Barry. Morse.
Jun. 30th, 2023 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogGood actor. Died years ago. Probably best remembered for Space: 1999.
But that's all I have to say about him. Rather, this will be about the two components of that title. The first name is the one we are just beginning a binge of: Barry, a four-season HBO series that just recently ended its run. The other, not named Morse, is my about-to-end binge of the final three-episode series of Endeavour, a Brit-PBS effort which in the depicted time predates, but in our time follows, the 80s series based on Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels.
"Dexter" will be a part of both of these tales, though neither show would admit to that.
----
Let's begin with the newer of the two. Though it had been running for four years, I'd seen references to and promos for Barry only recently on HBO Max, as we've finished Succession for good and Somebody Somewhere for now. That service doesn't do a good job of reminding us of things returning- Awkwafina's Nora from Queens came back three months ago under our radar, but their promos were all about Game of Thrones and DC comic shit.
The title doesn't tell you much. "Barry" who and what? Really, a better title for this show would have been "Dexter Kaminsky Fonzarelli," because THAT is what you get with this: a trained mass killer, who works under a Code to only "kill the bad guys" and who even looks like Michael C. Hall, especially when he gets into his "wind whistling" dark passenger mode. He also has extended scenes with people who aren't really there, but unlike Dex's chats with his dead father, Barry Berkman's mentor is quite alive and was a BFF of his Barry's own late father. Played by Stephen Root, with a mixture of intensity and utter verklempt.
The middle name reference comes from that other actor named Michael- Kaminsky Method was Michael Douglas's triumphant turn as the mostly-failed actor finding purpose as the mentor of an LA acting class. (And SHITSHITSHIT.... Kaminsky's muse in that series was played by Alan Arkin, who just fucking died during the writing of this post. Can I drop this and talk about Justices Thomas and Alito now?!?) Our Barry stumbles into one of these acting schools, while stalking one of his potential victims who happens to be in the class. Instead, he meets his future love outside it, who talks him into running lines with her at the school up the stairs. Only it's not Kaminsky's.....
Ayyyyyy! It's Fonzarelli's! Henry Winkler is Gene Cousineau, famed for his turn as "Man in Back of Line" in some thing or other he probably didn't get. He sees Barry's potential as more than just your Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer, channels his inner actor, and even faced with admissions of his pupil's kill history (at least the "justifiable" part when he was a Marine), accepts him for being a redeemable bad guy just as Gene is bad and redeemable himself.
We're almost up to the halfway point- the end of Series Two- and the rest of the cast so far is just as wonderful. D'Arcy Carden and Kirby Howell-Baptiste come over from The Good Place and shine in the acting class. Various detectives keep getting close, but not close enough, to learn Barry's truth. But the best is watching the clumsiness of the Chechen Chucklefucks who are Barry's first LA bosses- particularly the continuing character of "NoHo Hank," who revels in his fashion statements and love of "submarine sandwiches" at every turn. We find ourselves walking round with "Moose....Squirrel" accents before and after each sitdown for this show.
Each of the first two seasons seems to have an overriding arc. First was whether Barry will stick in his new avocation while they try to identify the killer of his first intended victim, who may or may not have been the guy caught on a lipstick cam that Hank put in his boss's SUV but too blurry to make out. They didn't, it wasn't, and one of the investigators wound up not at all well. Season two then twists and turns in trying to solve THAT crime, so far not so good.
It's Murder, He Acted. And we're loving it.
----
Meanwhile, back across the Pond, Endeavour is wrapping its ninth and final series setting up the events that will follow, precede, whatever in the earlier-filmed Inspector Morse show starring John Thaw. His daughter Abagail has been a regular in the one now wrapping, as a reporter for the Oxford Mail who comforts or confounds Our Hero with questions and occasional information. Inspector Morse's future boss James Strange starts here as Just A Bobby before rising to detective and growing mutton chops before our very eyes. Other than some very blink-and-miss cameos, our other future-time series character is the local coroner, Dr. Max DeBryn. Played here by a delightfully puckish James Bradshaw, Doctor Death is prompt, predictive and delightfully snarky in his initial on-scene evals of the condition of the stiff. Shall we say 2:30?, is his usual early morning promise for completion of the post-mortem.
Until this series, anyway. It's three 90-minute episodes, and by the middle of the second one, poor Max is earning combat pay. By then, the body count went way past Jessica Fletcher and appeared about to go Full Peckinpah. You knew it was getting to him after the third stiff of "Uniform" when, instead of his usual cheery "Shall we say 2:30, then?" for his PM report, he was all, "How about tomorrow?"
Yeah, go home Max. You're drunk on formaldehyde.
By the end of that second episode, I didn't know what's getting more ridiculous: the body count (lost track) or the callbacks to prior characters/events in this show's past and the original show's future. Threads from the second season, and constant teasers about names and events from the future, fill the passing minutes. There's even a major thread involving two dead bodies in Oxford with the last name of Lewis!
I had to joke that they're even doing crossovers. Rumpole showed up as a defense lawyer, John Cleese was outside the nick doing a silly walk, and the episode ended with Morse opening the door and David Tennant was standing there. I'm not even sure if he'd come back in time as Ten or Fourteen.
Not that I'm not completely in for the finale. Despite the limitations- Morse can't die, Thursday almost has to because he's never mentioned in the Colin Dexter source material, and Strange must become who he will become- they've laid quadrangles full of traps on the college greens for us to step through in just over 60 hours.
Shall we say 2100 Sunday, then?
But that's all I have to say about him. Rather, this will be about the two components of that title. The first name is the one we are just beginning a binge of: Barry, a four-season HBO series that just recently ended its run. The other, not named Morse, is my about-to-end binge of the final three-episode series of Endeavour, a Brit-PBS effort which in the depicted time predates, but in our time follows, the 80s series based on Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels.
"Dexter" will be a part of both of these tales, though neither show would admit to that.
----
Let's begin with the newer of the two. Though it had been running for four years, I'd seen references to and promos for Barry only recently on HBO Max, as we've finished Succession for good and Somebody Somewhere for now. That service doesn't do a good job of reminding us of things returning- Awkwafina's Nora from Queens came back three months ago under our radar, but their promos were all about Game of Thrones and DC comic shit.
The title doesn't tell you much. "Barry" who and what? Really, a better title for this show would have been "Dexter Kaminsky Fonzarelli," because THAT is what you get with this: a trained mass killer, who works under a Code to only "kill the bad guys" and who even looks like Michael C. Hall, especially when he gets into his "wind whistling" dark passenger mode. He also has extended scenes with people who aren't really there, but unlike Dex's chats with his dead father, Barry Berkman's mentor is quite alive and was a BFF of his Barry's own late father. Played by Stephen Root, with a mixture of intensity and utter verklempt.
The middle name reference comes from that other actor named Michael- Kaminsky Method was Michael Douglas's triumphant turn as the mostly-failed actor finding purpose as the mentor of an LA acting class. (And SHITSHITSHIT.... Kaminsky's muse in that series was played by Alan Arkin, who just fucking died during the writing of this post. Can I drop this and talk about Justices Thomas and Alito now?!?) Our Barry stumbles into one of these acting schools, while stalking one of his potential victims who happens to be in the class. Instead, he meets his future love outside it, who talks him into running lines with her at the school up the stairs. Only it's not Kaminsky's.....
Ayyyyyy! It's Fonzarelli's! Henry Winkler is Gene Cousineau, famed for his turn as "Man in Back of Line" in some thing or other he probably didn't get. He sees Barry's potential as more than just your Friendly Neighborhood Serial Killer, channels his inner actor, and even faced with admissions of his pupil's kill history (at least the "justifiable" part when he was a Marine), accepts him for being a redeemable bad guy just as Gene is bad and redeemable himself.
We're almost up to the halfway point- the end of Series Two- and the rest of the cast so far is just as wonderful. D'Arcy Carden and Kirby Howell-Baptiste come over from The Good Place and shine in the acting class. Various detectives keep getting close, but not close enough, to learn Barry's truth. But the best is watching the clumsiness of the Chechen Chucklefucks who are Barry's first LA bosses- particularly the continuing character of "NoHo Hank," who revels in his fashion statements and love of "submarine sandwiches" at every turn. We find ourselves walking round with "Moose....Squirrel" accents before and after each sitdown for this show.
Each of the first two seasons seems to have an overriding arc. First was whether Barry will stick in his new avocation while they try to identify the killer of his first intended victim, who may or may not have been the guy caught on a lipstick cam that Hank put in his boss's SUV but too blurry to make out. They didn't, it wasn't, and one of the investigators wound up not at all well. Season two then twists and turns in trying to solve THAT crime, so far not so good.
It's Murder, He Acted. And we're loving it.
----
Meanwhile, back across the Pond, Endeavour is wrapping its ninth and final series setting up the events that will follow, precede, whatever in the earlier-filmed Inspector Morse show starring John Thaw. His daughter Abagail has been a regular in the one now wrapping, as a reporter for the Oxford Mail who comforts or confounds Our Hero with questions and occasional information. Inspector Morse's future boss James Strange starts here as Just A Bobby before rising to detective and growing mutton chops before our very eyes. Other than some very blink-and-miss cameos, our other future-time series character is the local coroner, Dr. Max DeBryn. Played here by a delightfully puckish James Bradshaw, Doctor Death is prompt, predictive and delightfully snarky in his initial on-scene evals of the condition of the stiff. Shall we say 2:30?, is his usual early morning promise for completion of the post-mortem.
Until this series, anyway. It's three 90-minute episodes, and by the middle of the second one, poor Max is earning combat pay. By then, the body count went way past Jessica Fletcher and appeared about to go Full Peckinpah. You knew it was getting to him after the third stiff of "Uniform" when, instead of his usual cheery "Shall we say 2:30, then?" for his PM report, he was all, "How about tomorrow?"
Yeah, go home Max. You're drunk on formaldehyde.
By the end of that second episode, I didn't know what's getting more ridiculous: the body count (lost track) or the callbacks to prior characters/events in this show's past and the original show's future. Threads from the second season, and constant teasers about names and events from the future, fill the passing minutes. There's even a major thread involving two dead bodies in Oxford with the last name of Lewis!
I had to joke that they're even doing crossovers. Rumpole showed up as a defense lawyer, John Cleese was outside the nick doing a silly walk, and the episode ended with Morse opening the door and David Tennant was standing there. I'm not even sure if he'd come back in time as Ten or Fourteen.
Not that I'm not completely in for the finale. Despite the limitations- Morse can't die, Thursday almost has to because he's never mentioned in the Colin Dexter source material, and Strange must become who he will become- they've laid quadrangles full of traps on the college greens for us to step through in just over 60 hours.
Shall we say 2100 Sunday, then?