Like It or Lump It: His & Hers

 

 

We end this month with another Like It or Lump It.

This is a feature where I review a show on a streaming service and tell you if it is worth watching. 

Before I get into "His & Hers" (Netflix), a quick word on a couple of other shows. 

One is "Stranger Things 5".

This one was a honking big deal.  Eight episodes spread out between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.  It was longest Dungeons and Dragons game ever, 

Basically, "Stranger Things" had run its course. All of the kids of Hawkins had grown up. Like "Eleven," who was a little girl when the show started in 2016, but now is a grown woman in more ways than one, if you catch my drift. 

In real life 1987, you would have heard the guys say, "Hey, have you checked out El, lately?"

But no, they kept going down into the upside out or whatever it was to fight the Mind Flyer Spider or Mr. Vecna. Not going into great detail, but it all worked out sort of. I guess. By the time it ended, Dustin flipped off the high school's principal and a girl that had been in a coma for two years graduated with her class.   

Nothing against The Duffer Brothers, but their next show should be about CalvinBall because it seemed like they just made up things as they went along. 

The other show is the second season of "Fallout," which is based on a video game. You can tell.

It is about life in a post-nuclear apocalypse. The first season was really violent. The second season is too violent.  I checked out after the one hundredth exploding head.  

And now, "His & Hers".  The premise per Reddit: "The investigation by TV anchor Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) into a murder case in her hometown of Dahlonega, Georgia, deeply troubles Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal) in the thriller series based on Alice Feeney's novel of the same name."

 Jack Harper is troubled because Anna Andrews is (wait for it) his estranged wife!

Anna was the six o'clock news anchor at WSK-TV  Channel 5 Action News Scene Alive. However, she disappeared a year before the story takes place and is replaced by a bubble-headed-bleach blonde whose husband is a cameraman.

The story starts when the town's Miss Lincoln (everybody took a shot at her in the balcony) is found all carved up in a wooded section near downtown Dahlonega. 

Anna just happens to stop by WSK to ask her old boss for her old job back, but Blondie has taken her place as anchor, but gives Anna the story because, what the heck, it is great to have the old mouth breather back. (The actress conveys the act of listening by looking at a person with her mouth open.)

I would add more, but it would ruin it for you. Just be aware there are a lot of "dunnits" in this "who dunnit".

Acting:  Okay. There's a lot of criticism on Reddit about the guy who plays Jack Harper, who slides in and out of a Southern accent. The lady who plays Anna Andrews is a little better, but you can't really imagine her being from Dahlonega. Everybody else is just okay, too. There's a newbie detective from Boston who is being trained by Jack.  You really wonder how in the world she made it to Dahlonega from Boston. Did she answer an ad?  The best acting in the show came from "The lady holding a pink box of donuts in the sheriff's office".  This actress really captured the essence of holding a box of donuts. The fact that my wife and I know the actress from church did not influence my evaluation. 

Violence:  Some stabbing, punching, and shooting. No exploding heads.

Language: NSFGRD (Not Safe For Gold Rush Days).  Lots of F-words. Someone tells someone else to "shut your pie hole".  I have lived in Georgia for sixty-six years, and I have never heard anyone use the phrase "shut your pie hole".  That's a Yankee phrase.  A southerner would say either "Hush," or if they are really mad, "Shud-up."

 Sex and Nudity: Lots of getting it on in the North Georgia mountains. However, there is no nudity except Grandma nudity. It is essential to the plot. 

The Good:  In most tv shows and movies, Dahlonega would have been presented as a Hillbilly Redneck heaven where everybody is drinking shine and getting their white sheets dry-cleaned so they can meet up at the local Klan rally and sing praises to President Trump. "His & Hers" does not do this. The people of Dahlonega are presented as good people who say, "shut your pie hole."

Additonally, Jack and Anna are an interracial couple, and nobody makes a big deal about it.

As a whodunnit, it keeps you on your toes. There is a surprising red herring, and the ending makes some sense. Kind of. Close enough for jazz.

The Bad:  The acting could have been better, except for the lady holding the pink donut box.

The Weird:  Dahlonega is portrayed as a suburb of Atlanta, which I can assure you it is not. Characters zip from Atlanta to Dahlonega with no problem. It would take you 30 minutes to get from Buckhead, where WSK-TV is, to Ga-400 and at least an hour from there to Dahlonega. 

Verdict: Like it, but don't expect too much from it.  

 

 

  

 

 

Modern Andy

 

 

One of my principles in life:  Never watch an "Andy Griffith Show" that is in color.

The reason for this is simple. Don Knotts wasn't in it and he made the show. Plus, and this is important, it wasn't funny and sometimes it was dishwater dull.

But as I was flipping the channels the other morning, I ran across an "Andy Griffith Show" of color, and watched as Helen Crump (Andy's Squeeze) was being accosted by some old biddy (this was back when you could tell an old biddy just by looking at them) about her "past" (Helen's-not the old biddy).

It turns out that Helen was arrested in Kansas City when she was younger because she was part of the Mob or something. 

This presented us with a question:  Helen Crump was from Kansas City? It leads to another question:  How did she make it from the swinging town of Kansas City to Mayberry?

Spoiler Alert (is this necessary for a 58-year-old program?): When Helen was getting her master's degree in journalism, her thesis was on organized crime, and she somehow infiltrated the Kansas City mob with the help of her great gams. 

More questions: Helen's got a master's degree?

In journalism?

Why is she a school teacher in a small North Carolina town?

This episode was aired back when television was fairly tame. Three years later, "All In The Family" came out, and it was Katy-Bar-The -Door. Things started to get nasty. 

Couldn't you see "The Andy Griffith Show" in the '70s?  There would be episodes like "Opie's Trip" and "The Fun Girls Are Really Fun Now!"

You could just see this description in The TV Guide:  

Andy Griffith:  Barney sees Thelma Lou topless and can't stop talking about it!*

 Barney:  Ah, Ange, you should have seen 'em

Andy:   Now, Barney, I've seen 'em when I was dating her.

Barney:  Andy!  I didn't know you dated Thelma Lou!

Andy:  Barney, there are two single women in this town, and I'm the only single guy with a great job.

 <Barney runs out the door and drives to Mt. Pilot.>

Yes, I know it was a simpler time back then. Television was made for a general audience then, and that meant Grandma, Mom, Dad, and the kids would be watching. 

Now, TV doesn't care. If made today, Helen would have been in the witness protection plan because she was a mobster's girlfriend. I'm not even going to mention what they would have done with Gomer Pyle. 

 

* I've discovered some more modern TV Guide listings:

 I Love Lucy:  Women make only 79% of what men earn, and Fred thinks they're overpaid.

The Honeymooners:  The police serve a bench warrant on Ralph.

60 Minutes:  People from the South talk funny. The automobile industry wants you dead.  The myth behind Joey Bishop.  Andy Rooney tells you what has been grinding his gears lately.  Morely Safer, Mike Wallace.

Dick Van Dyke:  Laura tells a national television audience that Alan Brady is bald, but doesn't tell the reason: Alopecia.

 

The Past Year In College Football

 

 

 Well, we are finishing another season of our favorite professional sport, college football.

I've been using "our favorite professional sport, college football," for a while now because college football was the last rung until a football player made it to the NFL. It is part of my funny-ha-ha man persona to use it as a template because while college football always claimed to be "amatuer" (students), it was actually, "professional" in every sense of the word. 

 I know a guy who went to a local land-grant university ("Glory, Glory") and saw the star quarterback ("Glory, Glory") driving a new convertible Cadillac down the main drag.  This star quarterback was a young man from a modest household, so it was pretty obvious that a "booster" presented this student athlete with this vehicle. 

Those days are gone.

The old argument for paying college athletes so that these young, hard-working men could have "pizza money." 

Those days are gone, too.  

 Now, the big-time players make big-time money playing at big-time schools. I'm not sure if they have to go to class.

What this has done is level the playing field. No longer is the Championship Game the domain of the SEC.  Nope. The Big Ten is now the Big Conference in college football. 

Indiana University will play for the national championship next week.  That's like saying I will be selected as People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year. 

Let's review the College Football Season.

The season started by saying goodbye to one of the legends, Lee Corso.

Corso was part of the ESPN Game Day crew that would analyse the upcoming games. At the end of the broadcast, Corso would put on the "headgear" of the team he picked to win.  It was a grand time. 

Over the years, Game Day would expand. It would feature special interest stories, sometimes tied to a student-athlete who showed the human condition and how the player overcame the obstacles in his life.

A lot of these stories were about someone in the family was sick with an awful condition. Or a player whose dad was in jail for armed robbery and never saw his son play a down, but this week, he got out early for good behavior, and a booster got him tickets on the 50-yard line. 

 Corso retired after the first game of the season this year. Game Day continued. They have Pat McAfee now doing the lighter stuff. He has a 30-yard field goal contest, which is fun.  He can be a little much.

Nick Saban is on the program, too. Nick knows a lot about football. Not sure how much he knows about being a human being.

Ohio State was number one until they actually played somebody. Peyton Manning's nephew was supposed to be a lock for the Heisman Trophy. But then they played a game. 

More proof there is a God: Alabama lost to Florida State in the first game of the season. 

At the end of the season, Lane Kiffin was the coach of Ole Miss and LSU, or something like that. ESPN was on Lane Kiffin watch for 1000 hours. "Lane Kiffin still hasn't decided if he is going to coach at LSU. Wait...breaking news...we still don't know if Lane Kiffin is going to coach at LSU. If you hear anything, let us know."

Notre Dame wasn't selected to play in the college playoff, so they pouted and didn't go to a bowl game. Some of the bowl games seem like fun, like The Pop-Tarts Bowl, which wasn't fun for Georgia Tech because they lost it.

Speaking of bowl games, my beloved Kennesaw State Owls won the Conference USA championship after winning only two games the previous season. 

The Owls played in the Myrtle Beach Bowl against Western Michigan and lost Twenty Billion to Ten or something like that.  No matter. We wanted to play in a bowl game, and now we have!

I was able to go to the Kennesaw State homecoming, and I met Miss Georgia, Audrey Kittila. As you can tell by the picture below, she is a tall drink of water. 

I know that's not really football related, but anytime I can get my picture taken with Miss Georgia I am obligated by the Laws of Social Media to tell you about it.