Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
Crockett gets married! Huh?
Episode 4.8 “Like a Hurricane”
(Dir by Colin Bucksey, originally aired on November 20th, 1987)
Crockett is upset when he’s assigned to serve as a bodyguard to singer Caitlin Davies (Sheena Easton). Caitlin is a witness to the criminal activity of music industry executive Tommy Lowell (Xander Berkeley) and the Vice Squad is worried that he might send someone to kill her. Crockett doesn’t have much use for celebrities and Caitlin doesn’t have much use for a cop continually telling her what to do. But after Crockett saves Caitlin’s life multiple times, they fall in love and the episode ends with Crockett and Caitlin getting married.
Wow, Crockett got married!
I mean, is Caitlin going to live on his boat? Is the crocodile going to be okay with this? For that matter, wouldn’t the fact that he just married a celebrity make it difficult for Crockett to continue his undercover work as Sonny Burnett? I mean, I imagine there was a lot of press coverage of the marriage. Caitlin, we’re told, is a pretty big deal.
Honestly, Crockett getting married should have been a big moment but this episode just fell flat. The main problem is that Don Johnson and Sheena Easton didn’t have much romantic chemistry so their sudden love for each felt as if it came out of nowhere. Sonny getting married that quickly seemed a bit out-of-character for him. This episode, like much of season 4, felt like it was mostly the result of the writers grasping at straws to find something new to do with the show. Last week, Trudy got kidnapped by aliens. This week, Crockett got married. Maybe next week, Tubbs will take on the Yakuza. Who knows? At this point, it all feels random.
We’ll see what happens. For now, here’s Sheena Easton performing one of my favorite Bond songs.
2012’s Atlas Shrugged: Part II picks up where Part I left off.
The time is still the near future. (Part I specifically set the story as taking place five years into the future. Part II declines to use a specific date but it does feature some news personalities playing themselves so it’s still clearly only meant to be a few years from 2012.) The economy has gotten even worse. The poor are only getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. Under the direction of Head of State Thompson (Ray Wise) and his main economic advisor, Wesley Mouch (Paul McCrane), the government has nationalized nearly every business. Halfway through the film, Thompson declares a national emergency and uses the Fair Share Law to invoke Directive 10-289. All inventors, businessmen, and other creative people are required to sign their patents over to the government and to stop trying to develop now techniques. Wages are frozen. No one can be fired and no one can be hired. Creative thinking is discouraged. Asking questions or expressing doubt is forbidden. People are encouraged to snitch on anyone not following the Directive. Thompson and Mouch insist that it’s for the “good of the people,” and anyone who disagrees runs the risk of being dragged into court and sent to prison for ten years. Meanwhile, gas now costs $42.00 a gallon. One of the funnier moments of the film features someone paying $865.72 to fill up a truck.
Dagny Taggart (Samantha Mathis), the Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental Railways, is still trying to discover who invented an experimental motor that she found hidden away in a mine. The motor could potentially change the way that goods are transported but it appears to be missing one component. Unfortunately, all of the great scientists and inventors have been vanishing, with many of them leaving behind notes that ask, “Who is John Galt?” Meanwhile, Dagny’s lover, Hank Rearden (Jason Beghe), fights to protect Rearden Metal from being taken over by the government and Dagny’s brother, James (Patrick Fabian), sells out to Wesley Mouch with the end result being that there’s no one left at Taggart Transcontinental with the intelligence or the experience necessary to keep two trains from colliding in a tunnel.
Given that Ayn Rand herself was an atheist who wrote very critically of religion, it’s interesting how much of Atlas Shrugged: Part II feels like one of those evangelical films where the Rapture comes and the entire world falls apart because all of the believers have suddenly vanished. In the case of Atlas Shrugged, the world falls apart because all of the creatives and all of the leaders of industry and all of the innovative thinkers have abandoned it so that they can create a new community with John Galt. (They’ve “stopped the motor of the world.”) In many ways, this is the ultimate in wish fulfillment, a way of declaring, “They’ll miss me when I’m gone!” Indeed, the majority of people who keep a copy of Rand’s novel displayed on their bookcase do so because they believe that they would be one of the lucky ones who was approached by Galt. No one expects that they’ll be the person left behind to try to run the railroad. It’s a bit like how like the most strident Marxist activists always assume they’ll be the ones organizing the workers as opposed to being a worker themselves.
Not surprisingly, the same critics who attacked Part I didn’t care much for Atlas Shrugged Part II. When I first saw it, I thought the film was a bit too long and I was annoyed that, with the exception of a few minutes at the end, the film didn’t really seem to move the story forward. At the same time, just as with the first film, I appreciated the fact that the second film was proudly contrarian in its portrayal of the government as being inherently incompetent. After all, this was 2012, back in the “good government” era, when a lot of people still reflexively assumed that the government was staffed only by hyper-competent policy wonks who knew what they were doing and who were only concerned with making sure that “the trains ran on time,” to borrow an old expression.
Rewatching the film this weekend, I have to say that I actually appreciated Atlas Shrugged Part II a bit more than the first time I watched it. Yes, Part II was still a bit too long and the domestic drama between Hank and his wife fell flat but Part II is still a marked improvement on the first film. Some of that is because Part II had a higher budget than Part I and, as a result, it didn’t look as cheap as the first film. The corporate offices looked like actual corporate offices and the factories looked like real factories. Secondly, the second film had an entirely different cast from the first film. Samantha Mathis, Jason Beghe, and especially Patrick Fabian were clear improvements on the actors who previously played their roles. That’s especially important when it comes to Mathis and Beghe because, as opposed to the first film, Part II convinces the viewer that Dagny and Hank actually are as important as they think they are. When the trains collide in the tunnel, the viewer never doubts that Mathis’s Dagny could have prevented the disaster if not for the government’s attempts to force her out of her own company. As well, the viewer never doubts that Beghe’s Hank would fight to the end to protect his business, even if it means prison. One wouldn’t have necessarily believed that while watching the first film.
Finally, having lived through the COVID era, the film’s portrait of government overreach and incompetence feels a lot more plausible when watched today. One doesn’t have to be a fan of Rand’s philosophy or agree with her solutions to see the parallels between Directive 10-289 and the policies that led to children being kept out of schools and numerous small business having to shut their doors. In an era when most people’s faith in governmental institutions has been broken to such an extent that it might never be fixed in our lifetime, Atlas Shrugged Part II resonates. Whereas the film once felt subversive, now it feels downright prophetic.
(This review contains spoilers because it’s impossible for me to imagine that you somehow have not already seen Sharknado 3.)
Last night, I watched and live tweeted Sharknado 3 and I’m still recovering. After the first hundred, I lost track of how many tweets I devoted to Sharknado 3. Of course, I wasn’t alone in that. Last night, it seemed like the entire nation was tweeting about Sharknado 3 and it was a wonderful thing. At its best, twitter can be the great equalizer, giving everyone an equal voice and last night was one of those moments.
I hoping for a #Sharknado3 spin-off called Kittennado. "The world is ending! And it's adorable!" #meow
— Lisa Marie Bowman (@LisaMarieBowman) July 23, 2015
In fact, I was tempted to just devote this review to posting the best Sharknado 3 tweets from last night. However, if I did that, 90% of those tweets would be from me. Out of the millions of Sharknado 3 related tweets last night, mine were definitely the best.
Over the past three years, the premiere of the latest Sharknado film has almost become an unofficial national holiday, a summer version of the Super Bowl. On twitter, Sharknado 3 was trending for days before the film even premiered. And, once Sharknado 3 did start, it seemed as if everyone in the country was watching and taking bets on which celebrity guest star would be the next to die. (I’m very proud to say that I correctly predicted the bloody and prolonged death of Frankie Muniz.) Even the majority of the commercials were specifically meant to tie in with the Sharknado franchise.
Fans of the first Sharknado will be happy to know that Nova returns!
But what’s amazing and admirable is that, even though the franchise has now become an international phenomena, Sharknado 3 stayed true to its SyFy roots. Ignore all the hype and you’ll see that Sharknado 3 tells a story that will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched any SyFy original movie. The world is threatened by a flamboyant threat, in this case a bunch of tornadoes that happens to be full of sharks. Only one man (Ian Ziering as Finn) can save the world but first, he has to deal with skeptical military jackasses. As always seems to happen in these films, he’s separated from his wife (Tara Reid playing the role of April and sporting a truly badass robotic hand). Meanwhile, their teenage daughter (Ryan Newman as Claudia) has gone off on her own and finds herself right in the center of the disaster. It’s a plot that has been used in thousands of SyFy and Asylum films but director Anthony C. Ferrante directs with a lot of energy and writer Thunder Levin provides so many clever one liners that it doesn’t matter if the storyline is familiar. Ignore all the hype and you’ll discover that Sharknado 3 is still a wonderfully fun film that features everything that we love about SyFy movies.
Of course, one thing that distinguishes Sharknado 3 from other Asylum film is that it is full of celebrity cameos. Usually, I am weary of excessive celebrity cameos because they’re distracting and the celebs often turn out to be terrible actors. But the celebs in Sharknado 3 all do a wonderful job. (Add to that, the majority of them get eaten, as well.) Then again, the same could be said for the entire cast. Regardless of what they’re asked to do or say, Ian Ziering and Tara Reid both full commit to their performances. Casting director Gerald Webb is indeed one of the unsung heroes of the entire Sharknado phenomena.
The film opens with a shark attack on Washington D.C. and it’s during this time that we meet President Mark Cuban and Vice President Ann Coulter. And, oh my God, how certain heads on twitter exploded when Ann Coulter showed up. But you know what? After seeing Sharknado 3, I would totally vote for a Cuban/Coulter ticket. I don’t care what their platform is, they know how to fight sharks and they seemed far more believable than anyone who is currently running for President. At first, I assumed that Mark Cuban was supposed to be playing himself and I thought that Sharknado 3 had somehow managed to predict the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. However, I then checked with the imdb and I discovered that Cuban was playing President Marcus Robbins.
The same people on twitter who were bitching about Ann Coulter weren’t much happier when Michele Bachman showed up, playing herself. (For a few minutes, I was hoping that the movie would be full of cameos from former Presidential candidates.) However, the political cameos in Sharknado 3 are bipartisan. When the action moves down to Orlando, noted Democrat Jerry Springer shows up as a tourist and promptly gets eaten. And then Carlos Danger himself, Anthony Weiner, shows up as a heroic NASA guy. Eventually, for those of us who lean towards the libertarian side of the political spectrum, Penn Jilette and Teller eventually show up. Personally, I suspect that Teller knew how to stop the sharks but, of course, he wasn’t going to say anything.
As for the cameos from various media personalities, Sharknado 3 never manages to top the moment from Sharknado 2 where Kelly Ripa stomped a shark with her high heels. But no matter — it’s still fun to watch Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda get drunk while sharks fall around them. And then Matt Lauer gets eaten by a shark so yay for that!
(Incidentally, whether intentional or not, the film was full of former contestants from The Celebrity Apprentice, with Ian, Penn, and Lou Ferrigno all showing up. Personally, I would have enjoyed seeing Piers Morgan get eaten by a shark.)
However, of all the celebrity cameos in Sharknado 3, nobody could top the Hoff. When David Hasselhoff first showed up as Finn’s father, it felt like a funny but obvious joke. Of course, Finn’s father would be David Hasselhoff. But you know what? Give credit where credit is due. The Hoff actually gave a pretty good performance and, during the film’s interstellar climax, he managed to do a pretty good impersonation of George Clooney as he looked out into space and said, “It’s a beautiful view.”
And yes, Sharknado 3 does go into space. How could it not? The film may have started out as an homage to the classic weather disaster films but, by the end of the movie, it turned into a delirious combination of Jaws, Gravity and Interstellar. By the time Finn was exploring the stomach of a shark while it floated through the starry sky, Sharknado 3 had achieved a definite state of grace.
Incidentally, the film ended with a cliffhanger and we were asked to vote whether or not April would live. At first, I voted to kill April because, quite frankly, I thought it would be fun to see a vengeance-obsessed Finn. But then Tara Reid tweeted the following and made me feel totally guilty:
This is it show me your love and support I need you! You are the fans that made this movie keep it going! #AprilLives
Through the Shattered Lens 