Author: JaniaJania

Life with Charlie Crews, Season 1: Episodes Seven and Eight

Episode 7 “A Civil War”, and Episode 8 “Farthingale”

As we follow Charlie Crews’ exploits as detective non grata on the LAPD bizarro homocide beat, with every episode of Life, we get another puzzle piece clicked into place in Charlie’s picture of who framed him and took away so many years of his life. This time the puzzle pieces were more personal than ever. We got a couple of major reveals about Charlie’s partner Reese.

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Now, decades and decades of watching police procedural drama have taught me nothing if not the incontrovertible fact that partners have to rely on each other through thick and thin. Partners sharing a car and a beat have to have absolute trust in each other. Without trust they can’t possibly face the bad guys with an united front, without trust they can’t have each other’s back out in the field. Violations of that trust between partners is a breeding ground for some good drama in police stories.

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Billions on Sky Atlantic, Episode 7: The Punch

Less than half of the first season to go on Sky Atlantic, praise has been coming fast and furious for our favorite cable show of the year. For those of you following along every week, here are our recaps of Billions, Episode 7,
“The Punch.”

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Summer means a revisit to Damian Lewis as Agent Double OO!

My girl’s a year older since I first wrote this and her tastes have crossed over to the dreaded tween territory. Also, I’m no longer a stay at home parent. Still, when I’m lucky and we have the time, I can convince her to tune into my favorite animated programming: Phineas and Ferb. I’d love the show even if Damian didn’t make an appearance, but icing on the cake is that he did! Here’s a revisit of my post from this time last year. Enjoy!

In short, the series gives us Phineas, a chatty clever American kid, and his taciturn and even more clever English stepbrother, Ferb, getting into all kinds of shenanigans as they attempt to stay busy during…summer vacation! On their tail is persistently annoyed and shrill teenage sister Candace who seeks repeatedly to “bust” them, and never manages to, thanks to serendipitous help from subplot characters: evil scientist Dr. Doofenshmirtz and his nemesis Phineas and Ferb’s pet platypus, Perry. Perry is a secret agent for the spy organization O.W.C.A. (The Organization Without a Cool Acronym). Love it so far?

Now, I, like most stay at home parents, try to tune out what I can so as to stay moderately sane. But, I found myself paying attention to Phineas and Ferb. Earworm title sequence and songs, fun characters, great writing all worked to pulled me in. I mean really: Dr. Doofenshmirtz, the vaguely Eastern European CEO of Doofershmirtz Evil Incorporated given to long monologues, on an incessant mission to control a mysterious “Tri-state area”, always defeated by a clicking purring platypus? “Ah, Perry the Platypus, as always, your timing is impeccable. And by that, I mean completely PECCABLE.” Who can resist writing like that?

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Happy Father’s Day to Damian Lewis

No doubt many people get married and start families because it’s the thing to do, a natural progression in life. Not everyone takes the time or effort to really think about what it means to bring new life into the world or go forth on the venture with conscious intentionality. How many times have we heard (or ourselves thought) David Byrne’s immortal refrain:

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself: Well…How did I get here?

Following Damian as we do on this blog, we’ve seen at every turn that he seems to have entered his current life with full intentionality. You sense, in his various relationships prior to Helen, what we know of them, that he was always quietly in search of someone to settle down with, someone to have children with. Not all men think this way, I’m guessing, particularly attractive men who have no shortage of female attention. A lot of guys fantasize about the attention that Damian has always gotten, right? So, if you’re lucky enough to be Damian Lewis, why settle down? Why let a woman and the resultant children cramp one’s playboy style? But, no, Damian, even though he IS Damian, wanted the wife and the house and the family. And how beautiful the stories we hear and the images we get of him in arguably the most important role of any man’s life, the role of father. Here are some of our recollections of Damian being a Dad.

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Billions on Sky Atlantic, Episode 6: The Deal

imageedit_13_6627786066Billions Episode 6, “The Deal”, on Sky Atlantic has all the ingredients of a season finale, but, thankfully, isn’t. We’ve got surprises in a tepidarium, a war time speech rallying the troops, a valuable piece of crumpled up paper thrown across a conference room table. Under it all, we get the true ethics of the game laid bare, and, at the same time, we get Damian playing Bobby hunched inwards, closing ranks, in self-preservation mode.

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Here are our recaps and discussion of the episode.

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