I’ve become so bored with movies and television shows, primarily because of the terrible writing, casting, plotting, acting, directing and all the other gerunds. The most interesting recently was Department Q which had only a few drawbacks: one being the lead actor, who I’ve always liked but is just a little bit wrong for this part. Still, even saying that, I would rather have the part rewritten to fit Matthew Goode than to find another actor that is more like the part. It was just a very good mystery and the red herrings weren’t so abundant that it became an exercise in stretching a series beyond what was necessary.
I fell asleep for the first twenty or so minutes of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. I fell asleep for the first twenty minutes of The Phoenecian Scheme, as well. Bring Her Back was okay. I didn’t find it scary but I stayed awake.
The worst monstrosity was Mountainhead, which I had to watch in small doses. I don’t even know why I bothered to finish it. Toward the end, I started to wonder if maybe all the characters were retarded — I don’t want to say mentally challenged because they all believe they are the smartest people in the room. They are four billionaires — one starts off as a 600 Million-aire but he will go over the billion mark by the time the show is over — and they are meeting up at the poor one’s new mountain aerie of about 23,000 square feet which he has named “Mountainhead.” They speak nonsense words and they talk nonsense. They discuss how they should “Coup it up,” meaning the United States, so that no one, including the president, can mess up their plans. There was something about causing a brownout in Belgium which, apparently, one of the characters did from their cellphone. Watching this show was like watching someone slowly pull a hangnail out of your own big toe.
But I think the writer, whose name is Jesse Armstrong, I believe, has this weird sense of comedy. This was supposed to be funny and kind of zany. And there was that strain of humor in Succession, as well — like when Matthew McFayden swallowed his own semen and then sat in awe over the fact that it was like he had had sex with himself. And going back a ways, a movie called In The Loop also had humor. But instead of being a Three Stooges kind of humor, in that the Stooges were absolutely irrelevant to the world, the humor in his writing happens among people who cause harm in the world. So we end up watching these disgusting people and at the same time are supposed to laugh at their antics and sometimes how stupid they are.
I find it impossible. I could no more laugh at this scum as I could at the real life scum of Trump and his minions. I don’t think Trump is funny — I think he gets people to laugh at him, clown like, but it’s not funny. I can’t remember which president it was — it was probably Bush #2 — when Michael Moore made a movie about him which was filled with all these crazy antics and stupid Bush chatter. And yes the audience laughed and Michael Moore clearly knew that people would laugh but at the end, when Michael Moore implied that we would oust him at the voting booth, I thought, “You just gave everyone a reason to re-elect him. You made him funny. That makes him harmless and that means he will win.” And he did. Not, of course, because of Michael Moore, but because that was Bush’s schtick. He said somewhere in his career that he was never going to let Bubba win again. And that’s when he developed his Texas twang, his mangled use of words, and so on. He appealed to the idiocy of Americans. So does Trump. And like I said to a friend back then, who was laughing about something stupid Bush did, “It’s not funny.”
It’s not funny.
Fortunately, I don’t think many people will watch this. They’d rather watch another wretched piece of drek called “Sirens.”