Yellowstone was a very popular series that lasted five seasons on Paramount. By my count, it has now engendered two spinoffs:

• Marshals starring Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton, a special forces veteran subject to flashbacks and who was once married to a Chinese woman (Kelsey Asbille) who pretended to be a Native American in Yellowstone. Unfortunately for the series, Grimes doesn’t project much charisma, unlike Keven Costner, star of Yellowstone, so I don’t imagine the series will last. But who knows. I also see that the series is set in Montana, and that US Marshals there (1) draw much of their employment force from the Hollywood model pool, and these models are excellent shots and skilled horseback riders who can also carry their own in fisticuffs; and 2) that they do most of their work while riding horseback. I had it in my mind that the internal combustion engine had replaced horses, but in Taylor Sheridan’s world, four-wheelers do not exist.

Continue reading “The deadly spinoff virus” →

As time goes on, approaching age 76, I am less active and watching more TV, at least from 5PM on. To qualify, I never watch news or any sports except the Denver Broncos, and for that I can offer no rational explanation. Of course the NFL is rigged for the other 31 teams, but not the Broncos! I do like detective fiction more than any other genre. It offers a kind of cleanliness that I don’t find anywhere else, that is, they only focus on problem solving. If they want to throw in propaganda for the hoi palloi, I am gone. I lose WSOD, or willing suspension of disbelief.

For instance, and this is not detective fiction, but I did watch episode 1 of The Pitt. In it they had a flashback scene in which Dr. Michael Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle, was was in a room filled withs stretchers, maybe fifty people dying of Covid despite doctors’ attempts to save them. This ran head on against my experience from 2020 when independent-minded people all over the country were going to hospital emergency rooms, getting as close as they could, only to find … crickets. There might have been card games or wheel chair races, but there were no patients. It was all a TV show, ala Wag the Dog.

Continue reading “A journey in film noire” →