Parenthood Wrap Up and Modern Family's Visit From the Godfather

This was a busy week in television with the return of American Idol and the beginning of the new Kevin Bacon series The Following on Fox. I have already written about The Following and while we watched Idol it is kind of a big yawn.

Not boring this week were a couple of our regular favorites. Parenthood, the much loved but low rated NBC series, ended it's season with a show that wrapped all of the bows of the season up in a nice package. If you were looking for there to be any loose strings you did not find many. The Ron Howard produced show is consistently one of the best shows on the air, people joke about crying each week, but folks only cry when a scene hits home.

NBC finished the series off quickly as they want to make room for their rebooted show SMASH, which coincidentally is another cult favorite that the network would like to see build a broader base. As to Parenthood the worry each spring is NBC will pull the plug but it seems unlikely that they will throw such a well regarded show over the side. If that decision is made certainly it's viewers will have to be happy with the season end.

Over on ABC Wednesday night Modern Family had a smart episode. The plot line was typical sitcom stuff but what made this show standout was the ending sequence which out of the blue put together a spin on the culminating scene in the Godfather when the baby is being baptized and at the same time a wide variety of hits is going down all over Gangster world, even with the " Do you renounce Satan" line. The short clip at the end of the series even had Phil and his son closing the door to the den in Claire's face telling her " not to ask him about his business." This is pretty clever stuff and while silly this is culturally aware silly as opposed to the foolishness that typically goes on HIMYM that I wrote about last week.

Both of these shows are standouts this week.

The Shootist

With some time to myself this afternoon I was going through the Tivo to see what I had recorded to watch. I started the movie Diner but fifteen minutes in realized that, at least today, I was not interested in teenagers in 1959 Baltimore. I gave Network some attention, this had Faye Dunaway( looking twenty years older than her role in Bonnie and Clyde ten years earlier ) and great reviews but a half hour in, that I will never get back, it seemed dated and frankly a little too inside the bubble for my tastes and that too was discarded.

As I took the television out of Tivo mode the channel had been left on AMC. Lo and behold what was just beginning but The Shootist. A 1976 movie known as John Wayne's last movie the film caught my interest and I watched the entire thing.

I have to say that I am not a huge Wayne fan but have enjoyed some of his movies. This movie was different. Centering as much on issues of mortality and dignity at the end of it this movie is stunningly strong. Watching the scene between the Doctor who confirms for the aging gunfighter Books that Wayne plays and realizing that in this very scene we see perhaps the two biggest screen actors of the last fifty years acting out a scene acknowledging mortality is very powerful. Jimmy Stewart as the Doctor gives one late example that he might well be incapable of a poor performance and Wayne is perfect in his role.

The cast in this movie was directed by Wayne. Wayne wanted Lauren Bacall who, playing the boarding house matron, is understated and thus uncommonly affective. The scene of Bacall and Wayne out for a Sunday drive is very well done. Ron Howard also appears in the movie as Gillam Rogers, son of Bacall's Bond Rogers. Howard is wonderful in the role, caught between little boy fantasies of gunfighters and wanting to protect his mother and his feelings of sadness at the pending demise of this figure from an old west that is ending as the twentieth century begins.

Wayne went so far as to have a part wrote into the movie for a specific horse. He wanted his favorite horse, Dollar, in the movie.

If your looking for a typical Wayne shoot them up movie this is not it. There are some gunfights at the climatic end but this movie is as much a thought piece on mortality and how it affects us all, even those of us who seem bigger than life and thus bigger than death. In the end none of us are as Wayne himself found out three years later when he died.

This is an excellent, and very underrated movie.

American Graffiti

American Graffiti was a very popular 1973 movie co-written and directed by George Lucas. Yes, that George Lucas. The movie was hit a with the critics as well and was nominated for Best Picture. Starring Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Cindy Williams the movie became a touchstone in seventies culture even as it revisited the innocent time of 1962 in the days of cruising all night, hot rods, and wholesome middle America.

The very popular television series Happy Days starring the same Ronny Howard is often seen as a successful attempt to capitalize on the nostalgia wave the movie produced.

For me the movie was simply nothing special. Told as the tale of one night, the last night before the characters played by Dreyfuss and Howard go off to college, the movie is not supposed to be high theater. My suspicion is that having seen Happy Days for ten years growing up, and seeing movies that capture my own youthful experiences this movie seems like a relic. There just is not that much for me, with my life experiences, to embrace.

One jarring thing for me was how young Dreyfuss looked and then comparing that in my mind with the look he presented in the Jaws movies.

Certainly Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused is the movie that makes me smile and often think of my high school experiences. When I look at certain characters in that movie I say" Hey, I knew that guy." I am sure for those folks that grew up in the fifties and early sixties this movie does the same thing.

The soundtrack was very strong, the cast as well, the movie, however, was just nothing special for me.