• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Lieff Ink

TELL YOUR STORY

  • About
  • Services
    • Writing • Editing
    • PR
    • Writing Tutor
  • Words
  • Press
  • Blog
  • Clients
    • Client List
    • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Book
    • Accolades
    • Reviews

Fall TV (sort of)

September 21, 2021

Fall TV is back! We watched the season premiere of The Voice last night and, for the first time in two seasons, there were people in the audience! The jury is still out on Ariana Grande as a coach but I digress. While we’re also looking forward to watching 911 and the new season of Survivor on network television, there are a few series and documentaries that we watched on a several different platforms: Netflix, HBO Max, Apple TV+, and Paramount+ (what is with all the plus signs?). As I wrote in July, the streaming services can get out of control https://lauralieff.com/another-steaming-service/ but it turns out each one has something we want to watch.

From Cradle to Stage – Based on the 2017 book From Cradle to Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars, written by Dave Grohl’s mother Virginia, this six-part series from Director Dave Grohl is exactly what I wanted it to be: a Behind the Music-style event where Dave and Virginia personally handle all the interviews and visit each musician’s home. Thanks to Paramount+, Dave and Virginia go all over the country to talk to the mothers and learn how their spawn (i.e. Miranda Lambert, Tom Morello, and Pharrell Williams) became the music icons they are today. So far I’ve watched the Lambert episode, which is 80 percent about her rise to fame and the part her mom played in her success, and 20 percent about the Grohl family. It’s no secret that Dave Grohl is one of my favorites and watching his relationship with his mom makes me smile.

The Good Fight – No question the most daring, topical, and subversive show I’ve seen maybe ever, The Good Fight has held its own so well over the past five years that it’s easy to forget that it is a spinoff of The Good Wife which ended in 2016. Season five, which finished in August, featured ten episodes of incredibly relevant and newsworthy topics that continue to be exciting and well-acted. Christine Baranski, Sarah Steele, Gary Cole, and Nyambi Nyambi steal the show and this season Mandy Patinkin (aka Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride) was equally captivating and insane. While this is definitely the type of show that doesn’t allow for missing any episodes (check them out on Paramount+), the fifth episode was the most memorable as we watch a key character’s memory triggered (while investigating another case) about his near-death experience in the hospital with Covid. It’s horrifying, pulls off being both hard to watch and hard to look away from, and a reminder that without our health we have nothing.

The Morning Show – On September 17 (four days ago) the highly-anticipated season two premiere aired on Apple TV+ and, as expected, it was explosive. Without giving too much away, I will say that we find Jennifer Aniston’s Alex Levy off the grid and Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson on air with blonde hair (yes that rhyme was on purpose). Billy Crudup’s Cory Ellison is his usual entertaining, nutjob self and things are definitely chaotic at UBA. Most of the episode takes place around New Year’s Eve 2019/2020 which is fascinating because, as we all know, Covid hadn’t hit yet. But don’t worry – there is plenty of foreshadowing and intensity which made me excited for episode two. Unlike Netflix, AppleTV+ doesn’t roll out an entire season at once so viewers will have to wait each Friday (like with network television) for the next episode. As expected, it will be worth the wait.

Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal – Although the documentary about the 2019 scandal (aka “the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice”) was released on Netflix in March, we finally got around to watching it over the weekend and it was interesting for multiple reasons. First of all, it’s not a traditional documentary because many scenes are acted out in addition to being discussed. My significant other thought that format was captivating and so did my cousin (who is also in the education field) but I found it distracting. Instead, I preferred the interviews that featured the actual humans involved in the scandal, the reporters who wrote about it, and the college counselors’ analysis about the broken college admissions system. Don’t get me wrong – the film is great – but I found the acted-out scenes a bit cheesy. In addition to the millions of dollars being casually spent on bribes and the sequential months a few participants spent in jail, the film’s main theme is upper class white privilege which is also a big theme in The White Lotus – see below. Although that topic is of course worth examining, and I’m sure people got satisfaction out of celebrities like Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin facing consequences for their actions, what I found more fascinating (and horrifying) was the footage of stressed out students as they wait to see whether or not they got accepted into the prestigious college of their choice. It’s also interesting when the college counselors point out that elite schools aren’t always what they are cracked up to be. In short, it’s no surprise that Operation Varsity Blues was one of the top ten most watched films on Netflix.

The White Lotus – What a strange examination of white privilege in America. The six-episode series takes place at a fictional resort in Hawaii called The White Lotus which is apparently the place that attracts the most unlikable people in America. Seriously these people are the worst but the HBO Max satire/drama/comedy (I guess?) features an impressive ensemble cast including Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Jake Lacy, Natasha Rothwell, and Steve Zahn, among others. Somehow the show kept me wanting more (mostly because of the first scene of the first episode) even if the characters on the show are so difficult to watch and very little happens in each episode. The acting is great (especially Britton and Rothwell) and the analysis of how people treat those in the hospitality business is definitely on-point, but the content is extremely dark, very little redemption takes place, and the George of the Jungle music is just a little too much.

Laura

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Blog Archive

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010

Footer

Laura Lieff was named Colorado Mountain College’s 2017-2018 Part Time Staff Member of the Year for her work as a writing tutor and teaching assistant.
Laura Lieff was named Colorado Mountain College’s 2017-2018 Part Time Staff Member of the Year for her work as a writing tutor and teaching assistant.

Work With Me

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
lieff-ink-logo_updated-2
  • About
  • Services
  • Words
  • Blog
  • Client List
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 · PO Box 1228 Edwards CO 81632 · info@lauralieff.com