Category Archives: TV

Years And Years

01/01/2026 X Teri Leave a comment

It’s 2:00 a.m. and I’m sitting on the landing watching traffic. It wasn’t until car number six passed that I could say with certainty that the driver probably drank too much and shouldn’t have been out on the road. The first clue was that only their running lights were on. The second was going past the intersection and then reversing erratically to make the turn.

As Philomena Cunk quipped, “Things got worse before they stayed the same.”

Just for amusement, anyone who texted me Happy New Year got a reply text from me first thing when I woke up. You’re welcome.

When I went back inside to make my first cup of coffee of the year, Güino stood at the door, caterwauling in protest, informing me that he wanted to go outside and explore. He did the “penguin call” repeatedly, much like he did in the animal shelter when I got him in 2008. That’s how he got the name Güino, a shortened version of the Spanish word “pinguino.”

Not many people saw the British/HBO show “Years And Years.” It was on my mind this morning. The TV show was made in 2019, but the parallels for our current state of affairs are unmistakable.

Entertainment, Opinion, Review / Critique, TV

The Last Of Us Episode 3

12/20/2024 X Teri Leave a comment

“The Last of Us,” episode 3 was one of the best episodes of TV I’ve watched. It compares to season 1 of “True Detective.”

Although the episode arc is more akin to a standalone episode, the humanity it contains astonished me. Nick Offerman stole the show.

I’m unfamiliar with the video game. This show is one of those rare gems that defies the genre. Both for video games and post-apocalyptic stories Episode 3 was the stellar episode of the first season.

The final dinner scene revealed a stunning grasp of love amidst pain.

#nickofferman #thelastofus

Behavior, Mental Health, Opinion, Personal, TV

Argument And Life

08/28/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

The original picture is from Six Feet Under, one of my favorite shows. Just the memory of it sharpens internal knives inside me. The series finale still resonates as the de facto best series finale ever produced.

A few years ago, I modified the picture with one additional line. It’s a reminder that if you’re invested in ‘winning’ an argument, you’re also watching your precious time race past you – along with all the other things you could be doing. Most of us don’t win arguments. Not because we’re wrong or right, but rather due to the fact that most arguments are either a matter of opinion or stubborn bias against facts or other perspectives. If people won’t listen to facts or evolving discoveries, you’re playing by a different set of rules subject to the other person’s whimsy. And if neither of you can recognize the futility of individual perspective, you might be living on another planet.

The people who intelligently challenge you are the very people you probably need the most in your life. But also the ones that you shun. Who wants to live a life of introspection and self-accountability? It would be a marathon just making it to breakfast to have a life filled with such people.

“You sit in such judgment of the world. How do you expect to ever be a part of it?” Olivier (who was one of the smartest and most irritating characters on the show).

Love, X
.

Behavior, Entertainment, Mental Health, Opinion, Psychology, Relationships, TV

Reality TV Is Us

08/16/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

This is not a post about reality TV per se. Reality TV fascinates me; not as a watcher, but more for the process of misdirection, drama creation, and constant familiar themes to provoke an emotional or shocked reaction. When I do watch reality TV, I spend an inordinate amount of time looking up the people and places to find out what really happened and how the writers and producers repackaged it for entertainment.

Again, this post isn’t about reality TV per se. It’s about the fact that a great number of people are exactly like reality TV. They aren’t living authentically, they don’t say what’s on their mind, emotional connection feels foreign to them, and honesty tends to be in short supply. We tend to be reactionary by nature. And even with legitimate reasons to react with frustration, anger, or emotion, our tendency is to bite our natural response to whatever is happening around us. We watch one another, evaluating what’s going behind the facade. It’s why memes caution us to remember that each of us has things going on that others don’t know about.

Turn off the TV. Surprise yourself and other people. As a self-admitted hypocrite, I can write these words without feeling like a fraud. I hate the disparity between who I am and how I communicate and behave in a lot of situations. All of this artifice we build up around us is a cage. The strange thing is is that we are our own guards. The key is in our pocket.

Love, X

Death, Entertainment, Opinion, Personal, Review / Critique, Social Rules, TV

Michael K. Williams aka Omar

09/21/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

Michael K. Williams was more than just his character Omar Little. That’s how legacy works, though. We become filtered by perception. People are often reduced to singular acts or traits. Michael didn’t suffer the fate of being reduced, though; Omar was larger than life.

If we’re lucky enough, we find a role like Omar Little, something which defines us and gives us a platform to flourish.

“The Wire” was a slow-burning show, one which I loved when it aired. Omar fascinated me, in part because he didn’t adapt to please, and his code put his feet in motion. I loved the show more when I discovered that his killer, a young boy, and sociopath, had previously been in an episode mimicking Omar and saying he wanted to be “the next Omar.” Knowing that many of the characters on the show were based on real people gave the plot a little more kick.

Michael Williams was initially a dancer, of all things.

His scar, one earned in a horrific birthday fight when he was 25, gave him an unintended sinister look that allowed him to blossom as an actor, a career he’d never imagined. An unexpected horror surprised him with his shot in life. Michael Williams had other significant roles; it’s Omar that I picture in my head.

The above picture is one I made a couple of years ago. It’s a 16X20 custom canvas that I have in my weird sink window. I attempted to pack in meaningful references to movies, books, and icons that inspired me. I chose a few “musts,” and the rest I picked at random from a list of about 50.

Omar is in the bottom right-hand corner.

Michael died when he was 54, the same age as me. He’d struggled with drug use for years.

There are a lot of Omars walking the streets. This fact made “The Wire” such an incredible show.

There was only one Michael Williams, and his fly feet will no longer grace the Earth.

“A man gotta have a code,” Omar taught us.

I hope yours serves you well.

Love, X

Dexter, Entertainment, Opinion, TV

Dexter+ Vindicated

04/30/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

Since Dexter ended, I’ve told at least five hundred people, “The show will be back. I have no doubt about it.” Many fans were upset by how the show ended. Not me. I get it. The showrunners wanted Dexter to survive the original series.

Three times since Dexter ended, I wrote short pieces regarding my certainty of its return. As Hall opted for other series, I knew that someone would look at the metrics and dollar signs.

It’s a win-win. If you don’t want to ‘spoil’ the original Dexter, don’t watch the new Season 9. For the rest of us, it all hinges on how much creativity the writers bring to the revival.

A little over two years ago, I wrote another piece about the fact that I just KNEW Dexter would return. Turns out, I was right. We’re getting it later this year. My opinion is that its return is perfectly timed. We’ll be in a different frame of mind after the pandemic.

Here’s the blog post from early 2019: https://xteri.me/2019/02/14/dexter-returns-to-kill-us-all/

After all, I told you so!

Allegory, Entertainment, Movie, Review / Critique, TV

“What’s Remembered, Lives” Nomadland

02/21/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

The title of this, “What’s remembered, lives,” is a quote attributed to the father of Frances McDormand’s character, Fern. It’s a pithy encapsulation of a truth many of us remember when we lose someone close. Fern finds herself trapped in a self-fulfilling cocoon of memory.

I tried “Nomadland” without knowing much about it. I heard buzz about it before. Frances McDormand seems to bring depth to everything. Though she’s not a classic beauty, she’s aged beautifully. Despite being sixty-four, she appears nude in this movie and does not shirk from any realistic depiction of her character. Some moments will shock you, but none of them are gratuitous.

Frances McDormand’s character is experiencing the hollow of life after her husband died. The town they lived in died due to economics. She travels in a van as a nomad. Each place she visits greets her with fascinating and complicated people, many of whom are portrayed by ‘real’ people from the nomad movement.

It was one continuous, unutterable emotion rendered as a movie.

I might compare it to a dream, one punctuated by hyperrealistic moments that don’t let you flinch away from them. The scenery is beautiful, as is the simple music by Ludovico Einaudi. (Who I discovered accidentally a couple of years ago.) There is an odd assortment of live music in the movie, and all of it is performed with creative intimacy – by people you would love to get to know.

The movie paces with an intentional speed that might confuse some people. This movie is a bit of poetry and prose set in motion. It might well be a creative second cousin to Pat Conroy’s writing.

If I had to compare this movie to something, I might say it’s a photograph of the love of your life found after a violent storm, half-hidden in debris. Or a woman’s beautiful singing voice rendered hoarse from exertion. The beauty is bare for you to see.

Like I always do, I found little pieces of myself in this movie, and in unexpected places.

As for the ending, after Fern experiences her catharsis, it is evident that Fern chooses herself and the nomad life over one filled with people and intimate love. She is a nomad once again.

She will see us all later, though.

Entertainment, Opinion, TV

How To With John Wilson

12/05/2020 X Teri Leave a comment

If you are looking for a deep, profane, and funny show that takes a single life and amplifies it to include everyone and everything, “How To With John Wilson” will be a show you need to try. I used the word “profane” so that those who have a problem with a full range of language and visual storytelling will know they will have to grimace a few times. As for me, the juxtaposition of the possibility of everything and anything being said or seen is precisely one of the reasons why I love this show.

While it is rooted in New York City, the delight of this show is in the random connections. I laughed at several strange moments.

Each short episode is allegedly centered on a single topic, but only inasmuch as John Wilson wishes it to be. The fringes are what make the show sublime. The last episode, the one decidedly at the beginning of the epidemic, feels like ancient history and yesterday.

You’ll learn something interesting. You’ll also learn something about yourself.

In a nutshell, it is a show worth watching because it slams the boring pieces of life against a curious eye. We live in a boring, mundane, fascinating, and complicated world.

Entertainment, Personal, TV, Writing

Rectify Revisit

12/03/2020 X Teri Leave a comment

If you want to try a show that I think should be universally loved, this is the one. Each of us will discover something about what we think we know as we watch.

A few years ago, I watched a show that defied me to dislike it: Rectify. It’s still available on Netflix. As many said, it was the best tv show that no one was watching when it first aired.

“It’s the beauty, not the ugly, that hurts the most.” As wounding as this quote was, I laughed when I heard it again this week. Laughter emanates from the recognition of at least a kernel of truth. Though I was prepared for The Stranger scene in Rectify, the wallop it hit me with caught me off guard. If this quote seems strange to you, it is because you didn’t visit the emotional world created in this tv series.

When Daniel violently taught Teddy a lesson about his ignorance of assault, I laughed at that too, even though the lesson was graphic.

Like other shows such as Six Feet Under, Rectify tore through me like a tornado. It uses language and emotion so close to my own inner monologue that I felt like someone strip-mined me a bit to create this show. I learned more from SFU during the second viewing. Rewatching Season 1 of Rectify both amplified and soothed my past life for me. For those not exposed to brutality, it may seem counterintuitive to find redemption in seeing someone else suffer to find it.

Along with books like “The Prince of Tides” or “A Prayer For Owen Meany,” I add “Rectify” to the list of great works that line the perimeter of the sublime for me. If you watch “Rectify” with a keen eye, you will see bits of me hidden in there.

Watching the show again, I must admit that a couple of the scenes almost led me to burst into tears. I think it’s because I recognized the beauty in the struggle. We’re never the same person twice.

Here’s a link from something I wrote a few years ago:

https://xteri.me/2017/12/28/the-gift-of-rectify/