When?! (Oh, and some Soon and Now, too) - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

     Another week where my attentions are all over the place. I aspire to reach a point where I handle such things more sensibly.

     Before the middle of March, the COVID-19 situation shut down production on pretty much everything. This has meant that many ongoing series have had to choose between shortened seasons, improvising season-enders from episodes not originally intended to carry that burden, most likely adding the originally-planned episodes to the following season, or indefinitely delaying the back half of the season.
   Shows that have already been renewed for an additional season had an arguably easier time of the decision, as they knew they had a space to shift plot points and key scenes into, as needed.     One of the series I've long followed, Supernatural (CW), was deep into production of its 15th and final season when the world fell apart.This 20-episode season (already down 2 to 3 from a normal season) is set to be its last, with cast and crew having made the decision well back into the previous season. The final two episodes didn't even begin filming, and post-production work on the last few that were hasn't happened. Only 13 episodes made it to air by March 23rd. As with so much of the world, it's on a wait-and-see basis as to when production will resume and the remaining seven episodes will be scheduled.

   This tale, focusing on Sam & Dean Winchester, monster-hunting brothers from a family line of monster-hunters, has been going since 2005. With those leads and some from behind the scenes having labored with this for so many years, the bonds between them, and with their fan base, remain strong. With this final season being built on the ultimate struggle against a truly Supreme opponent, it seems oddly right that out here in our world there's so much, from COVID-19 to this being an election year where so much is teetering on the edge of an abyss, that has the feel of an apocalypse.
  Knowing that the resumption will only speed us to an ending, I'm comfortable with this being drawn out. I'm in no hurry to say goodbye. I expect that as production eventually resumes, the CW will rerun the season so far such that it can then smoothly roll to the finale. In the meantime, seasons 1-14 are over on Netflix. Ample cyclical plot elements to draw detractors, but then again most things that inspire affection in some will do that. Nothing outside of air and water is for everyone.

  One show, also in a heroic adventure mode and also stepping into its final season, is Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC) That returns for the start of its seventh (and, again, final) season next Wednesday at 10 PM Eastern.
  I don't think many could long protest with a straight face that were the show not tied from the start into Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, and if Disney didn't also own ABC, that there's no way this show would have gotten anywhere near seven seasons. An effects-heavy, scripted affair with a fairly large cast, it never drew the ratings necessary to justify its continued existence to the guys in Accounting. Maybe once it's all over, I'll eventually want to go back and rewatch the series. I suspect it'll eventually land on the Disney+ platform for smoothest and easiest access. Maybe by then they'll even have gotten their curation game together by then, so as to offer their subscribers the option of moving through the various shows, movies and extras in timeline order.
   Still, the series kicks off its final season next Wednesday, picking up where desperate measures had left the team at the end of season 6: Escaping into time.
   The team finds itself in 1931, in a mission to change the past and save the future.

   Time travel is rarely used well as a plot point, and I don't have any serious hope that this will come out as a shining example of success. As one can see from the trailer, the show's gotten about as arch and "comic booky" as it can in the absence of brightly-colored costumes. By this point - and, arguably, this has been the case for most of the show's run - they haven't been producing shows intended to recruit new fans. This series exists primarily to service a larger storyline, and the fans of that story.
   As I look at my DVR pre-sets for the coming week, I'm reminded that I'm continuing to enjoy (all times Eastern):
  The third season of Killing Eve (AMC/BBC America, Sundays 9pm). Recent episodes of which have tended to focus on a single character to the exclusion of nearly all the others. It works for me, but I could see where someone might have felt thrown a little by a recent episode which didn't involve a single scene for the titular Eve.
  Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (Showtime, Sunday 10 pm). All in all enjoying it, though I still think that the supernatural elements are something of an unnecessary cheat, potentially taking some characters at least a little off the hook.
 Rick and Morty (Cartoon Network, Sunday 11:30 pm) The back half of season 4 continues to be entertainingly convoluted, each episode meriting several rewatchings in order to appreciate the many details.
  Creepshow (AMC, Monday 10 pm): This anthology series has been nicely handled so far. This week's stories are to be "The Companion" and "Lydia Layne's Better Half", neither of which I have any particular expectations of.
 What We Do In the Shadows (FX, Wednesday 10 pm): This second season continues to be great fun.Before wrapping things this week, I want to point out several of the movies scheduled on Turner Classic Movies, which I know many cable packages have as part of a basic tier.
  Whenever one of those absurd "if you had to choose one..." questions comes up concerning one channel to watch if the tv were to be stuck on a single channel, TCM has been my surest choice. I've seen enough to know that there are interesting aspects to almost everything they show, even if it may require a little digging behind the scenes. It's with that in mind that you remember while looking through the mentions I make here, that I'm well aware I'm skipping over much worthwhile fare. I can assure you, if you look through their listings you'll repeatedly look at what I mention below and wonder aloud how I could be mentioning X while saying nothing about A, B or C.
With the Memorial Day weekend theme, there's more than a few with war themes - not a huge draw for me in and of itself - but plenty of odd items, too.  (Again, all times Eastern.)  
  Tonight at 8 is something that I know wears out its welcome pretty quickly for me, but maybe I haven't been drinking enough. It's 1967's Rankin Bass, stop-motion puppet musical, 1967's Mad Monster Party.

   I'll add that this has an adjunct to last week's post about movies I primarily remember because they were a disappointment to someone. In this case, it was me. I think I saw this when I was 10 or 11 - whenever it cycled onto tv - and someone had only just mentioned it to me by referencing several of the characters.

Saturday at 4am David Lynch's 1977 oddity, Eraserhead.  It's one of those films I don't believe I've ever heard a middle-of-the-road reaction to. Usually it's either dismissal as trash or exalting as landmark cinema.

 Edward Zwick's Glory (1989) shows up at 9:30 am Saturday. With Matthew Broderick as a Civil War officer offered command of the Union's first all-black regiment. Also with Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman co-starring.

    Saturday night at 8, is the classic Humphrey Bogart/Infrid Bergman wartime romance, Casablanca (1942). One of the first things that comes to mind whenever this film comes up is how so many of the people involved with it, and the studio folks, dismissed the film while it was in production. There were even some who worried it would damage their careers.

 Sunday at 4:30 pm is The Sand Pebbles (1966) one of the films my mom thought very highly of, and recommended to me on several occasions. Being a snide and cynical teenager when she started to bring it up to me in the late '70s, I was taking the quickest available routes to dismissal. In this case, I quickly noticed that the cast included Richard Crenna, who in 1978 was the star (well, not the titular one) of the tv movie Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell.That immediately became the go-to point of ridicule, such that it was many years before I got around to watching what she'd recommended.
  There are so many memories of snap dismissals I made over the years, and they bubble up to haunt me to this day. Oh, I spent so much time being an asshole.

Monday, Memorial Day itself includes a back-to-back threesome of WWII-based star vehicle films that can lure in even me. Where Eagles Dare (1969), The Great Escape (1963), and The Dirty Dozen (1967.)

  Tuesday morning at 7:45 is the a very modestly-budgeted British film about the sinking of the Titanic, A Night To Remember (1958), that I would gladly watch again twice before subjecting myself to the 1997 film ever again.

  As I look on through the remainder of the week, I'm reminded again that this really is a wonderful channel, catering to a wide variety of tastes. If you have it as part of your cable feed you could do much worse than to spend a little time scrolling through the listings and using the 'Net to look up some details on anything that looks interesting.
   That's more than enough for this week. I hope you're able to manage some sense of a holiday weekend, wherever you are. Where I am, we're still largely under stay at home orders, with masks and social distancing protocols officially in play wherever one might go. We're set to have rain through Saturday, but we have an enclosed yard where I'll be aiming to get some grilling done Sunday and/or Monday. In the meantime, there's no shortage of things to watch. The "C7 posts by Author" take you to a page where you can scroll down to links to all of my previous posts, nearly all of which are to things you can find on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc.)
   Take care, and stay well.                     Mike