Got to be birds flying higher

Next up from my winter watch-a-thon is The Commish, which I watched on Plex. The Commish was always a family favourite when it first aired. Instead of a tough-as-nails cop, you had a cuddly police commissioner, Tony, who often used his wits to get out of situations. I completely forgot Theresa Saldana starred as his wife--she was almost ten years older than Michael Chiklis!

The series was filmed in Vancouver, BC and it's quite obvious to me that it's not New Jersey 😄 Vancouver's film industry boomed during the 90s--there's a good chance many of your favourite shows were filmed there, like The X-Files.

Speaking of The X-Files, I would have loved to see a Commish/X-Files crossover because many episodes were written by Glen Morgan and James Wong. Wild, huh? Does this technically mean The Commish is set in The X-Files universe? Every now and then the writers pushed the boundaries with some episodes and I wonder if some unused Commish ideas were used in The X-Files😄

The Commish is a Stephen J. Cannell show and it's illustrious pedigree goes deeper than just the writers. Before The Commish, John Peter Kousakis worked on another cop show, Hunter. Walter Murphy composed the theme music for both shows too.

The switch to a kinder, gentler cop show doesn't negate the fact The Commish is a masterwork in A, B, and C plot structure. Almost every episode opens up with a family problem Tony has to face, then a workplace problem, then a crime. By the end of the show, all three are resolved with grace and humour. It's such a cozy watch!

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Here's another interesting video for Black History Month. As an avid cartoon watcher, I know there's a lot of influence from minstrelry and Blackface, but the Sapphire stereotype was entirely new to me. I've certainly noticed it though! As a writer, I always try to be conscious of these stereotypes so I'm not carrying them into the future.

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Quite enjoyed this show recently. Now I just have to find the original series from 2012 to get the whole backstory on these feisty codebreakers.

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A bit late to the game, we watched the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks and loved it! We just started season 2 as well. We've been wanting to watch it for ages but didn't want to subscribe to another streaming service. Then we found out, too late, that Crave is ditching all the Star Trek shows except Strange New Worlds. Crave is bundled with TELUS and it's like...how did we not know? Noooo!

Anyway, we may not have enough time to watch Picard but we wanted to watch Lower Decks far more. The stories are so affectionate with the source material and it's so laugh out loud funny. I feel action and humour have really been missing from Star Trek and I appreciate how this uh--workplace comedy?--finds joy and excitement in everyday crew life.

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One of the fun things about living in Canada is that a lot of British culture makes its way over the pond, such as an 11 VHS tape set of Brideshead Revisited based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. Mom and I watched it about 20 years ago. The whole soundtrack is on YouTube and it was delightful to hear it again.

Thanks for the memory sallymn!

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My homework has given me a lot of time to watch TV and I'm not even sure how I landed on this biography and remembrances of Chris Farley. The late 90s was full of celebrity deaths that I didn't understand at the time except they were very sad. As a young person, I didn't understand addiction, pain or adult stresses very well.

There are a few celebrity deaths that still hit me *right here* and Chris Farley has to be one of them along with Phil Hartman. 33 is such a young age to die--and one can only imagine what Farley's post-SNL period would have been like.

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I loved Nashville when it was on the air. I think about this signature song a lot lately!

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CW for abuse.

Over the past couple of years I have listened to some nauseating podcasts and docu-series about child and spousal abuse. These series are always hard to watch or listen to, but they are important. When one lives in a healthy relationship or is removed from abusive conditions, abuse can be very invisible or confusing. I know the confusion first hand because one of my old classmates was busted for having a child abuse image collection twenty years ago and Old Job once hired an accountant that masqueraded as a phony masseuse. How could such "nice guys" be such major creeps?

When I was growing up in the 80s, the only educational tools I had were "very special episodes" that meant well, but these shows were evidence of how poorly child abuse was talked about. It's not enough to find an adult. It was not talked about in my schools, even through junior high. For many women of a certain age, the social conditioning to smile, laugh and deflect threats was our only education.

I am not a parent, but I have noticed my friends talking more about bodily agency with their children and how to instruct them. If you're of a certain age, you remember having to endure cheek pinches, hugs and kisses and not having much of a say in it. You had to kiss weird Uncle Fred because it would be rude or you were forced too. This is an example of a child not having bodily agency. A parent who doesn't force their child to hug or kiss when they don't want to is giving their child bodily agency. When you give your child bodily agency, you give them the gift of being able to say no to unwanted relationships and touching as they grow up. They know their body belongs to them.

All this came back to me when I watched the first season of Surviving R. Kelly. TBH, I'm not a huge R&B fan, so I thought all of R. Kelly's music was in the vein of "I Believe I Can Fly", but it's surprisingly raunchy (side note: my musical tastes are stuck in the 90s). I also didn't know that he married Aaliyah when she was 15. Wow, gross! Turns out R. Kelly was mega gross in many respects. Not only did he abuse and control his wife, Drea, but he preyed on young girls and women like a hobby.

The series, which now has a second season, is a flawed series. The camera seems to exploit the emotional pain of his victims and their families. It doesn't push R. Kelly's enablers enough as to why they stuck with him through the years and helped maintain his framework for abuse. However, the series gives a much needed voice for BIPOC girls and women who found the courage to speak up and against a rich, famous and beloved celebrity. Who will believe them?

As I mentioned, abuse can be invisible or confusing and this series reveals just why that is. Victims are wrapped in shame, trapped without financial resources, scared or just mentally beaten down to the point where they don't exist. Rumours of R. Kelly's misconduct swirled around him for years and but this docu-series finally pushed the legal system into action in 2019. R. Kelly is currently incarcerated in Chicago.

Even though these kinds of series are hard to watch, they are important. They provide the missing knowledge to understand how predators work and how to support abuse victims. There is no one standard cookie cutter abuser out there--which you'll see as I log these different series.

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We're not exactly anime connoisseurs, so I don't know how BNA stacks up against other shows. I suspect there are a lot of tropes and plot elements common to other animes and although it was a bit predictable at times, I would have been all over this show if I was a teenager again :-D It's colourful, action-packed and entertaining and really tells a good story.

The viewer travels with schoolgirl Michiru Kagemori as she flees the human world for Anima City after she randomly transforms into an anthropomorphic tanuki or "beastman". Anima City is a purpose built refuge for beastmen who live side by side in a mostly peaceful, but imperfect, existence. She arrives during the city's anniversary celebrations and meets a wolfman, Shirou Ogami, who is a protector of beastmen and the city. The beastmen can appear human or anthropomorphic. The story quickly changes from fish out of water to a funny buddy cop conundrum as Michiru tags along and investigates crimes with Shirou. As she uncovers different parts of Anima City, she also uncovers an twisty, turny conspiracy.

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Back in the day, Canadians had few TV choices and if you lived in certain parts of the country, your American TV came from different parts of the US. In Alberta, that was Spokane TV. I always wanted to visit Spokane--I felt like I knew it as well as my hometown. We watched Spokane news, Spokane commercials and Spokane became like a mirror city I didn't live in.

Anyway, I remember the time that a religious group tried to poison a town in Oregon. But, like, most things, I forgot about it until Netflix coughed up this fabulous and engaging documentary, Wild Wild Country. It provides an excellent narrative that gives context to the news stories. The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) created a commune, or, intentional community, in 1981. It was called Rajneeshpuram and featured housing, an air strip and more.

Depending on your point of view--and the documentary chronicles the experiences of the local residents and Rajneeshees--Rajneeshpuram was either a force for enlightenment or a force for disruption. Tension between the two groups escalated over time as the Rajneeshees bought local businesses and armed themselves. The infamous salad bar salmonella poisonings happened in 1984 and then there was a plot to murder a US state attorney in 1985. Voter fraud followed. Apparently the documentary does leave out some things, such as sexual assault and child abuse within the commune. However, you can look this stuff up on Wikipedia or just watch the documentary! It's fascinating.

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