I just couldn’t get over the transition to TV: Eliott Gould resembles Alan Alda much more than he does Wayne Rogers, and vice-versa for the late Donald Sutherland.
I’m surprised there’s no mention of Seinfeld, since it was such a big deal in its heyday. I loved it back then, but when I occasionally revisit it via DVD I have mixed feelings.
On the plus side, some of the comedy bits were really good, and still hold up. On the minus side, even back in the day I found Jerry Seinfeld somewhat annoying. His smirky smugness and uncaringly horrible acting were a distraction from what were otherwise great performances by a stellar cast. It was like Seinfeld was just having fun and didn’t give a flying fig how his performance came across. If it had been anyone other than Jerry, he’d have never been hired, or fired after the first episode.
Beyond that, re-watching in later years I’m struck by how pompously self-important the whole thing eventually became. While other comedy shows sought to amuse and entertain, as the seasons progressed Seinfeld seemed increasingly like “Look at us! Look at how cool we are! And we’re gonna give you a new meme to talk about around the water cooler at the office tomorrow – yada yada, not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
I still like it, though, but not with the admiration I had for it in years past.
Considering its ancient vintage, I think The Honeymooners has aged fairly well, mainly because of Jackie Gleason’s comedic genius. There was no real threat of violence. The show made it clear that Ralph and Alice were deeply in love and there was no possibility that Ralph would ever hit Alice, let alone send her “to the moon”. But I agree that in today’s sensitized climate, the mere mention of such a thing wouldn’t go over well.
I don’t think that’s what was happening at all. This sounds like some sort of projection. Now a show like “Slings & Arrows”? That’s super cringe to watch today in how how pompous and smug it was.
I do wonder how our perceptions of actors today colors how we view their works. I know quite a few people who were fans of Joss Whedon who suddenly thought he was a hack when it became common knowledge what an asshole he was.
I don’t think “projection” is the word you’re looking for here. Maybe “bias”? As a former Seinfeld aficionado, I was frustrated by the long delay in releasing the DVDs, presumably because they were milking other sources of revenue (like syndication) for all they could get. And then hearing about Jerry Seinfeld stiffing his fellow actors on well-deserved royalties while he himself became a billionaire. Yeah, I admit to some bias here. The guy’s an asshole for sure.
So it was a first watch as an adult, not a rewatch? That’s interesting. I don’t think I can even imagine what I’d think of the show without the nostalgic coloring of years of having watched it as a kid. I would probably scoff at the notion that a normal human would marry a beautiful witch who can grant his every wish, yet force her to live as a suburban human housewife, not allow her to make him vastly rich and eternally youthful.
Hmm, might make for a good post-- ‘Impressions of old shows you first watched as an adult that most people watched as a kid’. “Why do the women and the rich guy have a full wardrobe if it was only a 3 hour tour? Why doesn’t everybody else just kill the bumbling idiot who keeps ruining their rescue plans?”
Really? I always like to hear avatar / user handle origin stories. What about the Garrison part? I figured you as a fan of the not very notable relief pitcher from the late 80s… 
Darren was an ass, but most of Samantha’s family treated him horribly. I can understand him not wanting to have anything to do with the community of witches and warlocks, where he’d be everybody’s whipping boy.
Not that his normal life was much better. His boss treated him almost as badly as his in-laws.
Yes, it is fair to say it was a first watch and not a rewatch which might make a difference.
Seinfeld largely holds up. Jerry cared enormously about small details of the show and while his acting is not brilliant, the show certainly remains funny. The self-importance of characters was always part and parcel of the humour: from urban cowboys, Peterman’s pomposity, Seinfeld and George and Elaine breaking up with partners over trivial flaws, Kramer’s quirks, eccentric parents and relatives and Newman’s neuroses.
I may not be remembering correctly, but I think most of her family were indifferent to him at worst. MIL Endora was the main one who treated him horribly.
She may have treated him horribly no matter what, being a mortal who married her daughter, but maybe much of it was because he forced her daughter to forsake her witchy nature and live as an ordinary human. Wasn’t that kind of witchist of him?
Endora was the worst, but Sam’s father was condescending, her cousin and uncle delighted in playing tricks on him.
Darren asked Sam to live in his culture, and she agreed willingly. Endora hated Darren just for who and what he was. If anybody was being elitist, it was her.
IIRC seasons 2-4 were the sweet spot, after it went to color but before The Other Darrin/Dick came onboard (D. Sargent simply wasn’t anywhere as good a comic actor as D. York, plus they were recycling scripts by then).
MTV deliberately didn’t play black artists for the first few years, and only relented when Walter Yetnikoff threatened to pull other Columbia artists’ videos unless they’d start playing Michael Jackson’s stuff. The reasoning was that MTV made it to cable stations in middle America first (because of competing cable systems in big cities, folks in West Butthole, Kansas had it a year or two before anyone in NYC or LA) they didn’t want to do anything controvertial to get it yanked. Controvertial like…melanin? There’s a famous interview with Bowie in which he calls out one of the original veejays about it, and the host utterly flounders.
Not to mention the fact that Sam didn’t tell him that she was a witch until after they were married.
IMHO it didnt hold up when first aired, but I am likely in the minority here.
Has Marathon Man been mentioned yet? I rewatched it for the first time in decades and it just seemed like a horrible botch, with 45-year-old Dustin Hoffman being grossly miscast as a 25-year old graduate student. The plot makes almost no sense at all, just one botch after another.
Magnum PI
I’m rewatching the original. I liked it better when I was in college.
The stories seem a bit simplistic now. The constant speedo shots of Tom Selleck seem unnecessary
It’s still a good show. Some episodes dealing with Vietnam Vets PTSD are very good.
The Love Boat. I’ve been binging seasons 1 through 3, from my DVD collection. Haven’t seen it in a few years.
It was total fluff, which is what it was supposed to be. And it was populated by grade B to D actors, plus a few has-beens and never was-es. But they could do their jobs, usually pretty well. Plots were never brain-busting, and there were always plenty of laughs during the show, and “awwws” by the end of the show. Just simple and pleasant entertainment that still holds up.
Awesome movie when drunk.
Horrible movie when sober.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Went to the theater with the kids and wife to see it for Father’s Day.
Holds up 100% 10 out of 10 from me, one of the best movies from the 80’s. Love it.
I watched George Roy Hill’s 1972 Slaughterhouse Five and it’s hard to evaluate, having read the book 4-5 times. I won’t say the movie goes beyond the book as a vehicle for the story itself (unlike The Graduate, which is an excellent movie but just sits stupidly in your lap as a book), but reading it first clears away any distractions of “huh?” as you watch it.
The “unstuck in time” aspect of the story allows the film to run the audio of the historian in the hospital bed next to Billy Pilgrim defending the necessity and justification for the firebombing of Dresden to be run on the video of German children celebrating Mardi Gras a few hours before they’ll be incinerated - harder to watch than it is to read.
Some other ones: watched **Testimony ** on YouTube, with Ben Kingsley as Dimitri Shostakovich, which still resonates, and perhaps, like Slaughterhouse Five, reveals more now than when I first saw it in my twenties.
I watched Ikiru and I’m watching Pather Panchali, and I intend to watch many post-war Neo-Realism film. After WWII, there was a sensation that humanity had emerged victorious, and that was celebrated in humanist cinema across the globe. We even had a go at it: The Last Picture Show is an example of a film whose theme is one of goodwill towards people, for all their faults and smallness.