I tried watching the TV show Soap a few years ago after seeing it on lists of the greatest TV comedies of all time. I couldn’t get past the first few episodes which seemed to consist of extreme mugging by Richard Mulligan and the awkwardly dated treatment of Billy Crystal’s gay character.
I can’t remember if it was one of the mini series that had a very suggestive scene for the time that escaped 11-year-old me but they had one of those scenes where a human girl was standing there staring off into space wearing a sports bra and panties that could be shown on 80s tv as an important visitor chick was walking around her looking her over
another visitor comes by to give her a message and they’re chatting while the first one starts subtly running her fingers over the human girl’s shoulders and she says to the messenger “Want to join me in a bit ?”
messenger replies with a smirk "No thanks I don’t play with my food " …as she leaves
i liked Mash becuase my dad was in Vietnam from 67-71 and even though he wasn’t anti-war he understood the struggle and he loved explaining all the somewhat useless minutiae that was everyday routine …
I continued with the subsequent TV series, but my mom walked in on an episode in which Michael Ironside was undergoing some kind of brainwashing torture, and I was henceforth forbidden to watch it.
If MI wasn’t a con game, then neither was The Sting. Not every episode was a con, but many were. Go rewatch The Mind of Stefan Miklos, The Photographer, Flight, The Glass Cage, The Heir Apparent, Submarine…I could go on.
,I haven’t watched it in a long ime, but I recall many episodes that had no suggestion of a con at all. People broken out of prison in clever ways, treasures retrieved, things diverted. All done with substitutions, disguises, clever devices, and those wonderful noiseless power tools they used (I want a set of those). But not cons.
The first two MI films are pretty awful. Skillfully executed, but shoddy scriptwriting. Four and Five are, to me, two of the best action films of the last twenty years. But yeah, aside from disguises and the concept of the IMF agency, there’s very little connecting the stories to the original concept.
Those I mentioned are classic cons. Give em a try. You’ll like them!
In The Photographer, they convince a guy whose house has a bomb shelter that WWIII has started, very cleverly. Flight convinces a guy he crash landed on a forgotten island penal colony, in The Glass Cage they convince the notRussians that they broke a guy out of their impenetrable cell by … not breaking him out (it’s quite clever). In Submarine they convince a guy he is on a submarine (while in a warehouse) run by leftovers from the third Reich. And in the best, they try to convince super genius spy Stefan Miklos (probably an equal to Phelps) that the false information he has is true, by giving him just enough info to draw the wrong conclusion. Too few clues, and he’ll miss it. Too many, or too obvious, and he’ll know he’s being conned.
I tried to watch Miami Vice because a podcast I listen to (The Rewatchables) absolutely LOVES that show and they’ve covered a few episodes.
While the look is iconic, the stories all seem severely under-baked. Stuff resolves either entirely too easily or ends in a really underwhelming gun fight. For every one good episode there was 3-4 mediocre or boring ones. Also there was an episode that dealt with child pornographers where the cops don’t even mention the criminals child stuff, instead they’re just entirely interested in nabbing the criminals because one of their underage stars ODed on cocaine.
What about when Castillo faced off against a bad guy holding a machine gun - while only wielding a samurai sword!
but did anybody wonder how a Black man could operate in all-white country?
while I loved the show, sometimes it became unreasonable–Tubbs wearing double-breasted suit in 100 degree Miami, and then carrying a shotgun under it??
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, Bill Cosby LPs (before the scandal broke), Richard Pryor, even Robin Williams: none held up for me.
I loved The Six Wives of Henry VIII and the Peter Wimsey series with Ian Carmichael. The production values are noticeably worse than they are now. Even my favorite episodes only had one or two enjoyable moments. Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R seems overblown. I guess she was acting for the stage while the rest of the cast were acting for the studio.
My library has the series so I watched it for the first time. The one I most wanted to see was “Usher II”. Mediocre. Sadly, almost no episodes were up to that standard. The IMDb ratings are lousy and accurate. But I liked “Banshee”, which was based on his experiences with John Huston while writing the screenplay for Moby Dick. Casting Peter O’Toole as Huston helped a lot.
I didn’t watch it when it was new. I’ve watched a few episodes now and I like the style, but it seemed that Mrs. Peel could never quite handle her final assailant and Steele had to come to her aid.
Good one.
I like rewatching twilight zone mostly out of nostalgia but they do not hold up.
Hard to believe that Zulu is 60 years old. It’s held up extremely well (with help from a gorgeous colour restoration). As has Michael Caine!
An addition to the list. Clint channeled Huston in White Heart Black Hunter, Albert Finney in Annie, and Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood. And probably more I don’t know about.
Not even close for me. It was cringeworthy. The bad jokes are even worse now. What was topical humor then isnt today. Lots of smoking on stage. Martin acting stupid.
To me, they mostly do.
I remember Jon Stewart introducing George Carlin at some tribute event, saying “Carlin, Pryor and Bruce were the holy trinity for comedians, the rest of us are just followers.” I still like a lot of Carlin’s stuff, before his shows became him just listing things and calling it a routine (his later work is truly the “We Didn’t Start The Fire” of standup). I’ve watched some Richard Pryor standup and listened to a few Lenny Bruce records, and to my ears there are barely any actual laughs to be found.
As for the others you listed, I remember wearing out my cassette of The Best of Bill Cosby when I was a kid, and I guess it was fine for comedy recorded in the late sixties/early seventies, would likely seem pretty bland today. Robin Williams was utterly exhausting to listen to. Hearing a routine once was fine, even though he’d fall back on “voice of mincing gay man” way too often, but his stuff got exponentially less engaging on repeat exposure. I had the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack, which interspersed his routines from the movie between tracks. I heard those bits often enough to be able to do them from memory.
My gripe exactly. If they want me to watch them, they’ll find a way to scrub them of all allusions to M:I. Who knows? They may be perfectly serviceable and enjoyable films with engaging stories to tell.
You realize that at this point, more time has passed between the latest movie and the first one, than between the first movie and the series. The movie series is very much a thing of its own, and the only nostalgia it cares about is with itself.