Really Good Sci-Fi: Star Trek Lower Decks

WARNING: Trek purists, I've noticed, REALLY hate this show. Probably because it's the only modern Trek that hasn't continued to stuff its bum with tweed. But I digress.

In just a few quick sentences, Ensign Beckett Mariner sums up what I find most appealing about Paramount+'s slightly seasoned (in its second season) Star Trek Lower Decks.

While cleaning up leftovers of senior officers' away missions and cultural explorations, Mariner tells Tendi the following: "Every day isn’t gonna be some pristine exploratory adventure. Sometimes it’s work, and it sucks. Get used to it." While the prime crew of the USS Cerritos muddles through second contact missions and comically being forced to deal with increasingly militant Pakleds, the lower decks crew gets assigned grunt work after grunt work. It's dull. It's boring. And it occasionally involves getting pooped out by strange space creatures.

It's also fun.

And while the wackiness does penetrate to the lower decks, this crew's adventure doesn't always end on some grand philosophical high note; bums are stuffed with crew members quickly expelled, not tweed.

And while I love the TNG era this series pokes fun at, it's fun to see Star Trek enjoying being Star Trek again, rather than everything else in the modern Trek world, being some gritty reboot and supposed moralistic reflection on our own troubled times. We can enjoy Rutherford being unable to stop his bloated barrel body because we can't ever see that happening to us. And it's fun to see writers and actors taking the rater stiff Trek tropes and flipping them on their heads.

That this crew isn't preaching moral superiority at every turn is probably why the Trek geeks don't like it all that much. Fine. More for me.

What I've Been Watching: Corner Gas

A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend whose identity I've forgotten recommended the Canadian TV show "Corner Gas" as a good watch on Amazon Prime.

Because I was desperate for something to watch while grading papers, and wanting to use our Amazon Prime membership, I decided to give the show a try.

Glad I did.

First of all, this is NOT going to be an "I'm so enlightened because I'm watching a Canadian TV program and they're SO much better than what we produce in the United States" kind of post. Because maybe the rest of Canadian TV is just as bad as what I'm familiar with here, and maybe there are great American TV shows out there that I haven't watched.

I don't watch a lot of TV. I am richer with TV from the '70s and '80s than I am anything more modern.

Anyhoo, "Corner Gas" is a hoot.

I won't go into a synopsis or introduction to the show, as that's what the Internet is for.

And while it's tempting to say "Corner Gas" is what "Napoleon Dynamite" could be if it were a TV show, the comparison is only apt in that both the show and the movie have a small-town setting. Okay, and quirky characters. But the goals of each are different.

Corner Gas feels more like a "slice of life" TV show with a refreshing rural setting. I say refreshing because the vast majority of TV shows I see now -- and again, I don't watch many of them -- have an urban setting, because that appears to be what appeals to the audience and what the algorithms tell producers and writers are where they should be to pursue those coveted eyeballs/advertising dollars.

That Corner Gas has wide appeal in Canada shows that character-driven stories can thrive in even unexpected settings. And maybe there's a Canadian paen to small-town life, similar to the American longing for the 1950s, that I'm not aware of that adds to this show's popularity.

That doesn't matter. This show is fun.

I probably connect the most with Brent Leroy, owner of Corner Gas, who appears to have a job only because it helps him fuel his comic book and chili cheese dog habits. He appears to have no competition and would probably fare well enough even if he had competition, because his laid-back amiability appeals to those around him.

Next is Hank Yarbo, Brent's life-long friend, whose work ambitions are even less defined than Brent's. AGAIN, I HAVE THIS ATTRACTION TO LAZY MEN WHO GET BY BUT HAVE NO REAL AMBITIONS OUTSIDE OF THE SIMPLE DRIVES OF CHILDHOOD. This probably tells you a lot more about me than I'd ever want known.

Anyway, if you have Amazon Prime, give Corner Gas a chance. Unless you're still a strict believer in the Rural Purge.

Four Men

Television brought four men into my little life as a kid.

Four men.

Two were on the same show – Gilligan’s Island. Gilligan and Skipper. Skipper and Gilligan. The skinny oaf and the fat oaf. One who ate glow-in-the-dark glue and the other who’d get mad and swat at people with his hat. When we played at being Gilligan and Skipper, my younger brother and I, I was always Skipper.  The game involved me lying on the top of the couch cushions as my little buddy Gilligan lay on the couch. As was Skipper’s wont, occasionally I fell out of my hammock – off the cushions – to land on Gilligan.

The third was master of a glittering game show – Bob Barker on The Price is Right. They talked a lot about Rice-A-Roni on that show, but what I remember most was the three strikes game people played on the chance to win a car.

I made my own three strikes game and, I’m sure, drove my siblings nuts insisting they play it with me. Other games on the show, notably the big wheel, proved too difficult for me to create out of masking tape and cardboard, though I recall trying mightily.

The fourth man?

Mister Rogers.

Contrary to what you’re thinking, this is not going to turn into a paen for Fred Rogers, nice a man as he is. To tell the truth, I saw enough nice men in my early years, from Mr. Rogers to Skipper and Gilligan to my father to any number of other fathers in the real neighborhood I lived in for Mister Rogers to stand out as a spectacular example. I remember thinking he was a nice man who loved puppets and had a trolley and – inexplicably – a TRAFFIC LIGHT in his house.

Maybe he wouldn’t have appreciated the demeaning behavior between Skipper and Gilligan. But he might have appreciated the many games we came up with, and the many things, from houses to airplanes to cars, that we built out of cardboard and tape and other odd bits of junk, thanks to the silly inventions those castaways came up with.

Maybe he wouldn’t have appreciated the loudness and the in-show commercials for Rice-A-Roni in The Price is Right, but again, seeing all the stuff I made to imitate Mr. Barker’s games might have impressed Mr. Rogers.

I think Fred Rogers would have appreciated the fact that since I saw so many nice adults in my life, from parents to school teachers to Sunday school teachers and neighbors, that his niceness didn’t really stand out in my mind as a kid. He’d have seen a bevy of adults, trying in their own ways to help kids out, and appreciated what he saw.

He might have seen a kid with ordinary kid struggles, from being fat enough to be typecast as Skipper to being bullied mildly at school, and then seen plenty of adults around him working hard to see that kid do as well as he could with what he had – and he had plenty.

That I didn’t really need Fred Rogers in my life probably points to me having a pretty good life. Though I’m glad he was there, one more of a large group of adults who cared.

Why is this coming up?

I watched Benjamin Wagner’s “Mister Rogers and Me,” in anticipation that I’ll eventually find and watch the more current “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” both documentaries about Fred Rogers.

As I watched Wagner’s documentary, I thought there are plenty of lessons I can learn now from Mr. Rogers that maybe I didn’t need as a kid.

This quote hit me pretty hard: “I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex.”

Deep implies, to me, slowing down, showing focus – as Mr. Rogers famously did. Whomever he was talking to at the moment was, in his mind, the most important person in the world. That’s something I could stand to remember, particularly as I interact with my own kids, my wife, and others. It’s easy to remain selfish, even when we’re interacting with those we love.

Another thought: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Maybe the most important part of that is to like ourselves. It’s pretty easy to maltreat others if we feel maltreated enough we treat ourselves poorly. That’s something Fred Rogers fought against mightily.

There’s the deep in Fred Rogers. Maybe I didn’t need him as a kid. But there are, clearly, things I can learn from him as an adult.

I Don't Want to Muppet on this Planet Any More

The Muppets are going reality.

And, if Entertainment Weekly is to be believed, more “adult.”

By reality, they mean “mockumentary,” meaning we don’t really get to see them doing their skits with beloved actors, just the in-between crapola they “go through” as they attempt to get a new show on the air. They don’t define what they mean by adult. But the mind reels and then shoots down to the phrase: “How low can we go?”

Read, and weep for your childhood, here.

The Muppets return to prime time with a contemporary, documentary-style show that—for the first time ever—will explore the Muppets’ personal lives and relationships, both at home and at work, as well as romances, break-ups, achievements, disappointments, wants and desires; a more adult Muppet show, for kids of all ages.

The show could do so much – and who cares if it got compared to the original show? I did the same thing to Muppets Tonight, and I was wrong. Muppets Tonight did what The Muppet Show did just as well, keeping what worked with the old show while bringing in enough new to keep it fresh. Haven’t we mockumentaried the world to death by now? That’s the best they can come up with for a Muppets reboot?

You know, here’s an idea for something fresh the Muppets could do: A variety show. We haven’t seen a good one on television since Carol Burnett and company left. And, since, well, The Muppet Show. We’ve had a lot of mockumentaries lately. A lot of behind the scenes stuff. It’s not original.

Get guest stars and let them have fun. Do you think Peter Sellers had fun doing this? I think he did. And we, the audience, lapped it up.

Good ideas here for the reboot. Except for the last one. Which is where the reboot is going. Yuck.

What would have been wrong with, you know, just bringing The Muppets back? Does everything need a grittier, edgier feel these days? It was already a show for kids of all ages.

I Miss This Show So Much

I’ll be in my office. Under my rug.

Boy. Talk about your gloomy Guses.

This Is Gonna Be, Like, the Best Cartoon Ever!

Oh yeah. This show alone might be enough to convince me to get cable TV. Or at least convince someone to tape this for me.

"What's A Commercial?"

Earlier this evening, I was perusing a local news website. Our five-year-old, who can see an embedded video window from a thousand paces (chalk up yet another skill at which he's better than his father) insisted I let him watch the video the news site had on display.

"Really," I asked him. "It's about road construction."

"Yeah," he said. Of course, he's five. He loves construction vehicles. Our neighbor has a backhoe. He is worshiped as a god.

So I play the video. It starts with a commercial.

"Hey," my five-year-old says. "This isn't about road construction."

"Nope," I said. "It's a commercial."

"What's a commercial," he asked.

Wow. My kid doesn't know what a commercial is. I feel so proud.

We don't have satellite or cable TV in the house, see. Don't see the need. Don't want to pay all that money for something we don't really use. We've been married thirteen years, and in that time haven't subscribed to TV. Nor do we have the ol' rabbit ears or digital converter box going, either. So of course our kids don't know what commercials are. They know what previews are -- they see plenty of those on their movies. But not commercials.

I tell them they're not missing anything.

Maybe.