T-M-I from T-I-M

Mr. Robot is Art at the Highest Form (and helps me be ok being weird)

Mr. Robot final review:

 

I finished the final episode of the season and show of Mr. Robot last night. And since last night I was absolutely streaming in tears at the end I waited until today to write about it. Truth be told what I really wanted last night was like 5 or 6 people to just talk about it with and probably shed some tears together.

 

I won’t spoil too much of it because if you haven’t watched it I SO recommend you try it. Admittedly I was hooked from the very beginning.

 

In 4 seasons, Mr. Robot was art at the highest form. I discovered last night that the writer/creator of it Sam Esmail has social anxiety disorder and founded a failed start up during the boom and decided to dedicate himself to writing and directing.

 

After several other failures, he hit the financial, spiritual, artistic and emotional jackpot with Mr. Robot. The premise is straightforward.

 

A socially anxious programmer (write what you know!) starts with a life at work and an outside hacker/Batman/Dexter (without the bloody killing mostly) existence of taking on evil people and evil companies. I readily admit that I’m a total sucker for computer nerdy empowered, cool stories (I LOVED Sneakers back in the day).

 

Rami Malek was literally made for this role playing Eliot. Over the 4 seasons, he demonstrated the range and depth to properly portray someone who is weird and powerful.

 

There are a variety of characters throughout the show (a slick and disturbing CTO Tyrell, a complex and badass agent Dominique, a cross dressing angel of death Whiterose, the incredible Fernando Vera who is a gang leader and even a character named Leon who no joked is played by Joey Bada$$ who is awesome and exactly a badass) that in my experience have the same kind of likeability/hateability of characters from Tarantino movies or the TV series Fargo from the Coen Brothers.

 

There is only one character in my mind who is way below the standard and unfortunately she’s central named Angela, the love interest of the Eliot. She's a weak actor and hard to connect to. She’s nicely offset by his sister Darlene who is spectacular. She is strong and both repelling and inviting.

 

The show does come hard and fast with topics and perspectives so I really needed to be on top of it to know what’s happening.

 

The first season is beyond spectacular. Seasons 2-3 had some excellent moments and was generally really good. Season 4 was phenomenal.

 

But here’s the big payoff:

 

I think, increasingly, entertainment is I hope, headed towards a future where it takes on the latent cruel and sometimes disastrous impact of childhood wounds. I think entertainment will increasingly take on mental illness in a way that is direct and real.

 

It’s a dark subject that feels really lonely and after watching the show it feels a little less so. Having been called weird more times in my life than I care to mention, the powerful message throughout helped me make sense of what that means.

 

The show portrays an inner reality manifested (real and unreal) in an outer existence. I’m getting more convinced every day that there are more of us who face this and want to see real, engaging entertainment that tells those stories and talks about it in a real way.

 

Suffice to say the end of it last night brought sooo many of the subjects to the forefront. And as I sobbed as the show ended in such a meaningful way I turned off the tv and kept crying for a bit and then eventually stopped and just sat there.

 

I sat in appreciation of the magnificent work of art and in deep gratitude that in my mind we are in a golden age of Television entertainment. There is more and better programming than ever.

 

And thank God almighty that someone in power at USA said yes to this quirky idea and this magnificent tale. I’m a better person for having been along for the ride.

The TV Series Euphoria was sort of euphoric

After watching the entire first season of Euphoria on HBO I felt compelled to write up my reaction and review of it.  Partly because I think more people (particularly parents) should watch and partly because I need to process what I saw.

I’ll say this upfront.  It’s not a lighthearted, fun look at life.  It’s deep, powerful, confronting and magnificent at times.  And, in some ways like 13 Reasons Why I needed to catch myself a bit between episodes because the ride is wild.

If you’re willing to take the ride and see it for what it is, the ride is fantastic.

The basic premise is a social circle of high schoolers is followed throughout the season.  The show is visually exquisite.  The characters have an interesting mix of full on make up and outfits that remind of the incredible film Party Monster, colorful and extreme at times.  And it was cool how seeing characters both in the full get up vs not at all helped set the story in different emotional contexts.

The drug use and sexual content is super raw and in my estimation overexaggerated with a purpose.  It does help create more suspense when a character faces a situation (like a drug dealer cutting off an addict) or a person (an abuser meeting who has someone cornered). 

I think it glamorizes the drug use too much, similar to the excellent movie Go at times, but more intense.  It doesn’t really do enough to show what that path means in the long term (usually death, jail, streets, etc.)  And while it accurately shows the reality of the shortcomings of participation in paths to sobriety, given the audience, I think it would have really helped to go deeper into what it means to really live sober. 

I think it portrays a LOT of sexual subjects that range from ordinary to taboo.  I wish it would have somehow woven in a real, honest discussion of what that range means.  Sex is way too often in the dark and is an expression of the unresolved issues in our lives. 

I think this show given it’s edge could have done a lot to explore that in a way that could perhaps illuminated that path to approval and acceptance.  There was one character (noted below) who did get deeper into taboo but mostly presented it and didn’t really explore it and bring it more into the light.

Most of the teenage characters have an emotional range that is explored in a way that feels right for a teenager but again exaggerated.  One of the core messages I got from Euphoria as a parent is:  In order for me as a parent to have a real relationship with trust, accountability and authenticity I need to have worked to clear my own issues.

The courage to stand in the face of the emotional volatility or withdrawal of the teenage characters is not easy.  And there are lots of examples of the teenagers getting around it.  I think the parents portrayed generally show many of the shortcomings of an adult life lived without really getting healthy. 

For example a Dad is living a seriously sexual dark double life and I cringed at the dubious life lived as a lie and the damage it does to his son.  Both “present” magnificently and live destructively.

But that’s my point about the show, it’s a relatively niche exaggeration of a core point.  When we as parents live a lie, it’s passed to our children.  And the heartache to see that when the son (played by Jacob Elordi), who is enormous, suffer because he knows he is impacted by the damage but has no model to get out of it, it’s brutal.

The way social media and phones are presented as both a connector and destructor are in my estimation nearly perfect.  I prefer that they let things play out by showing the text and image interactions.  That feels real. 

Personally I would like to have seen more attention paid to somehow modeling a way some of these kids take responsibility for where they are.  The show I think while accurately portrays the damage passed on does very little to show at what point does a teenager see that they have agency and responsibility regardless of what’s modeled.

But I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be compelling.

The main character named Rue is played by a woman named Zendaya and she is nothing short of magnificent in her role.  She plays the exaggerated inner life of an emotionally confused teenager who tries to use drugs to attend to her turmoil.  She literally jumps off the screen in most of her scenes. 

Zendaya’s love interest/best friend Jules (played by Hunter Schafer) was also impossible not to notice when they were on the screen.  Admittedly, I didn’t know until my niece informed me that Hunter plays a transgender character.  I can’t tell you if I would have seen or experienced her differently had I known that, but there was an obvious plot point I missed.

Finally, the main drug dealer (played by Angus Cloud) was terrific as well.  He genuinely seemed to embody the idea that even people who do massive damage by virtue of what they do try in some cases to do the right thing.  At times, I wanted him to do more and be more forceful but he couldn’t quite cross the line.  It was fascinating to see the depiction of a person who was the conduit for damage seem to confusingly care about the person he was damaging.

The overall arcs of some of the characters were hard to make sense of.  One of the young women goes into a sexual vortex to find her power only to by the end of the season seem most fulfilled by leaving it behind. 

Watching the show, for me, the high point was an entire episode set at a Carnival.  It was visually stunning and the plot lines and reveals that occurred in that context were fast and furious.  I felt like I was on the edge of my seat as it played out and is one of the best episodes of television I’ve seen in a long time.

In the end it felt sort of euphoric to watch Euphoria.  Meaning, I enjoyed the trip through our inner emotional worlds  Increasingly I think that's what most art/media etc is about.  This is someone exploring their inner world through the channels of these compelling characters.  It's worth it, if you can make it through.

Vietnam Documentary by Burns & Novick Cuts Deeply

I finished Ken Burns & Lynn Novick’s documentary on Vietnam and it was absolutely gripping.  I’m publishing a post that maybe 2 or 3 people will read and maybe none will read all the way through. 

When something hits me like this, I guess I want to put something out in public just to know I did.  If you have any desire to watch it, please do and consider not reading this because it gives a lot of it away.

I was stunned by how little I knew about the war that my Uncle served in.  I remember asking him 15 years ago why we went, he said “If we didn’t who would have?”.  I would have a different perspective today on his response and WAY more compassion. 

It’s ironic that in 2001 I visited Vietnam, where I clearly stood out.  And yet, every single person I met was kind, curious and generous.  It’s memorable in that the people are nicer than maybe any other foreign country I’ve ever visited personally (Australia is a close second). It's hard to understand hearts that big given what happened.

For me the most powerful and insightful interviews were with John Musgrave.  His riveting points which willingly let the viewer into completely what he felt about it all was beyond stunning (and he walked me through his own changing perception too). 

That being said, the interviews with Vincent Okamoto, Bao Ninh, Roger Harris and Nguyen Ngoc were incredible too.  There’s something uncommon about people who can hold both the clarity of duty and the bloody pool of pain of the war simultaneously in a discussion.

Understanding that even if Burns’ desire was to have a balanced view, it’s hard to believe that some endorsed narrative wasn’t unconsciously or consciously there, here are a few reflections:

• I have a completely new perspective of the men and women who served for the US in Vietnam. At one point we had a stunning 500,000+ troops there (about 20% were actively fighting according to the doc).  The Vietnamese more or less did not want them there.  The majority of the troops did not speak the language. 
  
  Enemies were woven into those who weren’t in the population.  How do you distinguish which is which?  Many of these kids (and they were kids) were 18-20 years old.  They were still developing their moral compasses. 
  
• I learned two unforgettable lessons that I never considered about fighting a war.
  
  First, that life or death fighting can be a high. According to him (I can’t remember which one said it), the situation more or less requires your absolute and total attention.  There’s nothing else on your mind.  Before and after you face the depression and agony of it, during it that’s gone.  It sounds exactly like a drug.
  
  Second, was from Mr. Okamoto who talked about when he was shot and he thought for sure he would die.  At that point, he said, nothing else really matters other than inflicting as much damage on the enemy trying to finish the job as possible.  He talked about the incredible freedom of that feeling.
  
• I cried hardest in the last episode where they documented the Vietnam war memorial and how it was created. There’s a moment where one veteran who initially hated it ultimately went to visit it because his roommate, who was killed, was being honored and he had to go.  His transformation about his perspective on it was deeply moving.
  
  Related to that Nancy Bieberman’s apology of how she protested the war in that same episode was heart wrenching.  It’s fascinating to see the perspective changes documented.
  
• I don’t believe that war crimes were happening as often and uniformly widespread as I thought before I watched it. I do believe that a huge percentage of those that fought witnessed some version of war crime during that time.   
  
  I know now that there was a massacre at My Lai where between 350-500 people died including many women and children.  I learned that had Hugh Thompson, Jr and his crew hadn’t landed it would have gotten worse.  He got in between the soldiers and the civilians and warned the soldiers that if they kept shooting civilians he’d start shooting them.
  
• Almost every person interviewed (on both sides) had friends who were killed virtually right next to them. I don’t know how an 18-25 year old (barely a year and half older than my 16 year old daughter) can see this for one year or two and ever really leave it behind.
  
  The two things they said and in some ways repeated is you NEVER leave your wounded and you ALWAYS go back for the dead.  I will never see Vietnam Veterans in the same light.
  
• One chilling part was when Mr. Musgrave said that he killed “one human being” and suffered from the guilt and remorse of that. It was his first kill.  From that point forward he spoke about how he thought of killing as wasting the enemy by calling them the widely used slurs for Vietnamese people.  It felt like that was how he made sense of it.
  
  Honestly, I know people today who can’t tell the difference between a Korean, Japanese and Thai person (who each have features that are nearly unmistakably different).  So I wouldn’t be surprised if at some level many of the population looked the same to them.  I wonder if that changed their perspective about killing although I don’t recall that exactly being said in the documentary.
  
• The inclusion of many North Vietnamese in the documentary was brilliant. It humanized the enemy and on many occasions helped me understand why they fought as they fought.  One particular interview about how a soldier would fight, walk 100’s of kilometers home then not long after go back to fight.
  
  While our 18 year olds looked fresh faced, the pictures of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers were stunningly young.  Their relentlessness and outmaneuvering in the face of the bombing devastation was incredible.
  
  It was revealing when one of them talked about how the US going after their wounded was an opportunity for them to kill more soldiers.
  
  At one point a highly placed officer in the US army said that he wished he had 200 of them to fight for him.
  
• It was illuminating to learn that before Vietnam we widely believed that our government didn’t lie. Seeing how presidents Kennedy, Johnson & Nixon in their own ways misled us about the war was chilling. 
  
  The documentary does a terrific job of showing just how much the governments on all sides were lying.  They all had vested interests in making sure it looked like their cause was just and they were in fact winning.  
  
• Richard Nixon’s motivation was almost singularly to get elected and to control the narrative. While the other presidents tried to hide facts, based on the evidence presented (again which is incomplete but felt representative) Nixon was an outright liar.  His lying about the bombing in Cambodia and his role in the South Vietnamese backing out of peace talks right before the 1968 election were particularly egregious.
  
  His conversations with Kissinger where he all but admitted that he knew the war wasn’t winnable but he wanted to time the outcome to give him the best chance of being elected were a heartwrenching look into politics.  I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if many of our current politicians use some form of this as an approach.
  
• Nixon won in 1968 with 43% of the vote and George Wallace (a known segregation champion) won 13% of the vote….of the DEMOCRATS! Nixon then destroyed his competition in the ’72 election.  Like him or not, he was a brilliant, dirty politician.  His silent majority speech was frighteningly savvy.
  
• Over a MILLION Vietnamese died in that war (estimates vary, this is the low end). Our bombings absolutely decimated the country and took a LOT of innocent lives.
  
• I finally learned what the Tet Offensive was. I literally didn’t know what happened, now I do.
  
• There was a wide group of people who ultimately opposed the war. I have a feeling that most of them peacefully protested the war.  The documentary seems to show that they mostly weren’t so peaceful. 
  
  I was astonished at the HUGE numbers of people who protested.  It reminds me that when there is a clear, simple, common cause, people can get behind it.
  
• I learned there was a group called the Weathermen who more or less looked to create conflict. They were widely unwelcome to the movement because it gave the pro-war side something to point to as it being a problem and detracted from the effort.  Makes me see Antifa as something that while it’s understandable it may not ultimately be productive.
  
• I learned that like today there were plenty of people who felt differently about the same issue. They supported war and importantly supported our troops there and home.  Trying to bridge the two groups is virtually impossible.
  
• There is a difference between watching a movie and watching a thorough documentary. Admittedly, much of my perspective on the war came from movies like Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Deer Hunter and many more.  For me there is a distinct difference between hearing it from people who actually went through it rather than people playing characters that may have gone through it or some combination of those that did. 
  
  For example, as brutal as the movie was, the scenes from the POW’s in Deer Hunter didn’t match the actual stories from POW’s.  There’s almost a distance I can create between a movie and an experience.
  
  It also dawns on me that if hearing the experience from someone who went through affects me differently (and perhaps more disturbingly) than a movie then certainly actually going through it would be WAY more damaging.  I know that sounds basic, but it’s a realization that I had about the hell of war.
  
  And on a side note, Donald Trump’s comment about John McCain as  POW not being a winner was reprehensible.  I can’t honestly imagine how that must have felt for the hundreds of men who endured torture and unspeakable treatment as POW’s.
  
• The last episode which documents how we pulled out of Vietnam was beyond difficult to watch. The hopeless families desperate to get out as the North Vietnamese army invaded was terrible in the context of our broken promise to help them came to life, a promise that we probably should never even have made.
  
• I’ve come to a point that I think people who are making decisions on war should only be people who really understand war. And I think the only ones who REALLY understand war are those that have been in it.  It chills me to think that there are people making real decisions about war who don’t know the horror it involves.
  

More than anything else I felt tremendous compassion for the people fighting on both sides of the war, it was horrific. 

I bristle at times when people say learn your history or your doomed to repeat it.  I feel like it’s more of sentence to keep doing the same things.  Like there’s not enough room to clearly see the present moment.  This documentary certainly squarely challenged my position.

I’m irreversibly changed forever having watched it in ways that I’m not even aware of yet.

Siobhan's Cooking Club

Folks, it doesn't get much better than this.  One of my daughter's friends is a serious foodie at only 10 years old.

So passionate is she, that she's put together the maiden episode of the web show "Siobhan's Cooking Club".  Pay particular attention to the background involvement of her family walking by, etc. 

She's quite the foodie and most certainly quite the gal.  Enjoy!!!

Siobhan's Cooking Club