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Movie Review: The Holdovers

A couple of days ago, I watched one of the Oscar nominated films with my family. There is a movie directed by Alexander Payne called The Holdovers, and if you haven’t seen it yet I really recommend you see it because it is a really touching and moving story. I had seen Alexander Payne’s other movie, The Descendants, a long time ago. It’s about a father living in Hawaii who is doing his best to raise his two daughters and cope with his wife being in a coma. It was a very moving film. I heard about The Holdovers from watching all of the awards shows this year, and I saw one of the actors in the movie, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, win several awards for her performance in the movie. I saw Da’Vine in one movie called My Name is Dolemite, which stars Eddie Murphy, and she was really good in that role. I can see why she won so many awards this year for her role in The Holdovers, though, because she was really good in the movie. Update since last writing this post: I nearly teared up when Da’Vine won for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars this year. Her speech was also very moving; she said that she thought she had to be someone else, but she realized she just needed to be herself. This was a good reminder for me because I tend to be critical about myself and think, Maybe I should be someone different or change who I am. I still want to grow and develop, but I am learning that I can grow and develop in a way that is true to myself. It made me think of the concept of cherry, plum, peach and damson in Buddhism; each tree has its own unique qualities, and one cannot be like the other. I also love Paul Giamatti, and he was really good in his role in this movie (I remember watching him as a kid when he starred in this funny movie called Big Fat Liar with Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes.)

If you haven’t seen The Holdovers, it’s about Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly history teacher at Barton Academy, an all-male boarding school in New England who stays during the school’s winter break to look after five young men who won’t be able to come home during the holidays to see their families. Paul runs a pretty tight ship, and this is evident even before the kids go on vacation. Many of his students got bad grades in his class and are close to failing. However, one of the students, Angus Tully, is the only one who got a B+ in the class. Five kids end up staying behind at the school, and even though Angus is planning to go to St. Kitts with his mom, his mom cancels the plans for him to go with her and he has to end up staying at the school over winter break. I seriously thought that the five kids were going to all stay with Mr. Hunham, but Alexander Payne got me with a plot twist (and your girl here loves a plot twist.) One of the holdovers has a wealthy father, and the father ends up picking up the kids to go on a ski trip with him, which leaves Angus as the only one to stay with Mr. Hunham. Over the course of the film, Paul, Angus and Mary, the chef at the school, get to know each other and find out they have a lot in common with each other even though they have gone through different things in life.

I really loved the scene where Mary, Paul and Angus are at a restaurant and Paul orders cherries jubilee because he sees someone at the other table ordered one, but the waitress tells him they can’t bring cherry jubilee because Angus is under the legal drinking age and cherries jubilee has alcohol in it. Paul tries to argue with her, and Angus is upset at being treated like a little kid, but I love Mary because she just calmly asks the waitress if they have cherries and ice cream, and the waitress gladly brings them cherries and ice cream. They go outside the restaurant and enjoy their own cherries jubilee by pouring alcohol over the cherries and ice cream and lighting it on fire to mimic the flambee style they saw at the restaurant. It was also really touching when Angus got to visit his father. Angus and Paul end up having a lot in common, one being that they both take the same medication.

I really loved Mary’s part in the movie. Mary’s only son, Curtis, was killed in the Vietnam War and she is grieving his death. There is a part in the movie where Paul, Angus and Mary go to a Christmas party held at Lydia’s house (Lydia is on the staff at the school.) They are having fun, and Angus even falls in love with and kisses Lydia’s niece. However, Mary ends up thinking about her son, Curtis, and gets really drunk, and Paul finds out that even though he was in love with Lydia, he finds out at the party that she has a boyfriend already, so Paul suggests that he, Mary and Angus leave the party. Outside of the house, Paul argues with Angus and tells him he thought he was going to go home on break to see his father, and Angus tells him that his father is dead. Mary calls out Paul on his behavior towards Angus, and Paul self-reflects. When Paul changes his relationship with Angus, Angus begins to open up to him and trust him more. Even though Paul got in trouble for taking Angus off campus, I still appreciate that he did that for Angus. While the three of them (Paul, Mary and Angus) are eating Christmas dinner, Paul has them list off any requests or wishes they have, and Angus’s wish is to go off campus to explore the city of Boston. However, Paul knows he will get Angus and himself in trouble if he does that, so he says no, leaving Angus feeling angry and hurt. However, Mary is very straightforward and honest, and so she says Paul should take Angus to the city because that is what he wanted. Angus didn’t get to leave the campus all winter break unlike the other students, so it wouldn’t be fair for him to have to stay while everyone else had fun. However, after they get back from the city, Angus’s mom and stepfather come to the school and let Paul know it wasn’t okay to bring Angus to see his dad. Angus’s dad struggled with mental illness and became very abusive towards Angus’s mom, and so she didn’t want her or Angus to see him again. They threaten to take Angus out of the school, but Paul admits he was the one to propose the trip to Boston and so he gets fired. I was kind of sad that Paul got fired from his teaching position at the school, but I also admire that he was honest and wanted to stick up for Angus.

This movie really taught me that sometimes you find friendships in the most unlikely connections and it’s not always about having a lot of friends but making a few close connections with others where you empathize with the other person’s suffering and genuinely want to help them. You may not always know how those bonds develop, but they do in the most interesting ways. Many people felt sympathy for Mary after she lost her son in the Vietnam War, but through her friendship with Paul and Angus, she found people who could genuinely show up for her and sit with her pain rather than run from it. I have learned through my own experiences losing loved ones that grief is an uncomfortable process, one that brings up a lot of emotions, and it can be uncomfortable to sit with yourself and process that emotional pain. But it really helps to have people around who can show up and just sit or listen without judgment, whether they have experienced your exact situation or not. Angus and Paul can also relate to Mary’s experience with grief because they themselves have experienced loneliness and loss. Angus wasn’t allowed to see his dad for many years and that was a painful experience, and he can’t go home to see his mom. Paul also deals with loneliness, and he is able to sit with Mary’s grief and show up for her, even if it’s just to watch TV together. The three of these people laugh, cry and survive the winter break together, and they develop an incredible bond with one another.

It was pretty painful watching the scene where Angus gets injured while messing around in the gym. He runs down the hall and Paul has to run after him to catch up, and when Paul finally reaches the gym, Angus jumps over some gym equipment when he isn’t supposed to, and it’s not until Angus lets out a severe cry that Paul realizes Angus is badly hurt. The doctors have to fix Angus’s shoulder because it got dislocated when he jumped over the equipment and injured himself. It was pretty painful to watch this scene, to be honest, because I saw Angus in so much pain.

Honestly, if you haven’t seen this movie, I recommend you see it. It is really good. And the trailer is excellent; it’s what got me to watch the movie in the first place.

The Holdovers. 2023. 133 minutes. Rated R for language, some drug use and brief sexual material.

Abbott Elementary, season 3, episode 8 (“Panel”)

Last evening I watched the eighth episode of season 3 of Abbott Elementary. It was pretty good. In this episode, Melissa, Barbara and Jacob have to complete CPR training, but their personal lives get in the way of them focusing on the training. Janine has to get a library program approved and she works with Manny to get it approved, but they end up going through a lot of challenges to get it approved. Gregory and Ava have to sit on an education panel and talk about public schools, and Ava’s sorority sister/ rival, Crystal, is trying to outdo her.

I’m really glad they came back with a season 3 for Abbott Elementary. It’s a good show. It also reminds me that teachers have to do a lot and they work really hard, and so I need to appreciate teachers.

Movie Review: Past Lives

This weekend I tried to cram in more Oscar nominated movies. One of these nominees was the film Past Lives. I love A24 movies so when I saw the trailer I was really excited to see this. At first, I didn’t think I recognized Greta Lee from anything, but then I remembered she was in a sketch on Inside Amy Schumer I watched a long time ago called “Compliments.” In the sketch, a bunch of women have a hard time taking compliments from each other and when one of their friends actually can take a compliment, it makes them feel bad about themselves. I just remember resonating so much with this sketch because whenever people would give me compliments, I didn’t think I deserved them. I’m developing more confidence in myself so I think I am getting better, but I used to be terrible at it. I would say things like, “Oh, no, I’m not that smart” and then people would have to assure me, “No, no, you are smart.” I think eventually they got tired of me putting myself down, and eventually I realized I needed to seek that affirmation from within rather than always relying on it from outside. I really loved Greta in that sketch; she was hilarious.

Anyway, back to the movie Past Lives. It’s about a young woman named Nora and a young man named Hae Sung who reconnect after years spent apart. Nora and Hae Sung grew up in South Korea together and they became very close, but then Nora and her family moved to Canada and her and Hae Sung lost touch. Nora and Hae Sung reconnect over Skype later on in life and they remember the times they shared and catch up, and they fall in love all over again. However, the distance puts a strain on their relationship and Nora says they should stop talking to each other. Nora goes to a writer’s workshop and falls in love with a white guy named Arthur, who is also a writer, and they get married and move to New York City. Hae Sung is dating someone else, but he still loves Nora and thinks about her a lot, so he comes to America to visit her. They reconnect over their past lives together.

Honestly, watching this movie was kind of an emotional experience for me. I didn’t cry, but I still felt this huge emotional pull throughout the film. It kind of resonated with me because I fell in love with one of my friends during my time in college and I think he liked me, too. But we never became a couple, and he ended up with someone else. I reconnected with him again a few years ago, and thought he wasn’t seeing anyone but then he told me he was seeing someone and was getting married. It was a pretty tough time because I wanted to respect him being in a relationship already, but I was still holding onto this idea that he and I were going to be a couple together. I think chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo helped because it reminded me to not feel worthless just because I didn’t end up with this person. I didn’t move on right away, but over time I realized that I had goals and dreams I was putting on the backburner for love and that wasn’t okay, so I decided to take my writing dreams more seriously and I think over time I started to just respect that we were friends and nothing more.

My first love

I remember the first time I got in a relationship. We were both in Sarnath, a city in India. To be honest, I wasn’t even going to India to find love. I was going there to study about Buddhism. It was a college program where we took courses in Buddhist studies and learned about Tibetan and Indian history and culture. We had an academic exchange with students from Tasmania and Australia. It wasn’t my first time meeting people from Australia. There was a young woman in my high school who was born and raised in Australia. However, I have never been to Australia or Tasmania, so it was a new experience getting to spend three weeks with people from Australia and Tasmania. The guy I fell in love with was named Tom (I withheld his real name because I still love and respect this man even though he is my ex, and I don’t want him to slap a big fat lawsuit on my behind when he finds out I am writing about him. Thanks for the sunglasses, by the way, Tom.) Tom was a tall, blonde man with scraggly hair and a very relaxed demeanor about him. As someone who is asexual, meaning I don’t experience sexual attraction, it was hard for me to pick up on the kinds of cues he was sending me. But honestly, it wasn’t love at first sight for me. Tom and I just started hanging out in a group and would often participate in group conversations, with very little indication that we were going to one day become a romantic couple. Honestly, I wasn’t even looking for a boyfriend at the time, but it was a sort of inconspicuous benefit that I wasn’t expecting to happen. I had fallen in love with a guy who was in my cello class in college. Over the summer, I agonized over whether he would text me back and often fantasized about us getting together, marrying and having children. However, when we came back from the summer break and talked about our summers, he told me he had spent time with his girlfriend. I was a little taken aback and a little heartbroken, but I moved on with no hard feelings and figured it was for the best that he already had a girlfriend because I wasn’t really ready for a relationship yet and needed to focus on my senior thesis research that year. I’m glad I was chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo at the time because it helped me keep a high life condition even when I was experiencing all this agony and heartbreak over unrequited love.

Anyway, back to Tom. Tom and I had a lot of great conversations during those three weeks in India, and I didn’t start getting closer to him until the last week of the program. We had gotten back from a weekend trip to Raj Gir, Nalanda and Bodh Gaya to visit Buddhist pilgrimage sites, and the night we were leaving to go back to the campus in Sarnath, our bus got stuck in traffic and we ended up hanging out on the bus for two hours. In between chatting it up with the other participants in the program, I chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo that we would get home safely. Finally, after two hours, the traffic let up and we were able to go on our merry way back to campus. We didn’t get back until midnight, but the chef at the campus had made us this delicious vegan tortellini soup and bread. Let me tell you, I chowed down on some Tibetan bread during my time on the program, and it was one of the best things I have ever eaten. We hada jar of peanut butter for the American students and a jar of Vegemite for the Australian students. I had made this general assumption that all of the Australian and Tasmanian students loved the Vegemite, but Tom surprisingly said he was never really a fan of Vegemite. Anyway, we inhaled the soup and the bread and then went to bed to get ready for classes the next day. The next day, I found Tom and I spending more time together than usual. We had gone from being acquaintances to being friends, and I’m glad it worked out gradually the way it did because I wasn’t ready to rush into anything, so I’m glad Tom and I got to know each other first before getting into anything serious. Soon, we were getting to be closer than friends. I didn’t know if anyone could feel the palpable romantic chemistry, the rush of oxytocin through both of our bodies, but that chemistry was there, and it was very much alive and well. Tuesday evening, we gushed over our favorite artists, and he led me to the steps outside and we listened to tunes on his iPod. He introduced me to artists I didn’t know, even for a music lover like me, such as The Cops, Buddy Guy and Hilltop Hoods. I didn’t know many Australian musicians before the trip, to be honest. In middle school I discovered Sia’s music, and in college I discovered Iggy Azalea’s music, but that was about it. Tom had me listen to a song by The Cops called “Out of the Fridge/ Into the Fire” and a song by Hilltop Hoods and Sia called “I Love It.” I pretty much fell in love with his playlist. We bopped our bodies and heads together as we jammed to “Super Freak” by Rick James and had a quiet contemplative moment as we listened to “Done Got Old” by Buddy Guy.

Wednesday things started to heat up a little more, and pretty soon the tension was palpable. We had gone into the city with a friend to get henna tattoos, and we were very innocently enjoying each other’s company, and then by Wednesday evening, Tom and I were feeling that chemistry crackle! It was midnight and everyone had gone to bed, but we stayed up and kept talking until the wee hours (how the professors didn’t bust our asses, I have no idea. They kept a pretty tight ship.) We crept downstairs to the lobby area and hid under the desk at the entrance, and then we talked and talked about our childhoods and I just was so vulnerable with him about my life, and he just listened so well. Tom and I peered into each other’s eyes, and then we pressed our henna’d palms against one another. He led me up from the desk and we danced in slow motion in the center of the lobby. Just two individuals in love. Then at approximately 1:00 AM, he took off my glasses, put them in his breast pocket with a small smile, and kissed me. A million electric currents surged through my body at that moment, and I kissed him with even greater intensity. Our lips danced in sync with one another, and I could feel the warmth of his body against mine. Even though I had nary a drop of alcohol in my system, I was so drunk and giddy from all this love and excitement. It really did feel like I was in a fairytale and this man was my knight in shining armor, here to save a hopeless romantic, a damsel in distress. As Barbra Streisand once sang, I was a woman in love, and I was going to do anything to get this man into my world. I remember one evening lying on Tom’s lap. The mosquitoes were buzzing around in the night sky, and one of them hummed in my ear. It was loud and it startled me, so instead of spending quiet time lying in my boo’s lap, I was instead flailing around, swatting this mosquito away. I really do miss the scent of his Bushman bug spray on his tanned beefcake Australian body. I remember his fingers exploring my curly black hair and the kisses we stole from each other’s lips.

I was so drunk on love and excitement that it made our last day together that much more painful. I felt like I was wallowing in grief; I could not stop crying. I didn’t want him out of my embrace for one second. The girls on the trip sang “I’ll Fly Away” as the Australian and Tasmanian students boarded the bus for the rest of their trip. We Americans would leave the next day to go back home. Tom blew me kisses from the bus and I cried even harder. My fellow American participant, Ramy, rubbed my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic smile, like, “It’s ok to feel sad about this.” All I wanted to do that evening was curl into a ball and cry and heave and break down from not being with Tom anymore. I’m glad the girls had me hang out with them the rest of the evening because I was in so much despair at that moment. They asked me about the time Tom and I met, and honestly telling them about Tom and I was healing. Over the course of our final week, I wanted to keep private about my relationship with Tom, but this being my first relationship, I was experiencing so many things at once that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about it. My friend, Grace, at the time, shouted from the rooftops that I was in love with Tom. I should have told her to not tell anyone, but I didn’t. Everyone knew Tom and I were a couple, and they were eating it up. I remember some of my close friends were a little taken aback though that I had gotten in a relationship, and I felt bad because I felt like they weren’t happy that I was with someone. But maybe that were just my own insecurities.

I think at some point in the course of our long-distance relationship, though, Tom and I had to call it quits. After several exchanges through Facebook Messenger (the cheaper option) and international phone calls (the much more expensive option) he stopped responding to my messages around 2018. I was confused and wondered what was going on. This went on for a whole year, and I was stressed but I also didn’t have time to be too stressed because I already had a lot on my plate. I was doing a lot of SGI Buddhist activities, working full-time and taking cello lessons, so agonizing over Tom had become less and less of a priority as time went on. In 2019, I deleted my Facebook. I think this was around the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and also the killings of two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. I was just overwhelmed and needed some time away from the site, so for the second time I deleted my account. I continued to chant about the situation and Tom’s absolute happiness, and after a year he reached out to me via email, noticing I wasn’t on Facebook anymore. He figured I had deleted it due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal (which I had, among other reasons) and he wanted to check in. By this point I had pretty much moved on and was willing to keep in touch as a friend. However, after a couple more email exchanges, we lost touch for good this time. It was closure. And it ended in the most painless, most respectful way possible, and I have every reason to appreciate that.

Movies I Have Watched So Far

I am gearing up for the Academy Awards, which is coming up this Sunday, so I am trying my best to cram in as many movies as I can before the awards ceremony. To be honest, I haven’t made time to watch all of the movies. I’m still trying to finish up Killers of the Flower Moon, but to be honest, it is really intense and during the first hour and a half I found my stomach getting pretty queasy. But I had to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo about how I was feeling after the movie, and I realized that it wasn’t the director’s job to make me feel comfortable. This was a very disturbing movie about the Osage murders, and the murders weren’t pretty, so it would be a pretty big “fuck you” to the Indigenous community if someone watered down the history of the Osage murders. I haven’t read the book Killers of the Flower Moon yet unfortunately, but after watching the first half of the movie it reminded me that is why I need to study history, especially Native American history. I remember we studied about it in history class, but that was several years ago and that class flew by pretty quickly, so by the time I graduated I had forgotten most of what I studied. Also, it’s one thing to read a classroom textbook about white settlers’ exploitation of Indigenous peoples, but the thing about movies is that those images stay with you for a pretty long time. My experience watching Killers of the Flower Moon made me think of when I was in my junior year of college, and the summer before school started, I was reading a lot of reviews about the film 12 Years a Slave. Many people said it was harrowing to watch, and so when my professor put the film on the curriculum for the class to watch, my stomach dropped a little, and during office hours I expressed my reservations about watching the film. I ended up watching the movie after he gave me a very no-nonsense reality check about the movie, and I ended up watching it four times because I wanted to study and analyze the movie. Looking back, I think watching it one time would have sufficed considering my sensitivity threshold when it comes to violence in movies, but as distressing as it was to watch Solomon Northrup’s trauma unfold within the first ten minutes of the movie, from the minute those white men got him drunk and had him shackled in chains to the moment he left the plantation after twelve years of being whipped, prodded, beat, strung up in a tree and called the N-word, the acting was very spot-on and the film score was brilliant, beautiful and gave me chills.

A couple of weeks ago, I did watch Maestro, a Netflix movie that actor Bradley Cooper starred in, directed and produced. Honestly, I cried after watching it. At first, I was ambivalent about watching it because it received a lot of push back from people. Bradley Cooper had to put on prosthetics to look like the Jewish composer, Leonard Bernstein, and considering the history of Hollywood casting non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters or real-life people in biographical dramas and other movies, I can see why it received some pushback. However, I read somewhere that Leonard Bernstein’s children didn’t mind that Bradley Cooper, who isn’t Jewish, was playing Leonard Bernstein. As someone who loves listening to classical music as much as I love playing it, I really appreciate that they made this movie. I don’t know a lot of movies where classical musicians, conductors or composers are the main characters on the big screen. I haven’t seen Amadeus, but I remember watching TAR with Cate Blanchett and thinking, Oh, man, this is the year for classical music! We’re not just playing on the film score; we’re actually acting! The girl who played Lydia Tar’s love interest in the movie is a real-life cellist named Sophie Kauer, and in general I was just happy to see a film about classical music. During the film Maestro, I remember getting goosebumps when Leonard conducts the orchestra in a performance of “Adagietto” from the composer Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. It was a beautiful performance and it really tugged at my heartstrings. I really loved that scene because it reminded me of when I was in my senior year of high school, and my orchestra played the “Adagietto.” It was honestly the highlight of my senior year because it is such a beautiful piece, and it challenged me as a musician, especially because it is a long piece and requires a lot of control when playing it. The cello part has a lot of whole notes, and the piece has a wide variety of sounds and colors, from the soft to the deeply intense. It is also hard to play in tune, and intonation has always been a pitfall of mine when playing the cello, so it really forced me to have a keener ear when working on the piece. As someone who feels intense physical reactions when I hear music, I remember while playing the piece during rehearsals I would often get teary-eyed because it was such a moving piece. The movie Maestro also reminded me of TAR because both of these conductors were members of the LGBTQ community. Of course, Leonard Bernstein was a real person and Lydia Tar was a fictional character, but it was encouraging to see not just representation of classical musicians on screen, but also classical musicians who identified as LGBTQ. I also saw the actor Gideon Glick from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in Maestro; he plays Tommy, a young man who Leonard has an affair with. In TAR, Lydia finds herself falling in love with a cellist named Olga, which puts a strain on Lydia’s marriage to her wife, Sharon.

I am currently watching The Holdovers with my family. I really wanted to see this movie because Da’Vine Joy Randolph won several awards for her performance in the movie, and I also really loved the trailer. So far it is a really good movie, and it has some heartfelt moments. Over the weekend I watched an animated feature called Nimona, which stars Eugene Lee Yang of Buzzfeed and The Try Guys, actress Chloe Grace Moretz, and Riz Ahmed. It was a really excellent film about a shapeshifter named Nimona who becomes a sidekick to a knight who is framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Nimona has a sharp wit and also kicks butt. I don’t have the stomach to see Chloe Grace Moretz in her earlier film Kick Ass, but I was at least able to see her kick ass in a PG-rated setting when I watched Nimona. I really resonated with Nimona’s struggle of being different and not feeling like you belong anywhere, and how it can put you in that dark place of despair sometimes because you don’t fit in anywhere and want to be accepted for who you are. I really appreciate the LGBTQ representation in this movie, too.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards 2024

On Saturday, I watched the Screen Actors Guild Awards. I saw it a couple of years ago, and I really loved it, and I didn’t want to miss out this time, especially because I was bummed about missing the Emmys. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t miss it, because after a historic writers strike last year that lasted from July to November, it was time for me to pay my respects to all the writers, producers and actors that work hard every day to produce the shows I love. Of course, I also watched it because I love seeing the people getting dressed up. And because I love movies and TV. Honestly, it made me wonder what it was like actually being at the awards ceremony. It seems so glamorous to me as an outsider, but I guess this reminds me of when I went to Los Angeles and had this glamorous idea of how it was going to be. I thought I was going to see celebrities just walking around, but I didn’t end up seeing celebrities and that was probably the best thing, because I would have tried to disrupt their day to get an autograph and they probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about that. I remember talking to the Uber driver while we were going through Sunset Boulevard to get to the place I was staying, and I was feeling so intimidated that we were going past all of these famous people’s homes, and he told me that at the end of the day, celebrities are just human beings. And I’m glad he said that, because I didn’t want to keep walking around thinking that Hollywood was this glamorous thing and that actors just came out of the womb reciting lines from memory. I think watching interviews and Variety series like Actors on Actors helped me see that the people who recite these brilliant lines of dialogue and get inside the minds and bodies of these characters are people with families and bills to pay. Of course, I love entertaining my little fantasies about being at these glamorous awards ceremonies now and then, because I enjoy daydreaming.

There were some really powerful moments during the ceremony. Barbra Streisand received the Lifetime Achievement Award and delivered a speech about her love of movies and acting and how important the work of actors is. I haven’t seen many of Barbra Streisand’s movies, and I have only heard a few of her songs, so I have a lot of catching up to do, but hearing her speech reminded me why film is such an important medium. I’ve learned from watching these movies and television shows that film is a really powerful way not just to entertain, but also to gain more insight into the human experience. The human experience is complex and full of emotions: joy, sadness, grief, anger, fear, love, gratitude, the list goes on. I really admire that there are people out there who can convey various human emotions, play different characters, and share stories that resonate with people from all walks of life. I remember doing theater briefly in middle school, but I ended up sticking with orchestra. I wasn’t all that great at it, but I still loved going to plays, musicals, and the cinema and watching other people do it. I think that is why I loved The Fabelmans, because it gets into the mind of a young filmmaker who is trying to chart his own unique path in life amid societal pressures and the pressures of growing up. I was curious about how these people got into filmmaking and how they became so good at what they did, and I feel like the secret to Sammy charting his own path in the movie was that he just kept making and directing films. He didn’t start with a big budget; he was making movies with his high school classmates. He spent hours making the movies and editing the movies, even when things got tough in his life. He managed to create something profound out of his painful experiences.

There were other great parts about the SAG awards. I was really excited when Da’Vine Joy Randolph won for her role in The Holdovers. I haven’t seen it yet, but I really liked the trailer and I love Paul Giamatti’s acting. I was also really happy when Ayo Edebiri, Lily Gladstone and Elizabeth Debicki won awards. Elizabeth Debicki is an incredible actress; she played Princess Diana in a series called The Crown. I also really loved her in the film Widows, where she plays one of the women who has to go on a heist mission after her husband gets killed. I thought Pedro Pascal’s speech was really heartfelt; I don’t think I have the stomach to watch The Last of Us (I’m squeamish about zombies and blood, unfortunately) but it was nice seeing him have a heartfelt conversation with Tan France, who interviewed the winners backstage. I was really happy when Succession won because I just finished watching the show, and it was really good. I didn’t really get into the buzz about Succession until after the show had wrapped up. The only reason I started watching it was because it won several awards and received lots of nominations at the Golden Globes, so I was like, Dang, this show must be really good. For some reason, I got emotional after Succession was over. Maybe it has to do with it being close to my period, or I’m just an emotional mess, but I just got teary-eyed. I keep forgetting that even though it’s a comedy-drama, a satire, a black comedy, it was still in the drama category for a reason. I think because I had my own personal experiences with grief this year that season 4 really knocked me out of the emotional ballpark. I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet, but it won quite a few awards, and Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. won for Best Actor and Best Supporting Male Actor in the Motion Picture categories. I’m curious about Beef. I don’t know much about it, but Ali Wong and Steven Yeun both got awards last night for the series and it got good reviews.

Honestly, this was a really good ceremony. I loved the conversations between Tan France and the winners of the awards. They were just so delightful and sweet. And the best part is, the actors got to make their speeches without the swear words being bleeped out because it was technically on Netflix and not live TV. If they swore on NBC or ABC, they would be bleeped out. Also, I really love the part where Billie Eilish signed Melissa McCarthy’s face. And Idris Elba. 🙂

Abbott Elementary, season 3: episode 4 (“Smoking”)

Yesterday I couldn’t get enough of Abbott Elementary, so after catching up on episode 1 (“Career Day”) I watched the latest episode, “Smoking.” In this episode, a student at Abbott is caught smoking, which caused the fire alarms at the school to go off. Apparently, there is not a no-smoking rule at Abbott. The teachers end up having a discussion about drugs in the lounge. Jacob says that smoking is bad, but Janine says he can’t say that because he vapes. Jacob argues that vaping is not as bad as smoking, and then he tells everyone that Janine does weed. Janine admits that she smokes it every night and that she needs it to function. Ava admits that she does hookah, Gregory admits he has an occasional protein-bar edible, and when Barbara tells them they need to give up the sin of taking these drugs, Melissa laughs and says that Barbara drinks alcohol. Mr. Johnson tries to chime in, but Janine sees a student has been taping the whole discussion with his phone, and the teachers confront the student about how he needs to not let the discussion become public. However, it is too late. The student ended up posting the conversation on social media, and now students everywhere in the school now know that their teachers do substances even though they told the students that substances were bad. During a lesson Jacob is teaching on the Dust Bowl, one of his students asks, when looking at a photo of the Dust Bowl, if that is what the inside of Jacob’s car looks like when he is vaping, and they laugh at him. Janine greets a student in the halls with a simple “hi,” and the student whispers, “Bet you are.” (At first, I didn’t catch this, but then I watched it again and realized the student was making fun of Janine being “high” on weed.) Barbara is teaching her students and takes a sip from her traveler mug, and a student asks her if she is drinking Pinot Grigio. The teachers are fed up, and so they find a way to clear things up with the students.

They end up enlisting the help of Tariq’s program, F.A.D.E. I honestly thought Tariq was going to show up again, but instead it’s Slim, another guy who is part of the F.A.D.E. program. Slim was deeply influenced by Tariq, and it is clearly showing in his performance. He ends up giving a really hilarious spoken word about not doing drugs, and it is very cringey for the students to watch. He enlists another F.A.D.E. spokesperson, Caroline (played by a really brilliant comedian named Aparna Nancherla), who ends up engaging the students in a very chaotic discussion about which drugs are better or worse than others. The school ends up employing a strict checking policy where the teachers have to check the students’ bags for any drugs. Obviously, this isn’t fun, and it stresses the teachers and students out. The teachers talk more about it, and they realize the best way to address this is to actually have a conversation with Curtis, the student who was caught smoking. Melissa and Gregory sit down with the student, and the student apologizes and says he won’t do it again, and that he doesn’t even like the taste of smoking. Melissa and Gregory tell him he isn’t in trouble and tell him that they just want to make sure he is being careful. When the student asks if it was his fault for having the F.A.D.E. program brought into the school, Melissa assures him that wasn’t his fault (“it’s the government’s fault) and they send the student back to class. Gregory and Melissa don’t want Curtis to be suspended, and so Gregory finds a way so that Curtis’s suspension will be lifted. When Curtis finds out, he goes into Ava’s office and gives her a hug (this was really touching).

Meanwhile, Janine also has to deal with Jessca (yes, this is actually how she spells her name) who is the substitute for Janine’s classroom. Jessca insists on the students calling her by her first name and doesn’t teach them grammar properly. She lets the students misplace commas and just has a very lax attitude towards teaching, and Janine has a problem with this. One of the students calls her Janine when she comes into the classroom, and Janine corrects him and says, “it’s Ms. Teagues,” but Jessca insists it’s fine and that nothing is wrong with her teaching. Janine confronts Barbara about Jessca, but Barbara tells her that every teacher has their own teaching method and that is fine. Barbara also admits that she wasn’t too thrilled about Janine’s teaching methods when Janine first came to Abbott because Barbara had a certain way of doing things, but after she got to know Janine over time, she came to respect Janine’s ways of teaching.

Poor Jacob had to give up his vaping pen at the end, though. The teachers cheer him on when he drops it in the trash can, but then he fishes back in the trash for his vaping pen because he doesn’t want to let it go. He ends up finding another alternative to vaping, a Bref pen, which is just straight up air (I had to look up if Bref pens were real, but I couldn’t find any.)

Abbott Elementary, season 3, episode 1: Career Day Part 1

A few weeks ago, I tuned into ABC to watch season 3 of Abbott Elementary. However, I didn’t know that I had missed a couple of episodes and wanted to catch up. Honestly, I laughed, I (almost) cried, and just was so glad that they decided to have a third season of the show.

There were some pretty hilarious moments in this episode. At the beginning, everyone notices that Ava, the principal of Abbott Elementary, is not acting like herself. She is following school policies to the point where she doesn’t participate in any shenanigans or act silly, and to the point where she takes away the teachers’ lunch period so that they are working all the time. Jacob, Mr. Johnson, Melissa, Gregory and Barbara all devise ways to get Ava back to her goofy self, so they try to give her stuff she likes. Jacob clumsily throws a pile of money on her desk because Ava likes money, but Ava doesn’t fall for it. Mr. Johnson tries to entice her with tickets to see Usher in concert while wearing an Usher T-shirt and trying to dance like Usher. That doesn’t work either. So, they use Gregory to try and seduce Ava, because in the earlier seasons Ava was always trying to flirt with Gregory even when she knew it was inappropriate and he didn’t like it. They have Gregory stand in the doorway to her office with his muscles flexed and have him talk to her in a sexy seductive voice about how her rules are “so rigid and hard,” and she looks up from her work and tells him to put his arms down (I busted up so hard when she called him “Jeremy Allen Black,” which is a reference to the actor Jeremy Allen White.) I laughed at the scene where they finally get Ava to go to the gym and then Mr. Johnson blasts the song “Back That Azz Up” by Juvenile. I love how Barbara called City Girls “The Town Women.” (Ava loves listening to City Girls and when she became a more serious principal and stopped cutting up, she stopped listening to City Girls for a while.)

Melissa also faces a huge decision in her relationship with Garrett, the vending machine guy at Abbott. They hit it off really well and he wants to get married to her, but Melissa doesn’t want to get married again because her last marriage wasn’t great. Garrett keeps hinting at them getting married, such as putting a Ring Pop in the vending machine, but Melissa tells him that she just does not want to get married. During Career Day, they bring in a marketing person from The Philadelphia Eagles team to talk about marketing, and the kids find it boring, so the person has Jalen Hurts call in on a virtual call to visit the class. Everyone is super excited, but then Garrett asks the marketing person if he could sneak in a way for him to propose to Melissa, so he has Jalen Hurts make an announcement about Garrett’s proposal to Melissa, with everyone watching the proposal in all the classrooms, and Garrett gets on his knee and proposes. Melissa is shocked, but she ends up saying “No,” and they have to go outside the school to talk about it. They really love each other, but in the end, Melissa didn’t want to get married, so they broke up. It was really sweet when they hugged even though it was a sad moment for both of them. When Melissa returns to her classroom, she is wiping away tears, and Jalen Hurts (Jason Kelce and Brandon Graham also make cameos. I’m not very knowledgeable about football, so I had to look up the names of the other players making cameos on the show) tells her that he respects her right to not marry and that she did what she thought was right.

Janine also faces a major decision herself. Manny, who works for the school district, offers her a fellowship to work for the school district. It is a great opportunity, but the only thing is that Janine would be away from her classroom for most of the time, and as a dedicated teacher who loves her students, it would be hard for her to be away from them for that long. Janine tells Manny that she appreciates the offer, but she turns it down. Jacob feels sad that he didn’t get the fellowship, and at first when Janine acts like it’s no big deal, Jacob tells her that the fellowship is a huge deal. The teachers also are kind of lukewarm about how Manny and the other people working for the school district are trying to change how things are done at Abbott. In one part of the episode, the district gives Janine’s classroom iPads, and Janine is so pumped that Manny and his team gave them iPads for the students to use as learning tools. However, the students complain about how the iPads aren’t fully charged and how there aren’t enough chargers for each iPad, so Janine brings it up to Manny and he and the team say that they will take care of it. Manny also introduces himself to Mrs. Howard (Barbara) but at first she is lukewarm because it seems like he doesn’t actually care about making Abbott a better place even though he comes off that way, but Manny tells her that his mom was an educator and Barbara starts to have more respect for him. Janine then comes to Barbara, and she wants to seem pessimistic about what Manny and the other school district representatives are trying to do to change Abbott, but Barbara says that she has had a change of heart and that she is actually quite hopeful about the changes the district will implement at Abbott. Janine then asks her advice about whether she should go for the fellowship or not, especially because she would be away from her classroom a lot. Barbara tells her that if that is what will make her happy, then she should do it, and that she can always come back to Abbott after the fellowship is done.

Things get awkward, though, between Janine and Gregory. Ava catches them on camera (clearly, she is back to regular goofy Ava because that is something she would have totally done) and we see Janine and Gregory talking about what happened when they were on the museum field trip. In that episode, Janine felt that it would be best that she focused on herself and not try to start a relationship with Gregory, and she thought Gregory still had feelings for her. But this time, Janine thinks that she and Gregory should make it official and get back together since she isn’t seeing anyone, and he isn’t either. However, he tells her that he wanted to respect her decision to not be with him, and that after that he had moved on. This puts Janine in an awkward position because she assumed Gregory had feelings for her. Since season 1, Gregory has had a huge crush on Janine, but at the time she was dating Tariq, who she had been with since eighth grade. Gregory decided to start dating Amber, a mother of one of the students at the school, and by the time Janine had broken up with Tariq, Gregory was taken, leaving Janine feeling secretly heartbroken. Janine finds another person, Maurice, who is Gregory’s best friend, and they seem to be working out. However, even though they are seeing other people, Gregory and Janine still have feelings for each other, and they end up making out on evening. Gregory and Janine tell this to Maurice over dinner one evening, and Maurice breaks up with Janine. Janine feels bad about cheating on Maurice, so during the field trip that the class takes to a museum, Janine tells Gregory that she feels bad about what she did to Maurice and says that she needs to step back from being in a relationship for a while to spend time with herself. Now that Manny is in the picture, I wonder what is going to happen. I’m not sure if Manny respects Janine as just a coworker, or if he is secretly interested in being with her, and I wonder if Gregory is going to feel a way about it if Manny and Janine ever do get together.

Succession, Season 4, episodes 4-10

So, I just finished the finale of season 4 of Succession, and it was, well, quite intense. There was so much that went on, and to be honest, at some point I had to stop taking so many notes and just watch the show. Taking notes helped because it helped me keep up with different points in the plot that I might have forgotten, but there were parts of the show that I had to watch closely, otherwise I would miss it.

There were some pretty memorable moments in this season. In episode 8, it is election day and everyone in the ATN newsroom is stressed, especially Tom, who is the head of ATN, and his assistant, Greg, who at this point is tired of taking Tom’s shit but still goes along with it. At one point, Tom yells at Greg for not bringing him coffee, and Greg asks if he wants coffee, and Tom calms down. Tom then goes to the board to see how the election results are going, and he is really stressed, so he does cocaine, and he tells Greg to do some as well. When Greg refuses, Tom grills him for doing cocaine with Lukas Matsson but asks him why he won’t do cocaine with Tom. Greg tells him that he is trying to not get addicted to cocaine, but Tom still pressures him to do it, so Greg does the cocaine. Tom then sees a bunch of sushi that Greg got from the bodega, and he gets angry with Greg for not meeting his requests for food. The cocaine scene reminded me of season 1, episode 8, when Roman, Greg, Tom, Connor and Kendall go to Tom’s bachelor party. There is a scene where Kendall is going to do four lines of cocaine, and Greg is checking in on everyone to make sure they don’t get too high or too drunk, and he checks in on Kendall. Greg sees that Kendall is going to do these four lines of cocaine, he gets worried and warns him not to do the cocaine, but Kendall tells him to leave him alone. Greg panics and then decides to do the lines of cocaine, even though he doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t want to see Kendall die, and Tom comes over and starts making fun of Greg and goading him on to do the cocaine. Greg experiences a severe reaction and panics, and instead of helping him, Tom laughs at him and tells him “Buckle up, fucklehead.” In the season finale, Tom meets up with Matsson and Matsson proposes that Tom, not Shiv, should be the CEO, and Greg texts Shiv and lets her know this. She confronts Tom and is really upset, and Tom, angry that Greg spilled the details about him becoming CEO, gets into a physical fight with Greg in the bathroom. Earlier on, whenever Tom tried to beat up on Greg, Greg wouldn’t fight back, but at this point because Greg has dealt with so much bullying from Tom, he is sick of it, so he hits Tom back. He still lets Greg stay on his team when he becomes CEO. I know the show is over, but I would be really interested to see what Waystar under Tom Wambsgans and Lukas Matsson would be like.

There is another scene in the election episode that was pretty wild. Darwin is about to announce the vote for whether Mencken or Jimenez won (Mencken is the Republican nominee, and Jimenez is the Democratic nominee) and Greg is eating from a container of sushi. Darwin has Greg move his sushi container over, and he slides next to him with his laptop. Darwin accidentally touches the side of the sushi container, which has wasabi on the side, and touches his eye and immediately his eyes start to burn, and he starts screaming. Everyone in the room yell at Greg to douse his eyes with water, but Greg ends up pouring lemon sparkling water in his eyes, which of course only makes Donny’s eyes burn even more. Everyone gets mad at Greg and this scene showed me again how Greg is always being called out for making so many mistakes in this show, even well until the very end. The election episode overall was very stressful because this year is the year of the election, and it might be kind of stressful. But it reminded me that if I want to truly feel like I can make a difference in democracy, then I need to vote. Even if there have been times when I felt like my vote didn’t matter, this episode (and real-life elections that I have lived through) reminded me that every vote counts. It was a pretty brutal moment when Mencken won the vote, and it was a stressful day for everyone at ATN.

The funeral episode, episode 9, was pretty dark, but the dialogue was brilliant. It is the day of Logan’s funeral, and also after the election results get called, people protest the election results in the streets of New York City. Kendall’s ex-wife, Rava, calls Kendall to let him know she is not coming to Logan’s funeral and that she and the kids are going to stay in upstate New York because it’s a really tumultuous day and she wants to make sure the kids are safe. Kendall drives over to her place to see if he can stop her from leaving, and when she says she and the kids have to go, he tries to block their car from leaving to no avail. Kendall not only has to deal with the stress of his dad’s funeral and Rava and the kids leaving, but also, his longtime assistant, Jess, wants to resign from her position as Kendall’s assistant. At first, Kendall tries to be happy for her, but instead he starts asking her why she is leaving. Jess says that it’s time, and Kendall gets angry and upset with her for leaving him at a really bad time. But Jess tells him that she had been thinking about resigning for a while. Honestly, I don’t blame her. Jess went through a LOT of stuff throughout the course of this show, and she tried her best to do everything that Kendall expected of her.

During the funeral scene, Gregory’s grandpa, Ewan, gets up to deliver his own eulogy, and they try to hold him back because he wasn’t scheduled to deliver a eulogy, but he does so because Logan was his brother, even with their very complicated relationship. Ewan shows another side of Logan and him that I hadn’t seen before. He doesn’t sugarcoat his feelings about Logan, in fact, quite the opposite. He says that Logan was mean-spirited, power-hungry and all around not a great guy. But he tells everyone about how Logan got sent to a well-off school when him and Ewan were kids, and when Logan came back he got polio and their sister ended up dying of polio. Logan blamed himself for a long time for their sister’s death, and their aunt and uncle made him feel like he was responsible for her death. This was kind of a touching moment because Logan never told them about it, and I think it was revealing for me because the whole time I was watching the show I wondered, Do we get any backstory about Logan? Ewan and Logan don’t have a great relationship, and Ewan is reluctant to come over to Logan’s for Thanksgiving because he hates what the Roy family has become: a bunch of money-hungry individuals who tear at each other and make the people around them feel less than. Logan is showing off some medals he has been collecting, and Ewan says that while Logan never served as a veteran, he, Ewan is a veteran, and he grills the family about being full of themselves and forgetting the importance of morals. He tells his grandson, Greg, to not associate with the Roy family because they are a bunch of terrible people, and when he confronts Logan at a conference, he tells him that their mother wouldn’t be happy with the kind of person Logan has become.

Roman tries to get up and deliver his eulogy, and he takes a few minutes to arrange and rearrange his index cards, but he ends up breaking down in tears and not being able to deliver his eulogy. His siblings embrace him in a hug, and Roman looks through tears in disbelief at the coffin holding his father, and it hits Roman so hard because his dad really is dead and is not coming back, and it is painful. Kendall delivers his eulogy, and he says that while Ewan was right about Logan not being a nice person, he tries to share some positive qualities about his dad, that his dad inspired people to become ambitious and want to achieve success, and that at the end of the day, he created a life for Kendall, Shiv, Roman and Connor. Shiv shares her eulogy, too, and she talks about the not-so-great memories of her dad, like when he yelled at her and the kids, but she also acknowledges the huge impact that he had on her life (“my world of a dad”) and gets emotional as well. There was a really interesting moment when Marcia and Kerry briefly reconcile. Earlier, Marcia kicks Kerry out of the house because Kerry and Logan had an affair together, but then Caroline introduces Sally Ann, who was Logan’s mistress while Caroline was married to Logan, to Marcia and lets Kerry sit with them in the front row. It kind of showed me how Logan’s infidelity hurt all of these women involved, and overall, it showed the very messy complicated relationships he had with the people in his life. While Gerri, Karl, Hugo and Frank are talking about Logan, Gerri asks if they actually miss him though after the way that he treated everyone so poorly. Karl and Frank try to not say anything nasty or negative about Logan, but Gerri jokes that they have “Stockholm Syndrome,” which shows how, while he was alive, Logan manipulated everyone and made them feel inferior. Ewan talks about how Logan brought out a really ugly side in people, and throughout the course of the show Logan tells people to “fuck off,” insults them and has put his kids through years of abuse and manipulation. I think that is why the grief they go through is so complex because on the one hand, he was their father and it’s hard losing a parent, but at the same time they are emotionally scarred from all the abuse he put them through.

Roman at this point has adopted a very nihilistic view on life, and there is one scene in episode 9 where he leaves the funeral reception and goes out in the streets, which is blocked off to make way for anti-Mencken protesters. The police warn him to not go where the protests are because they have gotten violent, but he ignores them and leans over the railing and shouts insults at the protesters. He goes out to where they are marching, and he pushes a few of them and they push him to the ground, leaving him with serious bruises. Kendall and Shiv ask him why he has a big cut on his forehead, and he tries to brush it off so that he doesn’t have to talk about it, and he wants to be left alone. In episode 10, Kendall and Roman share a moment in their dad’s office where Roman is overwhelmed with grief at losing his dad and not becoming the CEO of Waystar even when his dad promised him that he had potential, and Kendall gives him a huge hug. But then when Shiv doesn’t want to go with the plan to let Matsson acquire Go Jo, the three siblings erupt in a huge fight and then Kendall shouts that he is the oldest sibling. Roman ends up making a comment about how Kendall’s kids aren’t biologically his, and Kendall beats him up, prompting Shiv to leave the room. There is a brief tender moment during the course of this very intense final episode, and it’s when they are at Logan’s house (which Marcia sold to Connor and Willa) and they watch a video of their dad having a casual conversation and singing and laughing with the people on his PR team, including Kerry, Gerri, Hugo, Karl and Frank. It is a really innocent moment where they are just having fun and Logan isn’t hurling nasty insults at them, and the siblings start to tear up because it is a really touching moment for them and it reminds them that even though they had a really difficult relationship with their dad, they really miss him. Another sweet moment is when the three siblings are at their mom, Caroline’s house, and they pretend to crown Kendall “king” and make him this disgusting blended mixture of food found in Caroline’s fridge. Caroline tells Roman not to eat her husband Peter’s cheese, but after she goes back to bed, Roman, when she is out of earshot, starts licking and sniffing the cheese and him and his siblings start busting up laughing. Shiv gives Kendall the gross mixture to drink, and he ends up drinking only a little, and Roman pours the rest over his head, prompting all of them to burst into giggles. This for me was an enjoyable moment in the show because the rest of the time, they are dealing with these serious adult problems, but this scene showed them being able to enjoy this brief moment of child-like innocence where they are at their mom’s house and just goofing off.

Honestly, as intense as this show was, I’m glad I watched it. The acting and directing was really good. And the music by Nicholas Britell is amazing.

Succession, season 4, episodes 2-3

Contains spoilers.

Honestly this has been the most emotional season of the show so far. I think when I first started watching this show, I didn’t know if I was going to want to finish because everyone was really mean to each other, but somehow, I think just the acting and dialogue is what kept me hooked on this show. It’s been emotional because a major character passes away unexpectedly and the characters who supported this person are spending the rest of the season dealing with intense grief.

In episode 2, “Rehearsal,” Connor is rehearsing his wedding with his fiancée, Willa, and it’s not going easily. Kendall, Roman and Shiv are also still figuring out whether they should go through with the GoJo deal with Lukas Mattson. Logan Roy is also doing more supervising of the ATN news team, and Greg and Tom find him walking around the office in sunglasses while people scurry nervously around Logan doing their work. He gets up in front of the news crew and tells them they need to knuckle down and that he is determined to get ATN back to being a powerful media outlet. Kerry, Logan’s assistant and mistress, auditions to become a news anchor for ATN and she ends up becoming a huge laughingstock when people, including the Roy siblings, watch her audition because they think it is really bad. There is one scene where Gerri and Hugo are watching Kerry’s appearance on the ATN news network and they are laughing at how she says things and the smile that she forces, and they immediately shut down the laptop when Logan walks in. But then Logan tells Hugo to open his laptop, and Hugo is reluctant but does so, and Logan briefly finds they had been laughing about Kerry’s audition tape. Tom tells Logan that Kerry wouldn’t be a good fit as an anchor for ATN, and he has Greg deliver the bad news, which doesn’t go so well and prompts Kerry to storm out. Things are not going so well for Willa or Connor during their wedding rehearsal, and when Shiv, Roman and Kendall finally arrive late, they find Willa and ask her how the rehearsal went. She is still not happy in her engagement to Connor and isn’t sure she wants to marry him, but she doesn’t let them know this, she just tells them she is in a rush and needs to go home. Connor then tells them that Willa is uncertain about marrying Connor. The four siblings meet at a bar to discuss the future deal with GoJo, and Connor is trying to locate where Willa is.

Season 4, episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding,” is probably the most emotional episode so far. It is the day of Connor and Willa’s wedding, and everyone is focused on making sure Connor is ready for his big day. Guests are milling around and talking, and everything seems fine. It seemed Logan was doing perfectly fine early on, and he was on a plane with his crew (Frank, Tom, Karl, and Karolina) to go to Sweden to negotiate with Matsson. At the beginning of the episode, Logan calls Roman and tells him to fire Gerri, and Roman at first isn’t having it, but because he is scared of his dad and wants his approval, he ends up telling Gerri at Connor’s wedding that Logan wanted her fire. Of course, she is deeply hurt by this and refuses to speak to Roman again. However, everything changes when Kendall and Roman get a call from Tom that Logan has passed out on the plane, and they are doing chest compressions to try and revive him, and they don’t know if he will make it or not. Logan ends up dying, and within minutes the siblings have to make a statement to reporters and navigate the very complicated and painful process of grief, which is filled with shock, denial, pain, anger, anxiety, sadness and so many other feelings. Honestly, as terrible a person as Logan was, at the end of the day, it is painful losing a loved one. I think that is why watching this episode was so emotionally difficult because grief is a really painful process, and you can’t just cry and then call it a day. And on a day when Connor was going to celebrate his marriage to Willa, he faces this really shocking news. I’m sure it was hard for Logan’s PR team, too, because even though Tom remained calm on the phone with the siblings during this traumatic event, even he had to go into a private room and when talking with Greg, broke down and admitted he wasn’t okay. Even though Frank and Karolina and others on the team had to remain calm, I’m sure it was a scary moment for them, too, because no one knew that was going to happen to him. In episode 1 of season 1, Logan suffers a stroke and has to go to the hospital, and it is sudden and scary for everyone, but then he wakes up and everyone goes back to normal. However, throughout the course of the show, Logan deals with serious health challenges, and so throughout the show they have to figure out who will take over if he is incapacitated or passes away. However, even with all the preparation and talk about who will be the next successor, death is still a shocking and painful experience, so no amount of wealth or prestige could soften the blow of how painful it was for the Roy family to lose their dad.

Logan’s death hit everyone hard, and episode 4 shows how complicated their relationship with him actually was, especially when they find that Logan had drafted a will with specific instructions about who got what. I didn’t suspect Kerry of anything until this season. I just thought she just hid in the background, being Logan’s innocent assistant. But things got ugly between her and Marcia when Kerry shows up at the house to grab her belongings that she left upstairs in Logan’s room. Marcia hasn’t been to see Logan after she heard about him sleeping with other women, but she came back with a lot of pain and resentment, and so when Kerry comes and tries to go upstairs, and she is in a puddle of tears, Marcia tells her she is not allowed upstairs and that the guards give her the belongings she left. Roman tries to help her out, while Greg, who at this point has become a pretty twisted character, makes fun of Kerry and jokes, “Oh, here come the waterworks.” Kerry ends up dropping her stuff on the ground and telling Roman that she and Logan were going to get engaged, and Marcia tells her to get her shit and leave the premises. Roman thinks Marcia was being too hard on Kerry and asks if it was really necessary to kick Kerry out like that, but Marcia just says with cold indifference that she booked a cab for Kerry to go back to her own apartment. The other characters, with Logan no longer around, debate about who is going to take over, and they issue some pretty nasty insults towards each other (the insults they hurled at the beginning of the show were bad enough, but season 4 these insults seemed to cut even deeper, especially from people like Karl and Gerri.) Roman and Kendall find out that they would take over the company, but that Shiv would be excluded. Shiv has repeatedly fought the family over this, and in I think season 1, Shiv met with her dad to talk about how unfair it was that he would let Roman take over as chief operating officer and wouldn’t let her step up in her position at the company. Logan said it’s because she lacked experience, but Shiv told him he was excluding her because she is a woman. This really hurts Shiv because at some point she thought her dad had changed his mind and was going to let her take over, but it turned out he was just manipulating his children. He had the power all along and wanted everyone to go along with his long and drawn-out game. Roman and Kendall go into their dad’s office, and it hits them that their dad is no longer alive, and that they have this huge responsibility now to take over for him. It reminded me a little of season 1 of The Crown, because in season 1 Elizabeth’s father is failing in his health, and while she is in Africa on a tour with her husband, Prince Phillip, she gets a call that her father passed away. It was painful because they show her writing a letter to her father, and they show she is about to send it off, but she never gets to send the letter because by the time she does, she gets the news that he has died. She has to take the throne immediately, and it’s a difficult process because she is still grieving, but she has this incredibly huge responsibility to serve the public, and now that she is in the public eye, she cannot afford to show any weakness. It completely changes her relationship with her family, because she can no longer treat her sister, Margaret, like her sister. Her sister, her mother, and her grandmother all have to bow in deference to Elizabeth once she becomes the queen, and it also forever changes the relationship dynamic between Elizabeth and her sister. Margaret wants to get married to a man named Peter Townsend, but Elizabeth tells her she has to wait until a certain age before she can get married. She waits and waits, but still doesn’t get her sister’s approval. Even though Elizabeth tells Margaret she can try and help her, she can’t do any special favors for her sister because she is a public figure and anything she does that goes against the rules could put her reputation in jeopardy, so she ends up not letting Margaret do what she wants most of the time. This really sours their relationship.