The Week That Was - April 14, 2025
Surviving the Arctic Circle, obscure Kilmer, the original version of a movie that opened this week, and the best new show on television
In a week that had me waiting with bated breath to see if the Wolves could avoid the play-in while fitting in a Main Event recording for Unkind Rewind (and the hours of prep/writing/editing that goes into that), a welcome return of a fun race in the Bahrain Grand Prix (Oscar Piastri is increasingly feeling like he may be the next Max to me), and some baseball, I still had time to take this stuff in.
TV
The Pitt (Season 1) - This first season was phenomenal. A show that’s meant to take place in real time (episodes are not a full 60 minutes, so some minor liberties are taken with the concept, but none as egregious as having Jack Bauer get across LA in 15 minutes), The Pitt mines a truly horrible 15-hour day in a Pittsburgh trauma hospital’s emergency room for all the drama you can imagine. Its antepenultimate and penultimate episodes are some of the best television you’ll find, and I’ll frankly be shocked if Noah Wyle doesn’t waltz away with the Emmy for his performance here, as he’s made me reassess whether I need to give ER a proper visit after just watching some of it in passing when it started airing in the ‘90s and never really coming back to it. This show is transcendent, and you’ll only have to wait until January to get the second season. Prepare to cry a lot if you’re about to dive in, but the best art makes you feel something, and this does that more than just about anything in recent memory. Tremendous stuff. Max
Alone (Season 11 - Arctic Circle) - With each additional season I watch of this wonderful show, I get more and more of a sinking feeling that I’m watching a show that’s teaching me something I’ll have to know in the not-too-distant future. Things like don’t trip in the woods and impale yourself with your own arrow or don’t lose your fishing line on like the second day or make sure to build a proper chimney in your shelter to not turn your living quarters into a smokehouse or don’t start talking about Barbara. But seriously, this is the only American competition show that I like, and it’s some of the best television around. This season was maybe the best season since the last Great Slave Lake season (the Million Dollar Challenge where they had to last 100 days to get double the usual prize money), and the final three contestants left were captivating, which always makes for a more compelling season. It’s also the most exposure I’ve had to a Labradorean/Newfie accent, and it is WILD. Come for the monster pike, stay for the Sassy. Hulu, History Channel
Castle (Season 8) - Finishing out the run of this show as it was imploding behind the scenes was truly odd. The whole last season is a disaster, with the married lead characters being put in side-by-side shows happening at the same time because the real-life lead actors HATED EACH OTHER. I’d forgotten how this ended, and while I don’t generally like to get into spoiling anything, this aired in 2016, and if anything I may save you from continuing down a truly bad path and watching this final season. After announcing that Nathan Fillion and some of the other cast were signing on for a Season 9 without Stana Katic and Tamala Jones, fans revolted, and ABC just canceled the show entirely. With its fate somewhat uncertain but being stuck needing to potentially kill off Beckett, the ends with Castle and Beckett both having been shot in Castle’s kitchen, with Kate dragging herself to Rick to hold hands. Then they smash cut to a tacked on “Seven Years Later” dialogue-free post-script with kids running around a gauzy abode and Kate and Castle smiling and laughing with the family they have apparently had in the seven years after Kate would have died had the show continued on the path it was heading 12 seconds earlier. This is the most slapdash, insane storytelling choice I think I’ve ever seen. Like I guffawed loudly enough I’m shocked I didn’t wake up Jackie. This last season was bad. The show started more and more to get away from what made it work. It doubled down on the mythology episodes, having them come more and more often, and the serialized aspects of the show were always pretty laughable examples of a show that didn’t know what lane it actually existed in trying something that it was ill-equipped to do. It’s too bad this was such a toxic show behind the scenes for its last few seasons because early on the show was fun. This last season was a slog though.
Film
Madigan (1968) and Coogan’s Bluff (1968) - Both 1968 Don Siegel films mostly shot in New York with many of the same cast members in both, some reused sets, and similar views espoused about bad cops being A-OK. Coogan’s Bluff was easily the better of these two, but neither gave me the grimy New York I was hoping for, likely owing to it still being 1968. Madigan features Richard Widmark in the title role but feels much more like an ensemble piece. Madigan is also a really shitty cop who this film seems comfortable lionizing. Eastwood’s Coogan is slightly less shitty but is doing his ‘police’ work out of his jurisdiction and screws things up enough that he ‘has to go rogue’ to get his charge back in custody. Coogan’s Bluff at least has Eastwood’s cowboy in the city doing some vaguely interesting stuff, but neither of these are great, and neither has the hardboiled tone or exploitative verve that these films should have had were they trying to be as fun as they could have been. Criterion
Kill Me Again (1989) - This is notable neo-noir director John Dahl’s debut feature, and while it wasn’t quite as good as The Last Seduction or even Red Rock West, this is a very fun vehicle for then-husband-and-wife Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. Val’s down-on-his-luck schmuck of a PI doesn’t give him A TON to work with, but after watching The Saint last week, this is definitely a better vehicle for him. The juicier roles are definitely Whalley-Kilmer’s femme fatale and Michael Madsen’s psychotic boyfriend, and they both have a ton of fun. Bonus points for Jon Gries popping up here. Solid fun here. Prime, FUBO, MGM+, Philo, PlutoTV
The Amateur (1981) - My brother had happened across this on Hulu, and not having been aware of the fact that the upcoming Rami Malek vehicle of the same name was adapted from the same novel of the same name, I was morbidly curious to check this out. John Savage plays the aggrieved boyfriend of the American woman slain in a terrorist attack at a European consulate. This benefits in its release having been in 1981, because a few years later, this would have been far more jingoistic. Instead, this is still rooted in the paranoia that fueled many of the better thrillers of the 1970s. That said, this one is pretty middling, though it’s probably the earliest released film I’ve seen that suggests Shakespeare’s works were written by Francis Bacon. Hulu
Clue (1985) - Watched this for an Unkind Rewind episode we recorded for this next season, so more on this later. PlutoTV
The Swinging Cheerleaders (1974) - If ever there were a man qualified to make a feminist statement about the exploitative nature of cheerleading, it’s the Roger Corman protégé responsible for the films Coffy, Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters, Sorceress, and recent watch discussed in this space The Big Bird Cage, exploitation auteur Jack Hill. Here, we’ve got a Nellie Bly style exposé where a comely brunette co-ed named Kate (Jo Johnston, quite good in her only film role) sets her journalistic sights on the world of college football cheerleading. I was honestly watching this because I’ve seen two Colleen Camp flicks in the last week for the pod (Clue being the latest), and I figured I’d keep it going. Unlike much of its ilk, this at least arguably has a plot. If you’re looking for an exploitation flick from the ‘70s that qualifies as capably made, this definitely qualifies and is a fairly fun ride, even if it makes a choice for its leftist Dylan fan that strains credulity. Prime, Tubi, Plex
Promises….. Promises! (1963) - The first Hollywood film to feature nudity in nearly 30 years since the invocation of the Hays Code (Monroe died during the filming of Something’s Gotta Give—no, not that Something’s Gotta Give—the year prior), I threw this on because it features blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield and Mr. Universe 1955, Mickey Hargitay. If that doesn’t jump off the page for you, those are Mariska Hargitay’s parents. For something that was so edgy at the time that co-star/-producer/-writer Tommy Noonan (no relation to Tom Noonan) had to twist Mansfield’s arm to do the scenes in question and then had multiple cities in which the film was banned from being screened, this plays so tame now. There are a couple standout scenes that don’t involve Mansfield laying herself bare, namely a split-screen scene where each couple is complaining about having to have yet another meal with the other couple where Noonan makes fun of Hargitay to Hargitay’s real-life wife. That this was a modest hit and yet didn’t boost Mansfield’s flagging career speaks volumes about Hollywood’s tunnel vision, particularly but not exclusively as pertains to actresses. Prime, Tubi, Plex
Lured (1947) - Beckoned to this one from the Douglas Sirk Noir package on Criterion and by the presence of Lucille Ball in something set in London, I threw it on, but it was just kind of DOA. George Sanders generally leaves me cold, Boris Karloff was underused, and Charles Coburn was oddly playing a Brit. I never really cared about anything going on here, and it felt a little paint-by-numbers for serial killer fare with stakes that never really landed and a few odd transition choices and shots mixed in that made me question whether Sirk understood the assignment. Criterion, Prime, Kanopy, Hoopla
you watched a lot this week. dang. but the question is, do people know the Barbara effect? i would also say Great British Bake Off is a competition show you watch and enjoy.