For the first time I have Covid. I've avoided for four years, took every precaution yet still lived my life.
I even, in the pre-vaccination period (you remember: six feet apart, one-way supermarket aisles, anti-bacterial spraying the ATM but also everything else... yes those things) sprayed someone with hospital grade spray. Here's the story. My friend worked at an animal hospital and thinking we were in pre-apocalypse status gave me the hard-core product. At the market when someone repeatedly didn't get out of my space after several requests then warnings I took the spray bottle I had hung on the push bar of my shopping cart and sprayed that person. I wasn't proud but it was 2020. I stayed safe! This post is about TV/movie reviews and not my becoming unhinged, so here goes.
So what I've watched this week and some takeaways.
FARGO SEASON FIVE: I don't know about you but someone like Ole Munch shows up anywhere in the universe, he is evaluated and placed in long term psych hospitalization care. I don't care if he's immortal or not, there are some red flags. Just his babbling alone---why did people put up with it? NOT even one said, "What the fuck are you saying?" You think that would happen at least once
HOUSE: I never watched it when it was on. How times have changed. Fargo's Sheriff Tillman's misogyny meant bad, awful, terrible guy. Dr. House's meant quirky good guy. Damn you, Woke Nation. Anyway, this is an obvious pre-streaming show, and the spoiler is, I can tell you every plot of every episode.
Introduce character that drops nearly dead in first five minutes.
House's staff have theories that are always wrong because....
Dr. House has outrageous diagnostic and treatment number 1.
House argues with Dr. Cuddy.
Patient seizes every episode when treatment 1 doesn't work.
Dr. House meets someone quirky and placed in show for humor in the Clinic.
Dr. House has an epiphany for an new rare/outrageous treatment 2 after dealing with same quirky character placed in the episode.
Treatment works, because if it didn't the patient will die.
House's staff are fine with being wrong every episode because House is always right.
Dr. Cuddy says something to House with tail between her legs.
Nearly dead X 2 patient walks or rolls out of hospital accompanied by House and/or House's staff.
Roll credits.
20/20: The perfect sick show. You can dose off at any point and go in and out of consciousness and they review the entire episode before and after every break. You don't miss anything. Also, good show for Memory Care Units for the same reason.
Silver Linings Playbook: Perfect sick movie since I've seen it three times before---figured I can dose in and out of this one too. Problem was I got involved and didn't sleep.
Better Call Saul, Season Six, and only Season Six: Great rewatch. Still a bit weak of Saul to just give up at the end? Did it prove he can change. That's not his character.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: How is McMurphy locked up and Ole Munch out and about in the Midwest killing people? WT holy F.
The Midnight Sky: I took a bad week to go off my anti-depressants because I'm on Paxlovid instead. This dystopian film is summed up by George Clooney's characters' quote. He was perhaps the last living human on earth, after "the event" telling those still up in a space ship who can't land on the failing, uninhabitable planet, "We didn't do a very good job of looking after the place while you were away." The thought, "Covid, kill me now," crossed my mind.
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TIMOTHY GAGER has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his latest novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works of fiction and poetry published, 17 nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. In 2023, Big Table Publishing published an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 150 pages of new material: The Best of Timothy Gager. He was the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, and the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.