gay vampire couple. 

Until Armand and Daniel slice their heads off. 

Wait! Who did what to who how now? 

Which brings us to the season finale.

Armand has Louis's head and his body hooked to wires and shit in a makeshift lab while he torments and tortures him. He also has Lestat's body but not his head.

Lestat's head is buried in Daniel's bowling bag.  Inside his dying brain, Lestat is put on trial by manifestations of his maker Magnus, Sofia, Louis, others he had turned into vampires over the centuries.  They accuse him of squandering his vampire existence and condemn him as a failure.  

Lestat asserts himself against his accusers.  If he is a failure, it means he tried to do something with his life.  

I can't begin to summarize or analyze these twin torments that the severed heads of Louis and Lestat endure.

Let's just cut to the end and Louis and Lestat get their heads sewn back on.  

The episode ends with Lestat looking out from a balcony as the sun rises on a burned and shattered world. 

The Great Conversion went too far? That's a question for another season.

If Interview With A Vampire felt more (for lack of a better word) grounded, The Vampire Lestat leans harder into absurdity, with Lestat's drama queen rock star and the growing threat of an exposed vampire community demanding more than a furtive existence in the shadows.  Add in some full on mad scientist shit (Lestat and Louis spend time as just heads and then get them sewed back on to their bodies? Really?) and The Vampire Lestat is a wild and chaotic ride.  

I'll be honest, I'm not sure I understood it all but damn, I had a blast trying to hang on to whatever this was. 

That is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase!

Next week: Spider Noir! 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.   

 

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Big Mistakes and Schitt$ Creek

Today is Dan Levy Day here on the Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Dan is the son of Eugene Levy (SCTV, American Pie, etc) with whom he created Schitt$ Creek.

Schitt$ Creek follows the travails of the rich Rose family.

Well, formerly rich.  

It seems a business partner Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) relied on wasn't so reliable when it came to managing the Rose family's wealth, leaving them bereft of all their money and possessions.

Except one.

Back in 1991, Johnny bought his son David (Dan Levy) a small town in Canada called Schitt's Creek.  It was meant as a joke.

It's all the Rose family has left.

So Johnny, David, Johnny's wife Moira (Catherine O'Hara) and David's sister Alexis (Annie Murphy) set up shop in the small rural town, making their home in a couple of rooms in the town's run down motel.  

The Rose family runs into problems as their old life style of being rich runs into the obstacle of being poor as well as trying to make life work in an odd provincial town. 

I recently finished the first season of Schitt$ Creek which ends with Johnny finding a buyer for the town. The Rose family is ready to book it out of town ASAP but their efforts to say goodbye are premature when the fat boorish slob set to buy the town keels over dead from a heart attack before he can sign the paperwork.  

Despite Johnny's efforts to force a pen in the dead man's hand and scrawl a signature on the bottom line.

The fish out of water dynamic that forces the urbane city sophisticate Rose family to learn to cope with the quirks of their new found home fuels a lot of the comedy and the unexpected heart of the series.

My favorite relationship that develops is between David and Stevie, the sardonic motel clerk.  Stevie doesn't seem to have a lot that really holds her interest in Schitt's Creek and somehow, she has become David's only friend, not just in this town but perhaps in his whole life.

Steve is played by Emily Hampshire who set the lowest bar possible for a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy.  She's the standard I measure by for bad performances on that show.  A celebrity might have a bad night but I will observe they are not "Emily Hampshire levels of bad".  On Schitt$ Creek as Stevie, Emily is quite charming.   

Aftrer Schitt$ Creek ended, Annie Murphy would go on to play the beleagured wife Allison on Kevin Can Fuck Himself.

Sadly, Catherine O'Hara is no longer with us but her Moira Rose is an incredible capstone to her remarkable legacy as a comedian and actor.  

Dan Levy followed up Schitt$ Creek by creating another oddball comedy series called Big Mistakes.

Big Mistakes is a boiling cauldron of dysfunction.  

Dan Levy is Nicky, a minister who is gay but that's OK, the congregation knows that and are cool with it... as long as he doesn't do gay stuff.  Which is a source of stress as Nicky has a boyfriend and they are most assuredly doing gay stuff.

His sister Morgan is a school teacher by day and a total hot mess the rest of the time. She's trapped in a long term relationship with Max who is a petty, spoiled, passive agressive, selfish prick. 

Nicky and Morgan's mother Linda and their youngest sister Natalie always find someway to make Nicky and Morgan feel worse about their lives.  

The series opens with Linda's very elderly and very sick mother about to die right before her birthday which Linda insists on celebrating as she berates Nicky and Morgan for not making her mother's death easier on her.  

In the first of many "big mistakes", Morgan, looking for a gift for her dying grandma, shoplifts a presumably cheap necklace from a gift shop that is a front for a Turkish criminal cartel. The proprietor of the store tracks down Nicky and Morgan and demands the return of the necklace under threat of death.

Except Linda already put the necklace around grandma's neck right before she died and is now buried with it.  

Which leads to the first of Nicky and Morgan's crimes in service to the Turkish criminal cartel: grave robbing.  

I say "the first" as returning the necklace does not absolve Nicky and Morgan from their servitude to the Turkish criminal cartel.

As much as Nicky loathes these errands for the gang, Morgan is so deperate for some respite from her life with Max, she's more sanguine about her role running odd jobs for the mob.  

Meanwhile, with her mother now dead, Linda takes on more stress by running for mayor of her town. While Natalie is devoted and doting on her mother, Linda still complains that Nicky and Morgan are not doing more to help her.   

Nicky's feeling pressure from his church and from his boyfriend while Morgan's useless whiny boyfriend has somehow cajoled her into an engagement. 

And all top of that, there's the continual threat of death at the hands of the Turkish criminal cartel.

The Turks keep employing the sibling duo in a series of bizarre errands. The Turks are looking to make an end run around the Italian mob to take over the drug trade from Bolivia by smuggling cocaine in cows. 

Nicky's continual stumbling out of grace from grave robbing to doing lines of coke at a Miami night club is like watching a car wreck in slow motion.  Nicky is in a state of constant astonishment at how far everything has spun out of control.

In case you're wondering how does a pastor know how to do lines of coke, Morgan shows him how.  Don't ask how a school teacher knows how to do lines of coke. 

But perhaps the nightmare spiral can end when gunmen mow down the Turks and the Bolivians.  Are Nicky and Morgan finally out from under the thumb of the mob?

Returning home, Nicky and Morgan attend Linda's victory party after she wins the mayoral election.

But...

Why are so many people from the Italian mob at the party?

They were invited.  

And much to their growing alarm, Nicky and Morgan realize just how deeply and close to home the hooks of the mob are imbedded in their family.   

Props to Laurie Metcalf who goes full tilt into the role of Linda, a woman who cannot stop herself of from saying whatever she is thinking. Linda's professed love for her family is fractured by the frequent cruelty of her candor towards that family.  Even ever devoted youngest daughter Natalie isn't spared.  

And Dan Levy crafts a compelling character in Nicky who struggles with his faith, his identity and his morals even has he descends deeper down the hole into a criminal enterprise he never wanted. 

Unlike the more whimsical charms of Schitt$ Creek,  Big Mistakes is a much darker, more disturbing show.  Both shows trafffic in humor derived from social awkwardness.  But the worst that can happen on Schitt$ Creek is embarrassment.

On Big Mistakes, the stakes are more grim and dangerous. And the season ends with Nicky and Morgan in an inextractable mess.  

I have no idea how or even if season 2 can get them out of it.  

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I need to take a moment and acknowledge the passing of Randolph Mantooth at age 80.  He had a long and prolific career as a TV and movie actor that spanned 5 decades.  But I knew him best as John Gage on the TV series Emergency!

Emergency! was part of the stable of shows produced by Jack Webb that included Dragnet and Adam-12.

Both Andrea and I watched this show when we were kids and around the late 1990's, I think, Nick@Nite began running Emergency! reruns one summer and damned if we didn't follow those reruns every evening.  

Randolph Mantooth played John Gage, one of a pair of paramedics for a then nascent emergency medical unit operating out of Fire Station 51.  The program faced resistance from hospitals who were not comfortable with firefighters handing medical stuff and firefighter who questioned why some of their own were doing anything other than fighting fires.

Squad 51 driven by Gage and DeSoto.

John Gage and his partner Roy DeSoto (played by Kevin Tighe) do their best to prove the paramedic program is a good idea. Mantooth and Tighe took real paramedic classes to add some realism to their performances.  But Mantooth once admited that despite that training, "if anyone has a heart attack, I'll call 911 with the best of them."

Even after Emergency! ended and he  went on to other acting roles, Randolph Mantooth remained a tireless advocate for firefighters and EMS workers.

God bless, Mr. Mantooth and may you rest in peace. 

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And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Coming up on the Touchbase: The Vampire Lestat wraps up the season.  

And Andre and I will be bringing in Spider Noir for a landing.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.   

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Your Friday Video Link: It's Sid the Cussing Bunny, You #$@&%*!

From The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, it's Sid the Cussing Bunny! 

• It's a bunny.
• Named Sid.
• Who cusses.

Are we clear on the #$@&%*! concept?  

Sid's job is to hurl abuse at Craig Ferguson's #$@&%*! audience.

Your Friday Video Link#1, Sid has a few choice   #$@&%*! words with Gina from #$@&%*! Seattle.   

Your Friday Video Link#2, Jessica from #$@&%*! Atlanta is subject to Sid's crude #$@&%*! verbosity.

Your Friday Video Link#3, Sid has some #$@&%*! things to say to Rachel and do not believe her #$@&%*! shirt! She is not from #$@&%*! Scotland but from New #$@&%*! Hampshire.

                                 

  And that was Sid the Cussing Bunny! 

I hope you #$@&%*! enjoyed that, you #$@&%*! #$@&%*!

Tuesday TV Touchbase Too: General Hospital

Starting July 2nd, Andrea and I added General Hospital to our TV viewing schedule.   

There's some stuff 'n' junk going on at an art gallery in Port Charles.  The WSB (GH's version of the CIA or Interpol or some damn thing) is up to some sketchy shit involving the theft of something called "the device". 

Oh boy! When I first watched GH in college back in the 1980's, the first plot I got caught up in was about a device.  In that case, it was a FREEZE RAY! 

Is this "the device" a FREEZE RAY?  Sadly, no.  It is a COLD Fusion thingy so there's that. 

So a WSB head named Collum has turned rogue and is stealing the cold fusion thingy.  A couple of WSB agents still on the good guys side, Cassius and Josslyn, get caught up in a gun fight with Collum and his minions on the loading bay at the back of the art gallery.  

Long story made short:

• All the gunmen working for Collum: shot! 
• Cassius: shot! 
• Josslyn: shot! 

Collum shows up to gloat over a wounded Cassius but Josslyn, despite being shot in the gut, aims a rifle at Collum and...

• Collum: shot! 

Then things get interesting! 

A sleek black helicopter lands in the parking lot.  Surrounded by heavily armed guards, a man with slick black hair and a dark blue suit emerges and....

Hey! Isn't that John Oliver from HBO's Last Week Tonight? 

Yes, it is and the reason why Andrea and I are watching General Hospital.  

One of the gunmen ain't dead yet.  

The mysterious man in blue pulls out a revolver and casually shoots him in the head. 

He leans over the badly wounded Josslyn to reassure her, “Everything's gonna be OK. I'm here to help.”

I'm not sure we should feel reassured. 

Hey, if the video link is still up, you can watch this for yourself.

So what the hell is John Oliver doing on General Hospital?

A few months ago on Last Week Tonight, Oliver laid down a challenge to all the daytime soap operas to cast him in a role.

He didn't want to play himself, he wanted a solidly soap opera type character, someone preferably with a weird name and a duplicitous, shadowy background, 

General Hospital answered the challenge and cast John Oliver as "Z", the mysterious head of the WSB.  

Z is looking to clean up the mess left by Collum's betrayal and is prepared to reshape the truth to save the WSB's reputation. If he can get Josslyn's cooperation.   

I was impressed with John Oliver's performance and so was one of his co-stars,  Laura Wright, who plays Carly Spencer and acted in scenes with Oliver

“We had no idea what to expect. A lot of times, people like to come on and make fun of what we do, and I'm not a big fan of that. Our job is as important as anyone else's, and we don't consider it a different type of acting or anything like that. So, I was so impressed with the writing that honored what he does well while also staying true to what we do, and how he showed up and delivered. It was incredible.”

Wright added about Oliver's performance,   “If he was nervous, you couldn't tell. He was perfect with his lines. We were in the middle of a very intense storyline that has been building for months, so it's really funny that he stepped right in and didn't miss a beat. You would think he's been on the show!”

I agree with Laura Wright that John Oliver was such a seamless fit in the world of General Hospital.  He really felt like he belonged there.  

John Oliver expressed appreciation for his experience. “General Hospital was everything I hoped it would be. It's a true honor to be a small stain on the history of this illustrious show."

Here's another video link of Oliver talking about his time on the show.  

General Hospital was not the only soap opera that came calling.  Days of Our Lives also cast John Oliver in what appears to be a more broadly comic role.  

Andrea and I got a big kick out of John Oliver's turn on General Hospital which ended yesterday.  

And we're done with General Hospital.  

I think.  (I am TRYING not to care about all the subplots we encountered in our 3 day visit to GH.)

That is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase AND the Tuesday TV Touchbase Too!

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.   

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Brilliant Minds

Boy, yesterday's post was a bit of bummer, wasn't it?

Did I watch anything related to July 4th and celebrating America's birthday?

I caught up on Lucy Worsley's PBS special on the American Revolution.  God knows I love Lucy, her clever insights and her distinctive fashion choices. (She spends part of the special in silver wedged heels paired with white bobby socks. It was so cute!)  

I also caught the NYC fireworks on NBC.  Somehow I missed the part where the Brooklyn Bridge caught fire.

And I caught some random bits of ABC's Disney Celebrates America such as David Muir climbing up to the torch of the Statue of Liberty. (That was pretty darn cool.)

The always unbiquitous Ryan Seacrest was on hand to host musical segments from Disneyland.

Look like he was having fun but as you gathered from yesterday's post, I was not in the mood to party.

Onward! It's time for the Tuesday TV Touchbase. 

Last week, Andrea and I checked ourselves out of Bronx General Hospital.

While the rest of America checks in to Seattle's Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital over on Grey's Anatomy or the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center on The Pitt, we chose to hang out with the gang at Bronx General on Brilliant Minds.

And now we have reached the series finale.  

Frequent promotions for Brilliant Minds during the 2024 Summer Olympics compelled Andrea to really want watch this show. God bless her but she is easily influenced by marketing.

Hey, the show stars Spock from the Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies so, hey, why not? I'm on board too.

So that's two people watching the show.

And not may others beyond that, it seems. 

Brilliant Minds went on a break for this year's Winter Olympics with 6 episodes still to go in season 2.  It was during that break that NBC announced the show would not be renewed for a season 3.  And those last 6 episodes would air during the summer.

I fully expected NBC to renege on that deal and say to hell with it and burn 'em off on Peacock or some damn thing.  

But NBC followed through and ran those 6 episodes as promised.

So we got to see the resolution of the Hudson Oaks storyline.  In the first episode of season 2, we got a flashforward to Dr. Oliver Wolf as a patient at the psychiatric facility and desperae to escape.  

Over the course of the season, we were witness to Wolf's slowly unravelling mental health to the point he was hallucinating a patient named Sofia and at the pre-Olympic break sees the timeline catch up to Wolf being admitted to Hudson Oaks.

Hudson Oaks actually does Wolf a lot of good in his recovery from his mental breakdown. But there is some sketchy shit going down as Dr. Fredericks, the administrator, has a bad habit of denying patients their release when they are otherwise well enough to leave. She's bilking insurance companies for excessive stays and pocketing those funds into her own bank account.

SPOILER: Dr. Fredericks gets busted! 

The final 6 episodes also give us some resolution to the will they/won't they between Dr.Oliver Wolf and Dr. Josh Nichols.

Reminder: Brilliant Minds is as gay as fuck. 

Dr. Dana Dang breaks up with her paramedic girlfriend but has a one night stand with Sofia.

Wait! Wasn't Sofia part of Wolf's hallucinations?

Is Dana hallucinating Sofia now?

No, she is real but her name is Margot and she turns out to be the sister Wolf didn't know he had from the 2nd family he didn't know his father had.

Meanwhile, Josh and his boyfriend Beau break up because Beau wants to get married but he sees that Josh is still hung up on Oliver Wolf.  

Which Josh can't argue with that.  

Near the end of the episode, Josh shows up at Oliver's home with a fern.  (Oliver, a consumate medical professional who has saved the lives of many people, has an ongoing battle with keep plant life alive.) 

Josh says, “This thing has taken over my life. It’s unpredictable, stubborn, moody, I never know what it needs, it’s all I can think about." 

Guys, I don't think Josh is talking about the fern. 

Even the frequently oblivious Oliver can figure that out.   

And we get a big damn kiss.

Again: Gay. As. Fuck. 

Not knowing that NBC was going to cancel the show, the producers do button up a few dangling plot lines but some are still flapping in the wind.

• Erica thought she found her birth mom.  The woman denies it but hey, we out here in TV land can hear the dramatic music cues and we know something is up with that.
• Carol and her ER doctor boyfriend hit a serious bump in the road after he commits an ethetical violation when he defies Cariol's diagnosis of a patient.  
• Did Dr. Charlie Porter actually turn a corner to become a nice guy after spending most of the season actively plotting against Dr. Wolf? Wolf forgave him and Wolf's team of interns have slowly started to accept him.  Andrea and I are not sure we do.
• Is Margot going to hang around to be a sister to Oliver? And give Dana another roll in the hay?

The episode ends with Oliver and Josh on vacation together in Mexico with Carol along as their designated straight 3rd wheel.

But a medical crisis has struck their resort and the trio spring into action and....

We're done.  

Brilliant Minds was a smart show that challenged it's audiences expectations and made you think.  What defined this show was not so much the medical genius on display with each impossible case but it's dedication to empathy, the insistence on seeing the world through each patient's eyes.   

Brilliant Minds deserved a better fate and it will be missed.

________________________________

We're not quite done! 

We go from Bronx General to General Hospital.

The classic ABC soap opera landed on our viewing schedule recently and I'll tell you why.

The TuesdayTV Touchbase Too is back and will post in a few hours later this morning.    

Yoir Friday Video Link: Happy Birthday, America!

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, marking the 250th birthday of the United States of America! 

I know you may not be in a celebratory mood but let's try to give it a go, eh?

Your Friday Video Link#1 is Stephen Colbert teaming with a bunch of people all across this great land of ours to sing the National Anthem.  

This musical moment kicked off the very first episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. 

Your Friday Video Link#2 offers up a lesson in American history and geography as Wakko Warner from Animaniacs offers up a musical overview of our states and capitals.  

Your Friday Video Link#3 presents a somber and respectful tribute to the greatest nation on Earth as only the Muppets can! 

Happy 250th anniversary to the United States of America! 

Well, it was a good run while it lasted.

Tuesday TV Touchbase: Invincible

So I finally finished the 4th season of Invincible.

My delay in finishing this season should not be construed as me no longer being enthused by or interested in this season.

Invincible remains one my of favorite comic book adaptions.

When the eight-episode fourth season dropped between March and April, my time was consumed with shows that were heading for series finales that I needed to stay on top of in real time: Outlander, The Boys and Hacks.  

Necessitating me having to back burner Invincible whenever I was in a TV viewing time crunch.

Which is remarkable to me that as a person with no friends or a social life, I can actually have something called a "TV  viewing time crunch".   

Enough of that.  What about season 4 of Invincible?

After a mid-season side quest to Hell to actually help Satan (who is voiced by Bruce Campell so he can't be all bad), Mark Grayson is looking for some down time with Eve.  Eve is looking for the right moment to tell Mark she's pregnant.  

She thinks she's found it...and NOPE! Moment lost.

Nolan has returned. 

The erstwhile Omni-Man, Earth's greatest super hero turned Earth's greatest traitor and destroyer, has come back to Earth along with Allen the Alien to recruit Mark for war.

Nolan has changed quite a bit since he left Earth and is looking to atone for the evil things he did for his Viltrumite masters.  

The Coalition of Planets led by Thaddeus, another Viltrumite who turned against his people, are ready to go to war and end the Viltrumite threat once and for all.  

Mark relunctantly agrees to join the war effort and is accompanied by his young brother Oliver.  Allen also recruits Zoe Thompson aka Tech Jacket.  Her alien tech armor and weaponry is strong enough to take on Viltrumites.   

(We meet Zoe's dad Ed who is voiced by Bobby Moynihan. not Patton Oswalt as I originally suspected. This mix up will occur again.  See this Saturday's Movie Time.)  

Over the course of the next episodes, the battle is joined and it ain't pretty. Invincible gets into a knock down drag out beat down with Conquest.  Mark manages to kill Conquest but not before the psycopathic Viltrumite has beaten the unholy crap out of Invincible including pulling out his intestines. 

Instestine pulling happens a lot. Usually that's a good sign someone is dead but Mark does get better. Over time.  

Working on this show must be kind of weird.

Producer: So you want to be an animator on Invincible?

Artist: Oh yeah! I really love the comic and the show!

Producer: It says on your resume you worked on Spongebob Squarepants?

Artist: That's correct.

Producer: Have you ever had to animate someone punching another person really hard in the gut and pulling out their intestines?

Artist: Well, there was this one time Squidward really had it up to here with Mr. Krabs and...

Producer: Really?

Artist: Yeah, but (sigh!) it didn't make the final cut.

Producer: Those bastards at Nickelodeon?  

Artist: Damn right those bastards at Nickelodeon never let us have any fun.

Producer: Jeff Bezos really likes the intestine pulling scenes.

Artist: Wow! 

Producer: Welcome to Amazon and the Invincible animation team. I think you'll like it here. 

So the war goes on and on until Invincible, Omini-Man and Thaddeus lead a triple prong strike on the planet Viltrum and shatter the damn planet to pieces.

The 37 Viltrumites who are left are really pissed off and despite being small in number still have a significant edge in raw super power.

Oliver gets badly hurt. A Viltrumite tears... OUT his INTESTINES?! Nope, his arm gets torn off! (Don't worry, the Coalition will grow him another one.)  

Thaddeus gets killed! 

Tharrg, the Viltrumite leader, has Mark dead to rights and is own the verge of killing him....

But Tharrg and the Viltrumites choose to vanish.

Where did they go? 

Marks susses out they've gone to Earth.

A planet for a planet, eh?

Which brings us back to the season finale.  

Mark, Nolan and Zoe return to Earth to find the Viltrumites do not appear to be there. But that doesn't stop Mark from having hallucinations of Tharrg showing up out of nowhere to engage in some good ol' fashioned intesting pulling on his mom, Debbie, his girlfriend Eve, even on that detestable bastard Cecil.   

Mark has been off world for a year and he finally connects with Eve who finally tells Mark she was pregnant.

Was?

Eve says she had an abortion.  

With Mark gone for who knew how long (he was gone almost a year) and with her father being a judgemental prick, Eve felt alone and desperate and made a choice to end her pregnancy.  

Which just means more angst for Mark Grayson.  My God, this show never lets up on this poor guy, do they? 

Artist: Can we put in an intestine pull here?

Producer: Settle down! Now is not the time.

Artist: Damn it! 

Jeff Bezos (watching at home): No intestines? Damn it!  

Flying around to clear his head, Mark sees Tharrg. Fuck it! He ain't in the mood for another hallucination.

Problem: it's not an hallucination.

Well.. fuck! The Viltrumites are on Earth.

But Tharrg isn't there to fight. (Sorry, no intestine pulling.)

Artist:  Fuck! 

Jeff Bezos: Fuck! 

Tharrg wants to make a deal.  He and his Viltrumites will live on Earth, do nothing to hurt anyone and live their lives.

Which will include mating with Earth women. Which they know from the existence of Mark Grayson will produce Viltrumite powered offspring to replenis their diminished numbers.

And Mark will let them do that.

After everything they've done to hurt, terrorize and kill people across the galaxy and Mark thinks they can't get away with that.

Then he remembers everything they've done to hurt, terrorize and kill people across the galaxy and his own hallucinations of how they could do that to Earth....

And...

He acccepts the deal.

I can imagine that will not sit well with Nolan or the Coalition of Planets.

But that's a problem for season 5.

And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.