Ozy and Me

 

My mail bag is full of reactions to the family dispute between granddaughter Greer and me in reference to our disparate views on the motion picture The Zone of Interest. The grand kid quite naturally has the youthful readers on her side, plus at least one ex-wife, who chimed in to remind me of yet another of my failings. On the other hand, I have a multiple award-winning actor from across the pond and the New York Times reviewer in my camp.

And while sourcing the NY Times, one of its columns recently quoted Victorian art critic John Ruskin who wrote: “The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way.”

I’ll take that as a win for both Greer and me and move on.

But only a little ways.

Disappointment and its ramifications have been in my thoughts of late, having nothing to do with granddaughter Greer (and her big sister Hailey) seeing the connective tissues between the middle east and the Holocaust so differently from my own views on these events. I signed off my last article “proud grandpa” and meant it.

I probably got into this zone of disappointment when Variety came out with its top 100 TV shows of all time with none of the work I had ever done being referenced. I must tell you, that smarted.

But I got over it.

Honest.

Then I saw The Last Thing He Told Me, a highly recommended new limited TV series on Apple TV. It was okay. Not great, but good enough for most of us… I guess. It did not leave me with a lot to think about … except… it sort of did, albeit---I suspect---in a whole different way than any of those involved in the project intended.

My mind drifted back a couple of decades; there I was, shuffling through my collection of screeners from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In those days this was an annual ritual… something I needed to do to fulfill my obligation as a conscientious Emmy voter in the “Dramatic Series” category.

My eye was drawn to a DVD package for a series I had never heard of featuring two alumni from old productions of mine. There on that DVD cover, placed to indicate their roles in support, were Carl Lumbly, who played Lieutenant Petrie in Cagney & Lacey, and Ron Rifkin who played Rosie’s boss in The Trials of Rosie O’Neill.

The series in which they were featured was Alias, produced and… more-often-than-not… written and directed by J.J. Abrams… today, one of Hollywood’s super stars. Back then, as far as I knew, J.J. Abrams was one of two offspring of producer Gerald Abrams, a contemporary of mine who back in the day was a sometime competitor for those hard-to-get Network dollars.

Readers of these Island Notes of mine… and just about any house guest I have ever had since my introduction to Alias… knows what comes next. To this day, that J. J. Abrams creation remains one of my all-time favorite shows and, although its star had done stuff before with which I was then not familiar, in Alias, Ms. Jennifer Garner performed one of the greatest star turns I have ever seen. In that role… in that series… Jennifer Garner was nothing less than a revelation.

The show was, and remains, terrific. Once again, for (what?) the umpteenth time (?), I recommend the more than 100+hour long episodes of this very well-made network television series now available on Amazon Prime TV.

If nothing else, watch the first episode. When you take into consideration all the things that a pilot is supposed to accomplish for its audience of buyers (the network executives) and, ultimately, its audience of television viewers, it just may be one of the best pilot films ever made.

J.J. Abrams went on to create LOST and Fringe for ABC, Westworld for HBO, multiple Star Wars motion pictures, as well as a Mission Impossible feature film. He is an authentic Hollywood heavyweight.

Jennifer Garner went on to have a career as well. She even had a shot at true movie stardom in the title role of Elektra, an assassin-for-hire action flick. For reasons I now cannot remember, the film just did not work, and Garner’s upward trajectory took a turn.

Not that we need to take up a collection. Jennifer Garner works all the time… she’s a spokesperson for those “what’s in your wallet?” commercials and has done some credible work in a whole bunch of stuff. She just never became the super star that I predicted she would. I was first in line to see Elektra and the fact that Ms. Garner’s biggest fan cannot remember the movie pretty much says it all.

Back to the present day and Jennifer Garner in The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV, a limited series from the Reese Witherspoon producing group that has been responsible for some more than decent TV material. No exception here. This adventure/mystery starring Ms. Garner is certainly decent enough TV material… written and produced by Oscar winner, Josh Singer, based on the book of the same name by his wife, Laura Dave.

You may recall that Mr. Singer left me sort of cold with his Maestro screenplay. The Last Thing He Told Me does not redeem him all that much. It is not that it is bad… it is not bad at all… it just is a long way from being really good, let alone great. More to the point, it all had the effect of reminding me of Ms. Garner’s disappointing career trajectory: good but not great.

I wanted her to be great.

Life, they say, is full of disappointments. I have been fortunate to not have too many of those.

Sorta makes that Variety list of TV’s top 100 stand out.

 

Barney Rosenzweig