Family Values Tour: The Goldbergs
The soapy family values that MJFS can’t help but avoid are on full display in The Goldbergs. For weeks I’ve been seeing Facebook ads proclaiming, “Liked The Wonder Years? You’ll love The Goldbergs,” and reviews have strangely lumped the two together as well. I have no idea why. Aside from the presence of the protagonist narrating the show as an older man, I have to say that I have seen The Wonder Years, and you, Goldbergs, are no...
Family Values Tour: The Michael J Fox Show
The Michael J Fox Show (Thurs. 8:00) is not the good show. It also is not, however, bad in any way. The premise is that Fox plays an ex-news anchor named Mike Henry who had to quit his job due to his Parkinson’s disease. If you’re thinking that the show is maudlin or manipulative in any way, the show is well aware. In fact, more or less the entire pilot is about how sick Henry’s entire family is of everyone’s sympathy, and the writing...
Family Values Tour: It Begins
It was inevitable, I guess. The state of the TV sitcoms is dire, and it’s a long time coming. While television dramas are improving exponentially each year—so much so that TV is arguably the most dependable medium through which to receive any kind of quality product—sitcoms are struggling to maintain a foothold. Fewer and fewer audiences watch sitcoms anymore, anyway, and they (sitcoms) have certainly lost any kind of...
Foster the People
Here’s the thing: here are issues, and there are Issues. Every film, at least those with a conventional narrative, is going to have an issue at its core. Characters need conflict and crisis to butt up against, they need problems to solve and hurtles to overcome and yes, issues to deal with. That’s par for the course. Some films, however, find their characters dealing with capital-I Issues, big, heavy socially-, culturally-, or even...
Ain’t This Movie Awesome?
“This Happened in Texas,” states the title card of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, before you see anything else (in fact there are no opening credits, so that’s the only graphic you get at all) and it’s a damn good thing. Without that piece of exposition, it would be tough to get your bearings. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is so awesomely sharp and single-minded that it often forgets to set us in a time or place, to let us know how much...
Fear and Loathing in the Northeastern Suburbs
In the title story of Tom Perrotta’s new collection of short fiction, Nine Inches, a high school teacher chaperones a dance, and his job is to separate any students who might be slow-dancing a little too closely. Because of a school-sponsored event that got out of hand a year before, all students are required to obey the eponymous “nine inch” rule—they have to stay at least that far apart from each other at all times. The teacher is...