Tag: entertainment

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I have to confess I enjoyed the TV series — Reacher. The big man is fun to watch as he fearlessly takes on all comers and, no matter how outnumbered he is, he always comes out on top — usually after killing a shit load of people. He is tough, he is rule breaker, he is smart, he is cool, he disrespects all authority figures, he speaks softly and carries a big stick. He is everything we imagine our macho men should be. So not terribly realistic but, come on, it can be good television.

Since I liked Reacher, I was willing to take a chance on Neagley. Neagley was a member of Reacher’s crew but now works as a private detective in Chicago. I was skeptical whether Neagley was strong enough character for her own series. She was a good second banana to Reacher but her own show, I don’t know. I needed to be convinced.

Surprisingly the best part of the show is the character of Neagley. Maria Sten does an excellent job of making Neagley a believable but damaged character. The show delves into her tough cold exterior and tries to understand how she got the way. A good portion of the the series involves her trying to figure out why she doesn’t like to be touched. The show also connects her investigation of the death of a friend to her own personal trauma.

Neagley gathers a band of renegades to help her investigate the cult her friend was involved in. All seem foolishly willing to risk their lives trying to get to the bottom of her friend’s death and their back stories are interesting enough to keep me watching. Then, inexplicably, the show goes into a killing spree that defies believe.

It isn’t so much that people are killing and getting killed that is to be expected in a detective show. It is the volume of people engaged in both that becomes a cause for disbelief.

Spoiler Alert: Almost every lead character and important supporting character gets to kill someone at some point. And, even those who are new to murder, take to it with relish by the end. Give them a gun, take them to a shoot out and their guns are blazing away without nary a thought. And so many of the murders happen in front of room full of people. One man is shot in a room full of policeman, the cult members stone one of their leaders at a cult meeting of about 30 people, and a billionaire murders his lackey in front of his staff. No one seems to be much bothered by it.

Supporting characters left and right just remove the bodies. The idea that the leaders of the cult would be OK with testing drugs on their fellow cult members and when these drugs turned deadly, which happened quite frequently, they chopped up the dead bodies, put them into bags and disposed of the evidence. Really? No one thought this was a bad idea. I find that difficult to believe.

Then the Swedish businessman who was paying for the dangerous drug to be tested on these poor cult members decides there is too many witnesses to the cult killings. He decides to kill the entire cult to cover up his excesses. Except he has to hire a para-military group to do the massacre. Isn’t he creating even more witnesses? It just is so unbelievable. There is too many conspirators and too many victims to make this believable.

The villains are all caricatures of villains — the crazy cult leader who sleeps with all the women in the cult and then rubs the cuckold’s nose with their wife’s infidelities, the businessman who cares so much about money that he is willing to kill an entire cult if it stands in his way and a business lackey, so lacking in morals and too willing to please his boss, who incorporates murder into his plans in order to get his product developed. Huh?

You might give it a gander but what started out as a fairly serious investigation of trauma and a person trying to overcome it turns into a cartoonish pile of bodies with villains who twirl their mustaches.

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I have already expressed my shock in seeing Kanye West’s wife near naked body at the Grammys. The bigger problem with Bianca Censori’s display of flesh is the attention it is grabbing from a compliant press. Since people are shocked, they are talking about it. I, writing about it now, am part of the problem. I apologize. It is just too big of a juicy target to ignore and I can’t help myself which is also part of the problem.

It is a self-replicating problem. Famous people know that they will get press if they do something shocking. The papers, because they think people will read it, publish the scandalous story. I, because it is a scandalous story, read it. Once the scandal has drained every bit of media attention, a new attention seeking celebrity enters the fray.

First, and most importantly, it is about absolutely nothing other than Kanye West’s need for publicity. He knows how to create controversy and he did it. But what now, other than a few more days of Kanye making the headlines, is this about?

This trivial event, also, reveals how sadly out of touch Hollywood and the Media is with the rest of the country. It’s both titillating and boring. Kanye has become so lame, so desperate for attention that he will ask his wife to expose herself in front of millions. The media will roll out all the really important people to talk about the controversy. Opinions will churn for days to come but nobody outside the environs of Hollywood much cares.

But West, Hollywood and the Media think we do. This has long been an explanation for the sensationalist press. It isn’t our fault. We are giving the public what they want. They want to see people behaving badly so we, wishing we could report on the serious issues of the day but also needing to make money, will report about it. We aren’t the villain here, the public is.

I am not sure what to do here. I understand. If perusing the headlines and you give me a choice about reading about the problems in the Middle East or a naked celebrity, I’m afraid I am going to choose the naked celebrity every single time. Between my need to be entertained and the media’s need to make money, I am stumped on how to proceed.

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Bianca Censori, Kanye West’s wife, appeared nude at the Grammys last nights. And everybody is “shocked.”

Of course, everybody is far from shocked. Given the arc of Grammy’s fashion, nudity had to come into play eventually and so it has. People say shocked because there isn’t really another word for the feeling one has of seeing a naked woman married to a powerful man coming to a public event in nothing. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how people can honestly be shocked in a world where there is 24hours a day cable television. Once I saw rimming on the White Lotus, I realized anything was possible. There is really very little that can be described as shocking anymore.

The problem with shocking people is that celebrity culture has upped the game so much that more and more flesh needed to be shown in order to count as shocking. A revealing nightgown just wouldn’t cut it anymore when the goal was the headlines West was after. Anyone can do a revealing nightgown. Kanye had to come up with something really big in order to top previous daring fashion choices. You have to give West credit, he managed to pull it off. He wanted to “shock” the denizens of celebrity culture and he succeeded. They claim to be “shocked.” Kanye, Mission Accomplished.

In the process, though, I wonder how anyone can really claim to be shocked by much of anything. If at each celebrity event, people are waiting to be shocked by what people are wearing, then the word shocked has become so debased it is meaningless.

In the meantime, West, ever the game changer, has forced the issue in such a way that the only direction to go is showing less flesh. I mean no flesh if at all possible. Mark my words burkhas and old fashion nun’s habits will be the next big fashion statement. It will be shocking, right?