At the Cinema - June 2021

 Brockmire – 10

The brilliance of Brockmire starts at the moment that Hulu declares the show is intended for mature audiences, which is a satiric understatement of epic proportions.  Maturity?  That’s a minimal requirement.  One must be able to dive into tastelessness, vulgarity, and over-indulgence of sex, alcohol and drugs, the likes of which would make the cast of Shameless blush.  The easily offended should look elsewhere.  Jimmy Fallon awaits you. 

But if you are willing to take the X-rated dive, Brockmire is hilarious.  It’s about a hedonistic baseball broadcaster trying to get back to the majors after a divorce-fueled meltdown.  Turns out Brockmire (played by Hank Azaria with great gusto) might as well embrace his outrageousness.  There are 32 episodes, and while you feel like taking a shower after watching, it is hard for a sports fan not to embrace, especially when Amanda Peet is on-screen.  Another bonus is that the 2^nd season takes place in New Orleans, where Brockmire can thrive in his indulgences.

Brockmire originally aired from 2017 to 2020 on IFC and the first three seasons cruise along, but it is the 4^th and final season where the gloves really come off.  The last 8 episodes bounce back and forth between 2020 and 2030.  The writer’s dystopian predictions of the world and sports seem more brilliant than most movies dedicated to that purpose, right down to the drug commercials.  They predict the problems we will be trying to address 9 years from now and they are hilarious.  The evolution of sports, particularly baseball, is laid out.

As my rickety, crickety body has revolted against my desire to leave a recliner periodically, I have watched even more sports than I normally do.  I watched an NBA playoff game where it took 30 minutes to play the last 2 minutes, as replays were done on every facet of the game, including substitutions - who was on the floor and when did they know it?  Jeff Van Gundy, who is idiotic only half the time, debated that a replay of a ball getting knocked out of bounds was incorrectly called because it was ruled that the player who touched it last was not the player who caused it to go out of bounds.  This distinction would have been hotly debated by most booth partners, but his, Mark Jackson, can only speak in adjectives, not complete sentences.  Both of these guys are constantly mentioned as NBA coaching candidates.  Either would probably be better than Jeff’s brother Stan was for the high potential, low-production New Orleans Pelicans who treated the last two minutes of every game like it was an episode of The Twilight Zone.  Yes, I watched a lot of NBA basketball this year, and I came to understand that it’s all about the last 2 minutes, much like Jeopardy is all about the Daily Doubles, and in case you were wondering, I’m on team Blalik.  So far.  Jeopardy spring training will apparently stretch out longer than the NBA playoffs.

Then there was the College World Series where the umpiring was, shall we say, a tad inconsistent. And there were so many delays for replays that they should have been sponsored.  “This delay is brought to you by Olive Garden, the restaurant that the 6 umpires who have gathered for two minutes prior to initiating a replay, are presumably talking about as their din-din destination.”

All of which makes you wonder where sports will be in 2030?  Brockmire has the answer.  Baseball games, which already move at the speed of school zone traffic, have slowed to the pace of the turtle Brockmire owns.  If today they are undressing pitchers in a middle of a game looking for goop, can 5 and 6 hour games be far behind?  Very likely according to Brockmire who sees player’s unions stopping the action mid-game to demand 20-minute water breaks due to the excessive heat (global warming ya know).  Attendance has plummeted to just those with nothing better to do, and they only show up for Pranks-on-the-edge of decency.  Bill Veeck would be proud.  I’ve never worn a full batting glove so I don’t understand why you unbuckle it and rebuckle it between every pitch, but we have Derek Jeter to thank for that human rain delay, and so a game delayed while a batter tries to pick a bat from 5 approved bat colors in the on-deck circle seems a natural extension.  Let’s face it - all major sports are in replay hell and it’s adding so much time to the games that can we be far from reviewing every single play with digital on field cameras in everyone’s eyebrows?

So, amidst the absurdity of 2030, it is up to Brockmire and company to save baseball from itself.  I rooted for them.  This is a profane character study of some really bad but lovable characters and the scripts are terrific, helping Brockmire takes its place among the all-time ribald classics like Veep, Shameless, and Californication. (Shout out to DJ).  Highly recommended for sports fans with a high tolerance for indecency. I think it's a classic.

The Tomorrow War – 8

Amazon Prime splashes their prodigious stash of cash all over the small screen to produce a pretty satisfying time travel piece starring Chris Pratt in The Tomorrow War.

I admit it.  I’ve been a sucker for time travel ever since I watched what is probably my single favorite tv episode of all-time – City on the Edge of Forever, a Harlan Ellison penned episode of Star Trek.  The singular premise of most of these is don’t go back in time and mess with the past – you can really change the present, or the future.  And that’s not good.  Back to the Future, Looper, Time After Time, Time Cop.  Great stuff.

But what about when you are trying to change the future?  Well, in this one Chris plays a teacher who gets drafted to get sent forward to 2051 to fight a war the world is losing to invading aliens.  We are down to half a million people and there is no hope.  Except that Chris sees some familiar faces and gets to work.  I’m not going to go so far as to say it’s ingenious, or even riveting, but it’s good enough for an evening at home in the recliner, and there’s no shortage of special effects, as Amazon has so much money to spend.  In fact they have so much money they’re actually going to put Jeff Bezos in a rocket ship and send him into space.  What is it with these super-rich guys and space travel?  Seems pretty risky to me, and do the stockholders get a say in this little adventure?   If you have that much money, let’s concentrate on time travel.  It’s an obvious need.  I’d really like to go back and see a young Julie Andrews on Broadway.  But only if there’s an empty seat for me.  Wouldn’t want to bump someone and change history.