The Streaming Zeitgeist

Binge-Worthy Streaming Shows

Detours, Diversions and Escapes to Surreal Places and Times Long Past

Traditional network TV and even some venerable cable networks have been having a hard time lately holding on to viewers. The television audience is increasingly becoming fractured into hundreds of mosaic bits with each fragment representing some micro-interest. Never have there been so many choices of series and mini-series to watch. The profusion of offerings however isn’t necessarily a guarantee of quality or worth hours of your time. In an attempt to separate the binge-worthy from the worthless, here are some recommendations for couch-deserving  programs.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (★★★★★ 3 Seasons, Amazon Prime).

Rachel Brosnahan as Mrs. Maisel

Were you enamored of Don Draper and the rest of the ad honchos on Mad Men? Have a nostalgic hankering for late 50s/early 60s New York City heyday of The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit (★★★★, 1956 starring Gregory Peck) or Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (★★★★★, 1961)? Well, “Mrs. Maisel” gets the setting, scenery, attire and sensibility just right along with an extra bonus, “Maisel” is really, really funny.

“Maisel” is the story of a late 20-something contented, pretty, Jewish Upper West Side housewife whose life is totally upended by the idiocy of her husband. This sets her off in a seemingly unlikely (to her and everyone else) and unplanned trajectory as a stand-up comic at a time when this field (like most others) was dominated by men.

Midge Maisel is played with aplomb, sparkle and wit by Rachel Brosnahan with both good natured ferocity and good taste. You won’t feel like the show is over-the-top campy. Brosnahan is backed up by a sterling cast of characters (really, characters!) including Kevin Pollak (Casino ★★★★★ 1995, A Few Good Men ★★★★ 1992, The Whole Nine Yards ★★★★ 2000),

Tony Shalhoub, plays her uptight father (Shalhoub won the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Award in 2019 at the Primetime Emmys)  and he’s is channeling “Monk” through a neurotic Jewish-American prism. Shalhoub is also known for Galaxy Quest ★★★★ from 1999 and Honeymoon in Vegas ★★★½ from 1992.

Also outstanding in the cast are Alex Borstein who is hysterical as Midge’s manager and Luke Kirby playing the late edgy comedian Lenny Bruce. Kirby has Bruce down so cold that you’d swear he was standing before you right there and right now in the flesh.

The show ventures to locations galore. Aside from Manhattan the show jaunts to Paris, the Catskill “Borscht Belt,” Vegas and Miami. Each venue is replicated spot-on. From Wikipedia: Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 2017 and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2018…Brosnahan won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2018 and two consecutive Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2018 and 2019; Borstein has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series twice consecutively for her work on the series in 2018. Season 2 is my favorite but they’re all eminently enjoyable and I recommend starting with Season 1, Episode 1. Mostly hour-long episodes.

Fauda (★★★★★ 3 Seasons, Netflix)

Lior Raz as Doron (left) and Rona‑Lee Shim'on as Nurit in “Fauda.”

This is not a show for the squeamish. “Fauda” transports the viewer directly into the heads, hearts and traumas of an elite Israeli undercover counter-terrorism squad. It is not an exaggeration to say that after watching all three seasons you may find yourself fighting off mild Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) as though you were actually in the field with these guys. Heavy drama, scintillating action, plenty of violence, edge of your seat suspense and not always a happy ending. If you like dousing your food with Tabasco® Sauce, this is the show for you.

“Fauda” is the Arabic word for “chaos,” the word is a metaphor for the violent insanity embodied by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and ISIS terrorists along with a local population that encourages and enables their activities. Full-on repugnant hatred is not sugarcoated here in any way. Disregard for the value of human life is ubiquitous in each episode. The show is based on the real-life military experiences of Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff and takes place in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, all of which can seem like different planets even though they’re in close proximity to one another.

Lior Raz plays the main character of Doron Kavillio. Doron is who Vin Diesel or Pitbull might be if they were Israeli and served in the Israeli Army, which is to say Diesel in particular seems like a cartoon wuss compared to Doron. Doron leads a field team of passionate eccentrics who blend seamlessly into Arab cities and towns. In Doron’s case, he is so deep undercover that he often can’t differentiate if he’s Arab or Israeli. There is a supporting cast of officers, wives, lovers, children and diplomats which give Fauda a 360-degree view of human intensity on every level.

The verisimilitude of the show (which also portrays a nuanced Arab perspective as well) is such that there’s really nothing to compare it to. Original is an understatement. Winner of a bazillion Israeli Academy Awards and in December 2017, The New York Times voted Fauda the best international show of 2017. Hour-long episodes.

Norsemen (★★★★ 3 Seasons, Netflix)

Silje Torp as Frøya in “Norsemen”

Are you a fan of Monty Python and The Holy Grail (★★★★, 1975)? Well imagine Python-like historical absurdity applied to eighth century Norway and the Vikings and you have “Norsemen.” Made in Norway with an all Norwegian cast and crew (shot in two identical versions back to back in English and Norwegian, Netflix is showing the English-language series, so no subtitles) this is perhaps the best thing to come out of Scandinavia since Abba and Ikea.

Twenty-first century Western norms, values, morality and culture is overlaid onto an ancient Viking palette which results in a very funny show. Who knew Vikings could be such a laugh riot?

There is a silly Gay village chieftain (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who’s main fixation is to bring outdoor art installations and live theater to this primitive armpit. You have a Valkyrie Viking warrior who goes on raiding parties (primarily to England) and in addition to participating in murder and pillage also rapes men. There is a wondrously and hysterically evil rival village chief who schemes to steal a coveted map showing how to sail to England which is rich in booty and poor in its ability to defend itself.

The show also pokes great fun at modern marriage, relationships, dating and workplace issues all done in delightful singsong Norwegian English. The location shots, wardrobe and makeup are very believable as being from 1,200 years ago so the contrast between that and today’s humor makes the “Norsemen” a lot of fun and a trenchant lampoon of our modern world. Half-hour episodes so you can digest this in small bites.

Britannia (★★★½, 2 Seasons, Amazon Prime/EPIX)

Kelly Reilly as Queen Kerra in “Britannia”

As befits a show with this title, “Britannia” is an import from the UK and originally aired on Sky TV. It’s the year 43 A.D. and Britain (really Southeast England) is being conquered by those pesky, nefarious Romans. Swords, sandals and sorcery abound. Standing in the way of total Roman domination are disparate Celtic tribes led by fierce warrior women allied with mystic blue-faced Druids who commune with the underworld (often with the aid of psychotropic mushrooms and other herbs).

This is historical fantasy (not a comedy) analogous to HBO’s Game of Thrones (★★★★★) but made with a much lower budget. Shot on location in Wales and the Czech Republic there’s plenty of meat here to chew on but no flying dragons. Set at the very beginning of Rome’s 400-year British foray, this predates the Arthurian legends by many centuries (King Arthur, ★★★★, 2004, starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley is also very much worth watching). The producers do a good job particularly with the Druids and the Romans. The mostly British cast does lends gravitas to the stories simply by virtue of their British accents. Episodes run between 40 and 70 minutes.

Steve Carell in “Space Force”

Also worth watching:

Space Force (★★★½, 2020, One Season, Netflix) starring Steve Carell, Lisa Kudrow and John Malkovich. This is essentially “The Office” set at the new Trump-created military branch designed to fight in outer space. Absurdities and wry humor abound. Carell is a pleasure to watch doing just about anything or nothing at all. Carell is playing Steve Carell in the guise of an Air Force General put in charge of creating a fighting space force. Kudrow is in the role of his wife and Malkovich is the head scientist. Half hour episodes.

The Pre-2020 Election Zeitgeist

The Lion or The Lamb?

A Stark Choice for President

This appeared during the last week of October 2020 in various publications and websites.

President Donald J. Trump is annoying, abrasive, irritating and somewhat of a jerk, in other words he’s a typical brash, loud and pushy New Yorker of the kind that was prevalent through much of the 20^th Century, the kind of person who gave New York a bad name. The kind who made most Americans hate New York the way they do Frenchmen in Paris.

New York City was once rife with hungry “take no prisoners” shtarkers (big shots). They were endemic to the garment center, to finance (many are the wolves on Wall Street), to media, entertainment, fine dining, advertising, fashion, sports and real estate. New York didn’t become the biggest and richest city in the nation and one of the most important in the world because of milquetoast middle managers and bureaucrats. Skyscrapers soared in tandem with edifice complexes and outsized egos. You could see the hustle, bustle and jockeying 24/7 in real time. “The city that never sleeps” as Sinatra put it. And Donald Trump is the embodiment of that ethos, of that culture, of that milieu, it suffuses every cell of his DNA.

He has been grating as President these past three and a half years. He’s probably been grating his whole adult life. That’s the nature of entrepreneurs and most particularly of billionaires. They didn’t get to the top of the heap by playing patty-cake or being Mother Theresa. Business in New York and especially real estate development is a gritty, no holds barred hourly slugfest that doesn’t pity the weak, the meek or the failed. There are no trophies for coming in fifth place. It’s Darwinian to the extreme where only the strongest thrive and rise to ethereal heights. You either get stuff done or you’re road kill and it can happen in a New York minute.

Trump doesn’t know from niceties when he has a job to do or a deadline to meet. It’s all nonstop bare fisted brawl where often you get battered as badly as the guy you’re pummeling. Most Americans born after 1985 have no recollection of these guys but when I was a kid, teenager and young adult they were ubiquitous and if you went to work for some of them you needed to get tough fast and have a thick skin. Work was a four-letter word; you were expected to give 110 percent and fools were not suffered gladly if at all.

For all his gruff manner and bull in the china shop ethos, Trump has gotten a lot of stuff done:

The Economy

On the economic front Trump ignited the biggest boom in decades by lowering personal income taxes for most Americans, slashing corporate taxes and cutting reams of government red tape that impeded business from creating jobs, leading to the lowest unemployment rate since 1969, or, in other words, in most Americans’ lifetimes. More Blacks and Hispanics and women were employed than ever. The percentage of Americans in the workforce was at a big high and believe it or not, the wealth and income gap between rich and poor shrank significantly as those in the lower income brackets saw real wages and the value of their investments rise by several multiples while those at the top experienced little to no growth from 2016-2019. Manufacturing of real things returned to U.S. shores as factories reopened and capital investment grew. Under Trump, America has become energy independent for the first time in 50 years. The stock market hit all-time highs which has a direct impact on nearly all Americans through their pension funds, 401k’s or IRA’s. Residential real estate values had exponential growth. And he was the first President to stand-up to China’s unfair trade relationship with the US which included their wanton theft of American intellectual property. He also renegotiated NAFTA and signed a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico that protects American jobs.

Covid

Regarding the Covid Pandemic, despite some initial fumbling the Trump Administration solved the mask shortage, solved the PPE shortage, solved the ventilator shortage, opened military field hospitals in critically hit cities and states in record time. He also got “Operation Warp Speed” going which has fast-tracked both a vaccine for Covid and needed therapeutic treatments. By barring travel from China on January 31^st (much to the consternation of his critics) and then closing off Europe a few weeks later he probably saved hundreds of thousands if not nearly two million American lives. Original projections were for 2.2 million dead. The roughly 200,000 fatalities are a huge tragedy but without the steps taken by the Administration through May, the numbers would have certainly been far worse. Europe’s fatalities are comparable to those of the US and does anyone really believe only 3,300 people died from Covid in China? The CARES Act pumped $3 Trillion into the economy to keep America afloat. Because of the lockdown some 22 million jobs were lost almost overnight but nearly 12 million have come back in the past two months. Job growth will plateau until there is a vaccine or the disease withers away. The leisure, travel, entertainment, event and dining industries all have taken a horrible blow from lost jobs and these won’t return for a while. But the existential question is “who is best qualified to return us to prosperity and a booming economy?”

The Courts

On the judicial front, Trump has appointed nearly 200 Originalist/Constitutionalist federal judges along with two Supreme Court justices with a third likely on the way. Originalist judges interpret the constitution as the original framers of the constitution intended and do not create new laws and legislate from the bench, thereby upholding the legal traditions that bind our country and government together.

Foreign Policy

The Trump Administration has achieved historic breakthroughs in peace between Israel and other Arab nations for which he’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He also made good on his promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s capital. He also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights from which Syria used to bombard and terrorize Israeli civilians. He wiped out the ISIS “Caliphate,” and has put enormous pressure on the radical Iranian Ayatollahs to stem their nuclear and global terrorist ambitions. He has forced our NATO allies to pay their fair share of defense spending and he’s been disentangling us from never-ending intractable foreign wars, bringing our troops home. He managed to build or strengthen hundreds of miles of border walls and barriers and most significantly, convinced Mexico to post their own troops on the US-Mexican border to stop waves of illegal immigrants from flooding into our country. In a way, Mexico is paying for a human wall.

Veterans and Military Affairs

Trump managed to finally straighten out the disgracefully poor Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals and permit the VA to fire incompetent employees along with allowing veterans to access private healthcare so they don’t have to wait weeks or months for treatment. The military has been fully refunded and is being rebuilt to Reagan-era levels. Our soldiers have received successive pay raises. There are hundreds more accomplishments but space inhibits the ability to list them all.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden is a wonderfully avuncular and pleasant grandfatherly figure who would be soothing to the psyche for the year or two he’d probably last in office. Are you ready for President Kamala Harris? Biden is a lot easier on the ears than Trump but are we voting for “favorite grandpa,” a Homecoming King or student council president or for someone who will get the job done? Biden has promised to raise income taxes, business taxes, estate taxes, capital gains taxes and even create wealth taxes. He has adopted the Bernie Sanders “Green New Deal” which seeks to eliminate fossil fuels in 10 to 15 years and your cars along with it. He’s signed-on to the notion of effectively eliminating private health insurance and private health care for the 180 million Americans who now have it. He’s for defunding the military and he’d roll back Trump policies in the Middle East and China.

In a Biden Administration you’ll have a lot of members from the far left wing of the Democratic Party – people who have been pro-indefinite draconian lockdowns and who have been permitting and abetting the last six months of rioting in Democrat-run cities along with supporting the “defund the police” and other soft on crime policies that have been in vogue in certain trendy circles as of late. They are also for racial preferences, quotas and set-asides as opposed to equality of opportunity, equality before the law and advancement based on merit.

This is an existential choice between two dramatically different visions for our country. We have the lion on one hand and the lamb on the other. For a stronger and more prosperous America we need the lion, even though he roars.

The Covid Zeitgeist -- The China Syndrome

The China Syndrome

Ghosts of Pandemics Past and Affinity for Despotism

(Posted May 7, 2020)

They got a wall in China

It’s a thousand miles long
To keep out the foreigners
They made it strong

-- Paul Simon

There’s an old joke about eating Chinese food that says after you’ve had a big meal, you’re hungry again a half hour later. That may be true for us but probably also for them too because the foods they have an insatiable appetite for can literally kill you. Iguanas, koala bears, pelicans, dogs, cats and especially bats. Eating bats is literally batshit crazy and harvesting bat guano (excrement) to diddle around with the viruses in their feces is probably what has put us in the two-month Corona lockdown and corresponding economic meltdown we’ve been suffering from. Covid-19 is far from the first time we’ve taken a lethal hit from China.

The 20^th Century saw three flu pandemics (aside from regular, seasonal flus) originating from China. Some suspect that the 1917-1918 pandemic originated here although this can’t be conclusively proven. However, origin of the 1957-58 pandemic was most definitely from East Asia. It killed as many as 116,000 in the US out of a population 174.9 million, or nearly half the size of the today’s US population of roughly 330 million, so the proportion of those who were made ill and who perished was higher compared to today’s Covid-19. The country did not shut down even though the mortality rate was 10-times that of the 2009 Swine Flu.

I vividly recall the 1968-69 Hong Kong Flu. It hit the US in the Fall of 1968 and circulated for nearly two years. The CDC says it was an “avian influenza A virus, (H3N2)” and that killed about 100,000 in the US and a million worldwide. The US population was then 200.7 million. I was 10 in 1968 and my whole family was down with it – both my parents, myself and my younger brother. Things were so bad at home that my maternal grandmother came out to care for us. Most of the fatalities, then as now with Covid-19 were comprised of people over 65. This flu is still around today and has never been cured, just contained. The country didn’t close down even though millions were infected and made sick by it.

In 2009 we had the Swine Flu which was projected to be enormously fatal but ended up burning out earlier than expected. A vaccine was only available after the disease had peaked. From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus. The country did not shut down even though nearly 61 million Americans got sick from it.

Even though none of the aforementioned Asian flu pandemics of the 20^th Century killed millions in the US by any stretch of the imagination, US health professionals opted to latch on to hysterical computer models generated in England that estimated 2.2 million people would die here without a national quarantine and lockdown. It was somehow OK for 60 million to get sick from Swine Flu with no media hysterics but not OK for millions to contract Covid-19. Why was that?

Given decades of history on pulmonary and respiratory pandemics and how they were handled here, what was the model our medical, media and political class decided to adopt? Why the Chinese model, of course. Never mind that Chinese infection numbers and information couldn’t be verified and were lied about. Never mind that China, as a totalitarian Communist dictatorship (Communism is self-defined as the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”) can forcibly hermetically seal a city of 11 million (Wuhan) with nary a peep of opposition or information leakage from the people; never mind that China has an extensive history of self-serving deceit and boldfaced deception both at home and abroad, never mind that the Chinese Communist Party would be delighted to see the entire economy of The West crippled or destroyed.

Why use tried and true Western models of disease management when we can ape the bat-loving Chinese? Could it be about power? Power is intoxicating and there’s the old adage that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who is power hungry? Let’s start with many scientists who have gotten drunk on being celebrated and venerated on television and online 24/7. Revenge of the nerds here? Then there are the politicians. No politician wants to be held responsible on election day for two million or even 100,000 deaths, so even though there wasn’t a shred of proof that locking down the country would kill the pandemic, they went that route anyway. Then, once in place, it has morphed from “flattening the curve” of an anticipated spike in hospitalizations which might overwhelm the health system to becoming about stopping the virus altogether (for which there is no cure yet for this or the 1968 flu) and then penultimately, particularly among Democratic governors and mayors, implementation of their progressive agenda by executive fiat under the guise of emergency requirements. With people locked in their homes, this effectively squelches opposition. Finally, the Democratic obsession with defeating Trump and regaining control of The White House is so overwhelming that it’s worth any price – even by plunging the nation into a terrible depression, to create an environment where Trump can be turned out of office and stripped of his signature pre-Covid success of a roaring economy. That pleases the Chinese too because Trump had been pressuring them on trade issues.

Places with enough backbone to stick with Western norms have included Sweden, Hong Kong and South Korea. Millions haven’t died as restaurants, parks, schools and offices have remained open. Twelve states in the US didn’t lock down and they’ve been doing just fine. Interestingly, New York State just announced that in a survey of about 1,200 newly admitted patients at over 100 New York hospitals conducted during the first few days of May that fully 66 percent of new Covid patients had been staying at home, not working (only 17 percent) and not using mass transit. Meaning people have been indoors. So how is staying at home indefinitely helpful? Meanwhile Chinese cities are all open for business and millions aren’t dying.

From Forbes magazine: “In addition to [New Yorkers] mostly coming from their homes, surveyed patients were more likely to be over 51 years old, and either nonessential workers, retired or unemployed. 96 percent of the surveyed patients had co-morbidities, which means nearly all had another chronic medical condition prior to catching coronavirus.” We also know that about eight out of ten deaths associated with Covid-19 in the U.S. have occurred in adults ages 65 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) so why are we locking down all the younger people and prohibiting folks to go to parks and beaches where the sunshine (Vitamin-D) and fresh air will do everyone some good if most hospitalizations come from older people who’ve been staying at home? Maybe it’s a form of China envy for the power grab reasons indicated above?

But taking a clear look at today’s China is helpful. Aside from being an incubator for pandemics, China is a country that just last year put one million of their own citizens in concentration camps just because they were Moslems. China is a country that has been brutally suppressing freedom advocates in Hong Kong. China is country that rattles its sabers, missiles, warships and jet fighters every week against democratic Taiwan, threatening to invade and conquer them militarily. China is the main backer of the nefarious regime in North Korea and helps support Venezuela and Cuba among other bad actors. China is a country that essentially relies on the slave labor of untold millions to produce goods at ridiculously low prices so that Western nations can’t compete and then turns Westerners into consumer vassals – making Western nations utterly dependent on them for essentials including medicines and medical supplies, vitamins, clothing, shoes, hardware, electronics, you name it.

To protect America against the evil depredations of despotic regimes such as China and to ensure peace, freedom and stability in the world we must wean ourselves off the teat of cheap (and often shoddily made) Chinese goods even if we have to pay more for them. Make things in America or in allied nations so that we retain our independence on all levels – and one sure way to put us on that path is to send our young people back to work and back to school now so that as a nation we are not bankrupted, enfeebled and ultimately dominated by malevolent dictators.