Reviews

This is the first episode I ever saw of this series, years ago. It was on again today, and it still staggers with its impact.

The story concerns a woman, clearly mentally ill, who was committed to a mental health facility back in the 1950s. She has nearly burned her house down with her and her son in it. She had no harmful intent, but also no appreciation of the reality of her actions and their consequences.

The doctors and nurses are not evil either. They do things with the best of intentions, and the worst of outcomes. In the case of our protagonist, the young mother, they are helpless, clueless. A horror ensues, and the facility is impotent in its efforts at fixing her.

I am being purposely vague, because you really have to see this to appreciate its beauty and its horror. Because there are many things we can't fix, and the harder we try the worse the patient suffers. So does everyone else. We desperately want an answer, a fix. And all too often, there isn't one.

Only watch this if you can handle the ineffably sad. If you can, it is more than worth it.

This is a hard watch, but ultimately worth the time and the tears. It rerminds us of our own inadeequacy.

Who in the world decided that having Bill O'Reilly, the loathsome, disgraced former Fox News shouter on as a guest star was a good idea?

This is a man who was legendary for sexual harassment and snarling, hate-filled "commentary", a man Fox News was forced to cancel because of the disgust he generated among the American viewership, a man who couldn't keep his hands off any female who happened to venture near his orbit... THIS was their idea of an appropriate "celebrity guest star"?

How the show survived this boneheaded move is beyond any thinking person's guess. The show expressed just how much it really cared about advancing women's place in both law enforcement and show business, which is to say it didn't give a damn about decency and respect for women.

Have you ever heard of a real police detective sparring with an evil nemesis who stalks his/her every move?

Yeah, me neither. This has been a trope in bad fiction over and over, and it's just stupid. Yet lazy/bad writers trot this gimmick out despite it having no relationship to reality. Ask anyone who has worked in law enforcement if this has happened in any agency they know, and they'll look at you as if you were mad.

And a slight show with somewhat interesting characters chucks whatever goodwill it's earned with what can only be seen as evidence they are out of ideas. Pathetic. No excuse for this.

This is one of those episodes that shows how powerful and vital this show was.

The other reviewer covered the story fairly well, though I disagree with his statement that the father showed some cowardice. I doubt anyone, save someone suicidal, could go back into that burning building. He never would have survived, and I think he knew it.

There was a very belated introduction of actual science to the field of arson investigation some years ago, which this story is based on. I was a prosecutor when DNA testing, something we all now know about, began to be used to determine innocence and guilt. And I was disgusted when prosecutor's offices resisted when convicts asked for DNA to be done in their cases. And we now know that numerous arson/murder convictions were likely the result of junk science.

Law enforcement has tremendous power, making it all the more vital that the validity of any science used to convict be scrutinized when there are serious objections raised against the methods used to obtain those convictions.

Wrongful convictions are intolerable. And the job is supposed to be about obtaining valid convictions, not just "wins".

Five minutes into this latest episode of "Reality Does Not Apply Here", and it's already jumped the shark.

Any deputy district attorney who informed a jury that the defendant was convicted before, but had his case reversed "on a technicality", would see her trial declared a mistrial immediately. Any deputy district attorney who also informed the jury that she had done the first trial, and would continue to retry him until he was convicted, would be at least suspended and possibly disbarred. And NO court would allow a deputy medical examiner (Jordan, natch) to sit on that same jury, since she not only testifies for the prosecution in murder cases, but is hopelessly conflicted as a matter of law.

Welcome to "Crossing Jordan", a fantasy land where M. E.s interrogate suspects, deputy M. E.s routinely work crime scenes, and everyone sleeps with each other. Seriously, it's a wonder there's a police department at all since all law enforcement seems to consist of deputy M. E.s. (The police department also performs the function of supplying studly young cops for Jordan to sleep with.)

Business as usual for this horrid piece of schlock.

Anyone who grew up in the '50s and '60s (and watched TV, which was everyone) remembers those episodes in almost every series when the subject was juvenile delinquency. It was a hot topic for writers who obviously never spent any time with actual teenagers. Black leather jackets, switchblade knives, "go-go music" and "goofballs" figured prominently in cookie-cutter plots wherein we were taught that the kids were all right, just confused by this kooky world run by squares.

Perry Mason was not immune. This episode was one of these efforts, and easily the worst, which is no mean feat. Since this is Perry Mason, our young, mixed-up youth is not a street urchin, but the heir apparent of a dying Otto Kruger, who phones this one in from bed. And this tortured young man is more than enough reason to burn the name "Johnny Washbrook" into your memory because you never want to be subjected to this guy again.

Johnny takes but a few seconds to impress his sense of grievance and self-pity on any sentient being in the vicinity, while whining, wailing, and pouting in an astonishingly irritating howl of self-indulgence. It is a performance devoid of nuance or variation, one that will make you wish fervently that someone, anyone in this play will grab that gun off the wall and shoot this nimrod dead just to stop our agony.

Further cheapening the proceedings is the resolution of just who killed our cardboard cutout victim (who was nowhere near as obnoxious as Mr. Washbrook). I half thought they chose the killer by putting the names of all the characters in a hat and then drawing one to be "it".

I love Perry Mason, but all of our heroes in life let us down from time to time, and the same is true of shows. Maybe take a walk instead, or reacquaint yourself with your cat. Maybe a nice nap.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

I was a big fan of this show despite the legally dubious antics that cropped up. Well, I was a fan once they dumped Michael Moriarty and brought the solid Sam Waterston in.

I was a prosecutor in two different jurisdictions, one of which was a huge city, so I could relate to the cops and the lawyers in this show. And I could disregard the inaccuracies in the portrayal of court and criminal procedure, understanding that sometimes reality gets stretched in service of drama. But this incarnation has started out so divorced from believability, with nothing to justify such an approach, that it was torture to watch through to the end.

Okay. Waterston's back, but now in the Steven Hill role as the actual District Attorney. And Anthony Anderson is like an old friend who you rediscover and rejoice that he is the same cool guy you remember. But Jeffrey Donovan, an actor I've always enjoyed, has either taken a wrong turn somewhere, or else is being very poorly directed. He is certainly underwritten and, as the cliche goes, he runs the emotional gamut from A to B. And it's mostly B.

SPOILERS!!!

Worse, they have tossed reality over the side, along with believability. NO, you CAN'T tell the suspect that she will be free to go if she just confesses to murder, and then charge her when she does. And NO, the defense CAN'T suddenly decide to change their theory of defense to self-defense in the middle of trial!

I mean, do they really think anyone watching this is going to buy such idiocy? Do they truly take the audience for fools and dunces? Sure, in the previous shows they played fast and loose with the law and procedure, but they still managed to remain on Planet Earth. Not anymore. Now we're in Bizarro.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Of all the villains of this series, my favorite has always been Clavo Cruz. Not sure what that says about me. But what made Clavo fascinating is that, more than any other bad guy on the show, Clavo changed from episode to episode, as his entire sense of reality was gradually revealed to be an illusion, and he went from being a spoiled wild child to a destroyed man made aware of how alone, and lonely, he actually was.

It would take too much space here to recap his odyssey. He started as a gleefully evil punk and ended as a scared little boy, but one who went out on his feet.

He had been adrift ever since his abandonment and betrayal by his father, who revealed him to be a bastard. He became a man without a family. He was disowned and cast out, his options disappearing, his privilege stripped from him, an abandoned orphan.

So he committed suicide by cop, by Horatio, perhaps the last person left who Clavo knew had no choice either. Maybe I'm reading too much into the dynamics between the two men, but there was a sense that Clavo realized Horatio was the only real man in the entire sordid drama of his life. And it seemed that Horatio took no joy in ending Clavo's life, that he got how devastated and stripped Clavo had been by his family and events and his own character. It was one of the saddest scenes in the whole franchise.

I'll raise my next glass of beer to Clavo. I'll even pour out a little on the ground for him, the absent brother. He was Horatio's most worthy opponent, and they both knew it.

So do we.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

I rated this five stars because it does, at least, feature the departure of Sara Sidle.

Without doubt, Sidle is the most depressed, and depressing, character I've ever encountered in a television series who didn't kill her/himself. That doesn't happen here, for the even more depressing reason that she will be brought back later in the show's run to again be a major buzzkill.

Grissom himself, of course, is a walking DSM-V exemplar of clinical depression. In his case, though, there is the fact that he's a genius with fascinating obsessions and semi-interesting insights. There is no such excuse for Sidle's persistent downer personality. The writers did exercise discretion by not showing the unbridled relief of everyone she worked with at her leaving, so there's that.

Grissom himself will eventually depart himself for some weird, genius reasons. He will turn up in cameos, in the wild with a butterfly net. Tastefully, we are not shown the white-coated orderlies who are doubtless chasing him with their OWN nets.

There is otherwise a lot to recommend this series, to be sure. Even more, now.

I write in response to to the existing reviews, which demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how guns work.

One reviewer complains that the shooter, who is armed with a rifle among other things, should have been taken down by the cops using handguns. Another complains that the bad guy has his head and neck exposed, and implies that shooting him was a breeze.

This is simply ignorant. When you are firing at a gunman with a handgun, you don't take head shots, because they are almost impossible to make. Shooting someone in the neck is even harder. It would have taken a miracle to hit a subject in the neck or head. These armchair sharpshooters betray a complete lack of understanding of how a firefight goes. If you are only armed with a pistol, versus a rifle, your odds of killing the shooter are minimal at best.

Equally at sea is the claim that the cops should have shot the bag the shooter had. If these reviewers think that just shooting a bag with pipe bombs will result in an instant explosion, they are wrong. Shooting a propane tank does not cause a huge explosions. Nor does shooting a pipe bomb.

Television is replete with bad ballistics. Shooting lights out with a gun does not result in spectacular fireworks. It just results in those lights going out. And if you shoot someone who is standing still, they do not go flying backward: They just fall straight down in a heap. If they are running toward you, they fall forward, not backward.

Silas Weir Mitchell is one of those cliched "Hey, it's that guy!" faces. I've seen a number of shows in which he's been featured, and most of them seemed to play up a "weirdo" typecasting.

This episode indulges in the weirdo theme, too, but it also allows Mitchell to portray someone tortured by conscience and desperate to give pay a debt he thinks he owes. Over the course of the hour, Mitchell takes his time revealing his agony and, in the course of it, showing us a tortured man harried by his conscience while trying to be the man he wants to be.

So many great actors get hamstrung by pigeonholes they're forced into, the types they were cast for, without being allowed to stretch their acting chops. In this episode, Mitchell is allowed to show us the strangeness, sure, but also the twisted decency of a man whose life has left him stuck in one time. Ineffably sad, and heroic in an unconventional way.

I will continue to look for more of his work. This actor has a lot to give us. He deserves the chance to do so.

I love House. One of the best shows ever, and a revelation, with one of the best actors around, Hugh Laurie. The rest of the cast is top notch, too.

So why does such an original, brilliant series have to indulge the beyond-cliched straight-guy-gets-hot-when-he-sees-lesbians-hoo-hah! crap this episode is centered on? Really guys? This is about as original as mother-in-law jokes and absent-minded professors. Did the writers forget their deadline and have to slap this garbage together at the last minute?

This is cheap writing and an insult to the House audience. Season 4 ended with two brilliant episodes, and Season 5 follows up with this?

Oh, and what is the point of this P.I. character? Are we supposed to believe anyone takes him seriously, let alone Cuddy? He is not "quirky", he is not "clever", he is not comic relief. He's an obnoxious little runt who kills any chemistry that might exist whenever he enters a scene, an annoying mosquito. He is an unwanted intruder, with all the subtlety of Macbeth slipping on a banana peel.

This is what writers who have literally lost the plot produce. Bad, very, very bad.

This is a fairly accurate accounting of Ted Bundy and his homicidal journey. As it happens, I knew Bundy. I worked at KSPN radio in Aspen when Bundy was awaiting trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell. I interviewed him a number of times, including the evening before he escaped for the second time. (Earning me a visit from the FBI.)

What impressed me most about this production was Mark Harmon's performance. Harmon absolutely nailed Bundy - his walk, his mannerisms, even his phony self-effacement. It was eerie to watch how totally Harmon captured Bundy.

This movie was adapted from Dick Larsen's book, The Deliberate Stranger, and Larsen is a character in this show. The movie still stands up today.

It's hard to explain how important Bundy was to the times. As horrifying as he was, he captured the country's attention like no other serial killer, to the point he attained near-folk hero status. Even today, everyone knows his name and who he was. Unmissable.

This series blew me away. In the 1950s and early 1960s, we were not that far removed from World War II and the new world order that emerged with Germany's defeat. I recall in the 1950s, in the U.S., the network news was dominated by news from France and the UK, much as we are consumed by the Middle East and American politics today. Stories involving de Gaulle, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan often led the nightly news. Europe seemed closer to the real center of things than California.

The Hour spans the fall of Eden and the Suez Crisis, along with the early Macmillan years. The drama centers on a new show on the BBC, "The Hour", produced by Bel Rowley (Romola Garai, whom I am officially in love with now), with investigative reporter Freddie Lyon and presenter Hector Madden (Dominic West). We start with the show's creation, overseen by Clarence Fendley (Anton Lesser). In Series Two, the ever-compelling Peter Capaldi assumes the top man position.

The news show struggles, then triumphs, through these characters. Series One portrays the show covering the Suez Crisis, while Series Two involves the establishment of American air bases and nuclear arms on UK soil. Of course, it's the characters, and their relationships, that we care about.

SPOILERS In Series One we get to know Ben Wishaw's driven, often obnoxious Freddie Lyon. He is constantly moving, constantly on, while producer Rowley struggles to keep up while establishing her own bona fides, and Madden comes off as a shallow pretty boy and budding alcoholic.

It is in Series Two, though, that we watch Madden being brought low by his drinking and his seeming indifference to his wife (Oona Chaplin in a perfect performance). It is Madden whose character undergoes both downfall and resurrection. Dominic West is an actor I enjoyed in The Wire and Appropriate Adult, but in The Hour I realized how truly fine he is. It would be easy to turn Madden's journey into melodrama, but West never plays it cheap. In the end, you'll stand up and cheer as Madden reveals himself to be a man of principles, and one willing to fight for them no matter the consequences. He is not a pretty boy after all, but a thoroughly decent and talented hero who realizes, almost too late, just how much he has risked and nearly lost.

There are no pauses, no time-wasting diversions, and no time, almost, to think about what we're seeing. The pace is breakneck, the stakes enormous, and the people deeply worth caring about.

Not to be missed. I watched both seasons over two nights, and never wanted it to end. Neither will you.