TV Right Now: The Good, the Bad, and the Totally Sucky - Volume 3

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Go ahead and write your thoughts, Jeff. At this point I can either skip them or what you say might inspire me to start catching up!

[Jeff Wrangler]

Did anyone know the post office put out an Alex Trebek stamp this past summer?

How long has it been now? And I still expect Johnny Gilbert to say, "Here is the host of Jeopardy, Alex Trebek!"

[Jeff Wrangler]

Go ahead and write your thoughts, Jeff. At this point I can either skip them or what you say might inspire me to start catching up!

OK, well, prepare yourself. ... 

I tried unsuccessfully to find out how many episodes are left for this fall. That is, I'm assuming there will be a break as there was when the show was on Fox. I wanted to check because I wonder now where they're going with the whole "gay Buck" plotline, since Tommy Kinard dumped him. So is Buck gonna go straight now? The "plot twist" that Buck was Abbie Clark's "himbo" after Tommy Kinard dumped her was, in my mind, stupid, and I don't think it really fit the plot of Season 1, where for a long time Abbie had been devoting herself to her mother (Mariette Hartley), who had Alzheimer's.

Soapbox: That whole "gay Buck" plotline has always annoyed me. OK I am still devoted to the idea of "Buddie," but still I didn't find the sudden change in Buck believable. I could just imagine a bunch of people sitting around the writers' room, and somebody goes, "I have an idea! Let's make Buck gay (or at least bi)!" So Buck and Tommy were together how many months? And we had no hint of Buck suddenly having to deal with sex with a guy? And, yeah, I don't think Oliver Stark and Lou Ferrigno, Jr., had chemistry. The episode ends with Eddie (in his underwear!) and Buck sitting on a couch just drinking a beer. In and out of character, those two guys have chemistry.

I will give them credit for Tommy's "I'm your first, not your last" speech. I thought that was well written/well done.

I did enjoy watching Eddie do his Tom Cruise/Risky Business thing because I still think Cruise's "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll" sequence was one of the sexiest things I've ever seen in a movie. And it was Ryan Guzman. ... 

I assume we can assume Marisol dumped Eddie (she was the girlfriend who was a name and not a real character), but I want to know what became of the "Shannon look-alike." She just disappeared? 

[gattaca]

9-1-1  WOW!  Just watched this weeks episode!

Warning!  SPOILERS AHEAD...

 They really spent a lot of time on on Buck and Kinard from the restaurant dinner where they set the stage for the final encounter and ultimately the "I didn't see it coming breakup".   The "breakup" speech as Wrangler mentioned above, is well written and executed by both actors.  The look on Buck's fact as Tommy explains his experience with these things and that Buck would eventually "break his heart' if he moved in was well done.   I even replayed that sequence 3 times to hear every work and catch every glance.   Well done.   

I also really like the scene where the hot guy behind Eddie in line followed Eddie and struck up a conversation.  Eddie was quick to convey that's he's "straight" and then the guy says, "I'm celibate."  It was the priest Eddie had confessed to earlier about 23 years of sin!..   

Of course, there was no way to miss the final scene you mentioned which is a cover to one of the most iconic film scenes in our history - the white tidy dance scene from "Risky Business"  Just WOW!  Guzman really pulled it off and I'll admit, I hit RR 2 or 3 times just to watch that!           

That final scene gave me a bit of hope for how that discussion will go but then they made it clear earlier that Eddie is "straight" so as much as we hope, I just don't ever see the writier venturing down that path!  FWIW, anytime anyone ever showed up at my door with beers or stronger out-of-the-blue was never a good sign and usually meant a tough chat was ahead.

Once of the best episodes of the season though I'm said to see the Buck / Tommy thread end even though I didn't feel the strong vibe and connection between them.  V.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I also really like the scene where the hot guy behind Eddie in line followed Eddie and struck up a conversation.  Eddie was quick to convey that's he's "straight" and then the guy says, "I'm celibate... and it turns out to be the priest he'd confessed to earlier. 

Way-way-way-way back (I forget if it was Season 1 or 2 it was that long ago), the same actor, Gavin Stenhouse,  played the same priest who helped Bobby work through issues he had with his past. I recognized him because, well, he's hot. ...    Which is also probably why I recognized his name in the opening credits. 

In fact, in the All Cast list in the IMDb entry for the show, he's identified as "Hot Priest." 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7235466/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm

[Jeff Wrangler]

Meanwhile, back at Tracker. ...

I found this eBay listing for a magazine from 2009 that featured Justin Hartley.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204421194799

For my taste, he's hotter now than he was 15 years ago.

All-too-briefly in tonight's episode we got to see him all sweaty in a black tank top. ... 

I think he's muscled up some compared to Season 1.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Brilliant Minds

Spoiler Alert!

Last night's episode confused me so much so that when it was over, I went to the NBC website and watched the previous episode again in case I'd missed something.

Wolf was treating a patient with locked-in syndrome. At the end of the last episode, it appeared that they were just beginning to learn how to communicate with him. At the beginning of last night's episode, they knew his name and that he was a refugee from Chechnya. I went. Huh? Did I miss something? When I rewatched the preceding episode, it appeared that I had not.

Then we learned that he had fled Chechnya because he was gay. Last night I did miss how they located his boyfriend in New York. I won't go into how that all ended, but the ultimate end of the episode surprised me (it may be a departure from the life of the actual Oliver Sacks). We already knew that Dr. Nichols, the neurosurgeon, was also gay. At the very end, Wolf is about to mount his motorcycle when he sees Dr. Nichols standing across to the street. Wolf runs over and pulls him into a great big kiss.

So I'm pretty sure I've never before seen an episode of a prime-time show that had four gay men in it.

[Jeff Wrangler]

So it seems that next Thursday we have the fall finales of both 9-1-1 and Found.

[gattaca]

Watched this week's 9-1-1, which appears to be tying up story lines b/c next THU 11/21 is the last one for this season.   I thought the episode was weak. IDK too many guys who go on an "all out" baking spree to "get over" breakups.  Sigh.... V.

Spoiler alert:
There was one great line from Buck about not knowing which team he's on but outside of that... meh...

[Jeff Wrangler]

Spoiler alert:

There was one great line from Buck about not knowing which team he's on but outside of that... meh...

Yeah, that pretty much describes the episode in a word.

I found myself wondering how the police knew the smash-and-grab crew was going to hit that particular jewelry store.

I wish I could identify Athena's probie. I think I saw him somewhere else (maybe Fire Country), but anyway, he was cute.

I was prepared for Athena to tell her boss that she was going to retire, but she didn't.

Capt. Gerard turning into a cry-baby who wanted to be liked? Please. ... 

[gattaca]

^^^ 10-4!  SPOILERS ON!!

"Capt Gerard" doing a 180 b/c he's finally  "found a job he loves" is a long shot.  People, generally don't change unless there's some life affirming or threatening event.  Which let's give the writers credit, they set us up for that one well with the whole sawblade event.   Still a bit of a stretch in this case!  But it is not impossible as I've seen a very few people do that 180 and retreat from the cliff's edge but they have to really, really want it.  I've seen others sail off the cliff which ends in divorce, broken lives, bars or worse - toes up.

Yeah they never explained the Jewelry heist sting info.

Yeah Athena's new probie certainly stood out enough for me to look him up too!      His name is Zack Tinker.  Your memory is keen. You have seen him on "Fire Country" plus a ton of other shows including daytime dramas!  LO: True Crime, NCIS, DoUL,   Quite a list of IMDB appearances!   -> https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7203178   

I never thought about the writers setting us up for Bassett to retire from 9-1-1 until you mentioned it.  Her and Krause have been getting solid paychecks for a while. 9-1-1 is ~ 115+ episodes.So maybe they are setting us up for a sunset with the pulled hamstring + fire burning down their house, ....    V.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Yeah Athena's new probie certainly stood out enough for me to look him up too!      His name is Zack Tinker.  Your memory is keen. You have seen him on "Fire Country" plus a ton of other shows including daytime dramas!  LO: True Crime, NCIS, DoUL,   Quite a list of IMDB appearances!   -> https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7203178   

Not really. I really don't know what may have triggered the memory of him. I did give it a maybe to Fire Country. It may have helped bury that cute face in my memory that he was in a five-episode story arc on Fire Country; it wasn't just a one-time appearance.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

I thought last night's Tracker episode was great entertainment, but this post is mostly about something adjacent.

Last night's Tracker episode ran 39 minutes. That's the shortest "hour long" episode I've noticed to date of any hour long show. I hadn't seen any hour long shows running time dip below 40 minutes before and they're usually now 41-42 minutes running time still. Most of us remember shows used to run 52 minutes back in the day! And sitcoms were 25-26 mins. The last CBS sitcom I watched ran 18 minutes!

Having said all that, last night's Tracker episode stuffed a feature length movie plot into, not only 39 minutes, but into 34 minutes, because the last 5 minutes was info to set up some future episode intrigue.

It certainly was an adrenaline rush, but afterwards kept wondering how much more effective it might have been with a little more character development with the guest actors so that what happened in the episode wouldn't just be the action parts, but some human interest of how such a thing could happen and persist for so many years.

I also can't imagine watching a 39 minute episode interrupted here and there for 21 minutes total. It certainly wouldn't have impacted me like it did watching it without that. Like I said, you could watch that 18 minute sitcom and have 3 mins. left over in that time? You wonder how "short" things will keep getting. TV series are becoming the length of Tik Tok videos.

I should say I watched Tracker on CBS's Paramount+ app. Most apps for network shows have them available the next day, or after midnight in your particular time zone, but I happened to see this was already available at 11pm. (!)

[Lyle (Mooska)]

His name is Zack Tinker.

I wondered if he was related to Grant Tinker, famous TV executive and one-time husband of Mary Tyler Moore. The answer is yes. Zach is the grandson of television executive Grant Tinker. Tinker and Tyler Moore were married from 1962-1981, with a separation for some years in the '70s. Zachary Atticus Tinker was born in 1994. So he's 30.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

I am at least three episodes behind on both 9-1-1 shows and also both L&O's and 2 episodes behind on Found and The Irrational. This doesn't help with chatting about them here, but it'll be nice when everything is reruns soon. I'm caught up with Tracker, Georgie and Mandy's first Wedding and Frasier reboot Season 2 on the app, because I need to cancel an app for awhile to save a little money. I probably wouldn't have because last year I was also watching CSI: Vegas (which had better ratings than the season before it, but got cancelled???) and So Help Me Todd, Survivor and Amazing Race. Two of those shows were cancelled, Amazing Race is not until Spring and I forgot about Survivor for a few weeks when it had returned, so I decided to skip it this season. So I'm good without this app for a few months at least.