Category Archives: Sunday Morning Sidewalk

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #83

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“Hand to Mouth”

Jimmy made his first contact with Larry in this episode that saw everything else on the edge for the informant.

Jimmy’s father showed up to see him and flashed his old badge for some favors from the guards, unwittingly blowing his cover. One guard in particular, Mr. Carter, who blackmailed Jimmy for 10 grand or else he would tell everyone that Jimmy was here as a snitch.

Jimmy was summoned to the in prison Italian Mafia Don, and he waded through that issue too. Oh, it was the real life Mafia head Vincent “the Chin” Gigante played by Tony Amendola. He wants Jimmy to play boccie with him.

The main course of this week’s episode was the dialogue between Jimmy and Larry. There was a scene between them that absolutely was frightening. Both Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser were tremendous in their roles and in this moment. The tension built by the face of Hauser and his chilling words was amazing.

It had an impact on Jimmy too. When Jimmy told Agent McCauley about Carter, she told him they would get him out of prison. He should go into isolation until they could get the paperwork done. McCauley was having doubts about the case, afraid that Larry was just a sad and sick serial confessor, or that they would never be able to get the goods on him.

When asked what would happen to Larry if Jimmy went into isolation, McCauley answered that the judge could find the confession coerced and let him out into the world.

Jimmy had already seen the evil in Larry, convinced he was guilty. Jimmy insisted that he would stay and get the info. It was an unselfish turn for the drug dealer, because he knew allowing Larry out would be way worse than anything else.

I’m in on this show, and I am excited to see what is going to come down next. I didn’t realize that Jimmy’s father was being played by Ray Liotta, and that this was his final role before his death.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #82

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Black Bird

“We are Coming, Father Abraham”

Episode two of Black Bird on Apple TV + is the next step on the Sunday Morning Sidewalk.

The thing that sticks out to me most in this episode is the manner in which they tell this story in different time frames, and how they all kind of come together by the end of episode two. There were flashbacks back to Greg Kinnear investigating as Brian Miller, tying to get Larry Hall, played by Paul Walter Hauser, to confess to the killing. By the end of the episode, Larry is in jail and staring across to James Keene, played by Taron Egerton, in another cell.

Interestingly enough, my guess is that we will not have any more flashback sections of the story since it was used just to show how this all was set up. I might be wrong on that, but that is the way it feels.

The whole confession scene with Larry was haunting. Paul Walter Hauser does an amazing job here as he is able to maintain the slight uncertainty about this character. I can see why the people in Larry’s life believed in him.

Things are ready to move forward hard now.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #81

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Black Bird

“Pilot”

With our next Sunday Morning Sidewalk show, we dive into the world of Apple TV +. There are so many top quality shows on Apple that you can easily miss something. Black Bird is a good example.

I started the first of six episodes of this limited series this morning.

Jimmy Keene was a drug dealer who gets caught and sent to prison for a ten years sentence. The FBI approached him with an offer for him to switch prisons to get close to another inmate, Larry Hall, who was accused of killing 14 women, in an attempt to find out info about where a body is buried.

This is a true crime story.

The story is also told through flashbacks to before the deaths. We see Greg Kinnear playing Detective Brian Miller, who was investigating some of Larry’s victims. I really liked the flashback scenes, but the interview scene with Greg, Larry and the other cops was strange because I just could not get a grasp on the other cops. They seemed like they were actively trying to help out Larry by trying to convince Brian that Larry was just a serial confessor who was full of crap.

Pau Walter Hauser has some big time sideburns, or as the show says ‘burnsides.’ Hauser’s initial scenes were great, and I feel like he is going to rock this show.

After the pilot episode, I think this one is going to be an awesome entry to the Sunday Morning Sidewalk.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #80

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The Boroughs

“Triple Audible”

So the Sunday Morning Sidewalk comes to the end of yet another show, this one Netflix’s The Boroughs. This eight-episode series from the Duffer Brothers was a lot of fun and was a show that, each week, I wanted to keep watching.

One of the ideas that I dreaded was that, since Netflix canceled the show, it would wind up with a cliffhanger that would never be resolved. I am happy to say that, although there was a little mystery centered around Sam in the last few moments of the show, the main story of the show is wrapped up and will serve as a sufficient finale to the show.

However, the finale felt a little rushed to me. I think it could have easily been spread out to a ninth episode without having too much trouble, because a lot was packed into this ending.

In the end, it was a satisfying conclusion that was able to wrap up the stories well and left our characters in a positive situation.

The ending sequence in the cave with mother, Sam and Blaine was okay, but I am just not sure what was going on. Why did Mother explode? How did Sam survive it? Did he? These are questions that linger, but does not ruin the finale for me.

The cast of the show was wonderful and the main strength of The Boroughs.

With that, the Sunday Morning Sidewalk finishes another series. Next week, we will begin the Apple TV + series Black Bird, a six-episode mini series.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #79

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The Boroughs

“Time To Go”

The penultimate episode of the Netflix show The Boroughs was amazing. I was into everything that was going on from the beginning to the end.

All of the arcs going on are just so exciting. Sam’s struggles inside The Manor, Wally’s attempts to save Mother, Renee and the group’s attempt to break Sam out, Claire’s realization that her father was right… all of these are working so well and blends together into a great final scene.

We even get a deeper motivation for Blaine, who we learn is more about saving his wife Anneliese from her pain (who had polio and withered limbs as a youth) than just his own selfishness.

Mary McDonnell played The Dutchess is a new great character who can also hear The Mother. It was revealed that Sam’s weird images of his wife were coming from Mother. It helped turn Sam’s thoughts about Mother around. She’s not a monster…

I love when the whole group is back together and on their way out of The Manor, only to have Sam say they can not kill Mother, they have to save her. I also loved the scenes between Claire and Paz.

Again, knowing this show will not be renewed, I sure hope there is a satisfying way for the story to end and it does not leave off on a cliffhanger. I was not sure about this show when I started it last month, but The Boroughs has been fabulous.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #78

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The Boroughs

“The Grey Rebellion”

Hello, Mother.

Episode six of The Boroughs gave us a bunch of info on what was going on in this place.

Last episode, the whole crew of Sam, Art, Judy, Wally and Renee are captured by Blaine and given an ultimatum. Wally has to go to work for Blaine while the others are basically on house arrest. Can’t leave the Boroughs, ankle monitors, cameras in their houses, the full nine yards.

They have to accept this situation or they would be sent to the Manor. The whole situation has become quite sinister.

Blaine takes Wally to meet the whole crew behind the scenes of the Boroughs and want him to help save a patient… the person they call Mother, who was supposedly hatched out of an alien egg found decades before. This is the being who the monsters (they call The kids) who suck “brain juice” from the residents came from.

Sam can’t take the way things were so he decided to walk through the desert to the diner and call his daughter, Claire. He cuts off the ankle monitor and heads out.

Meanwhile, Paz and Renee plan up an escape attempt to correspond to the 75th anniversary celebration coming up. They are able to recruit Judy to the fold, but Art did not want to be part of it.

However, when Art discovered from Claire that she had committed Sam to the Manor after she picked him up at the diner, he changed his mind and joined the “Grey Rebellion.”

Renee, though, has altered the plan. She does not want to just run away, she wanted to fight. She had been told everything by Wally and she said that she wanted to get into the offices at the manor and kill Mother, to take it away from Blaine and his cronies.

Of course there would be more to this. At the end of the episode, we see Mother, and she appears to be human-ish. She was not a monster like the “Kids.”

You knew where Claire was taking Sam after she picked him up. I was disappointed that she did not believe her father and allowed Blaine’s manipulations to work in her mind from a few episodes ago. Clearly, Mother’s appearance will make it more difficult to kill as Renee wants to do. Mother also makes me feel as if she is less sinister than Blaine and his cronies. Has she been held captive all these years?

There is something more to Sam’s wife too. This is an arc that remains unanswered.

Next week is the penultimate episode of the series and things are really setting up to be a massive final two episodes.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #77

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The Boroughs

“Another Beautiful Day”

Things are really cruising in The Boroughs. Some shocking revelations in episode 5.

I love how our protagonists have found each other and immediately shared truths. No hem and hawing around. Just, “Hey this happened to us…what about you.”

Sam, Wally and Judy had come from the tunnels beneath the Boroughs where they had killed a monster. They hear Art being attacked by Annaliese, who has some kind of monstrous form. Paz and Renee are kidnapped by Hank and taken out to the desert to be murdered. They are able to escape and, in the process, killed Hank as Renee’s car drove off a cliff. Somehow, I do not think that Hank is dead-dead.

The episode ended with Annaliese coming back to Blaine and them sharing some kind of weird, slimy bath to heal her gunshot wound from Judy. Then, Blaine showed up to catch the squad of monster hunters at an isolated restaurant.

We learned what Paz saw before he was assaulted by Hank in the basement of the police hq. He told the group that he saw a bunch of monsters caged up. He said it was sad. The group pieced together that they use the monster’s blood to feed on to keep them young, allowing the monsters to feed on the residents for them to stay alive. Circle of life.

Three more episodes as the mythology of the Boroughs is being revealed slowly. Should be a big time showdown next week. My guess is that Blaine is going to make it seem as if these old people need to be admitted because they are losing their grip. He already was setting the foundation of this by talking to Sam’s daughter about his bizarre recent behavior.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #76

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The Boroughs

“Forbidden Fruit”

I love this show. It has everything you could want out of a show like this: humor, drama, suspense, wonderful characters and a mystery that is truly compelling.

I am sad that Netflix decided that this was the only season this show was going to get, but it makes me happy that it exists at all.

This week we get all kinds of progress, including Sam, Judy and Wally setting a trap for the monster (which actually worked!), an investigation by Renee into the background of Hank (who seems to be a man named Milton Hauser, who died in a car wreck in the 1970s), and Art’s transformation after eating a magic peach.

Not that everything went great. The trap for the monster may have worked, but it was able to get away. Judy winged it with a gun and it seemed to bleed blue blood. Sam ran into his daughter and there was a tense discussion. Then, Paz, who was curious about a meeting between Hank and Boroughs CEO Blaine Shaw, followed Hank into the basement and saw something in a room before he was shocked into unconsciousness by Hank.

Ed, who tried to help Sam, died in the episode off screen and Sam suspected that Blaine had the man killed because he tried to help him.

There is definitely something sinister going down at the Boroughs and the show has a pace that does not mess around. It provided a bunch of great scenes while furthering the mysteries. The LOST-style shot at the end of the episode with Sam, Wally and Judy peering down a shaft that had allowed the creature access to Sam’s house was a great cliffhanger.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #75

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The Boroughs

“A Pyramid”

This week’s Sunday Morning Sidewalk sees the third episode of the Duffy Brothers’s The Boroughs which gives a perfect example of the idea that you can do anything by watching a video on YouTube. Even pick a lock, as Sam discovered this episode.

Sam and Wally break into the funeral home to take a look at Jack’s body, looking for evidence to support their theories about Jack’s death. Judy, who had been very suspicious of them, followed them too.

Meanwhile, Renee and Paz get together when one of the cameras they had set up caught an intruder. After they investigated and found confusing details, they had sex.

Wally, after checking over the dead body of Jack in the morgue, discovered that Jack had marks in the back of his neck, making them think that the creature was feeding on Jack. Sam and Judy had Wally check them and they each had the marks as well, telling us that, whatever this things was, it has been feeding on everyone.

We then see a creature feeding on Renee and Wally as they slept post-coitus.

This was another solid episode in this series and I loved how they intertwined the two main stories this week. They also had Art looking around where the crows crashed last episode and he found some weird location, which has some connection to the creature.

They continue to build the mystery of the Boroughs and melding the characters together.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #74

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The Boroughs

“The Mourning After”

Last week, in episode one of The Boroughs, I commented that I had hoped that Jack survived the attack of whatever that thing was. Sadly, as this week started, we learned that jack did not.

RIP Jack.

Sam, who discovered the creature “feeding” on Jack, became obsession (as one would) with trying to figure out what was going on. A trip to see Edward at the care facility gave Sam a clue… “The key is in the lights and the owls are in the wall.”

So Sam started tearing out the light fixtures in his house.

Jack’s death affected more than just Sam as we learned that Judy had been having an affair with Jack, and his death was causing her serious grief. Judy’s partner Art apparently knew about the affair but never confronted her in fear that she would leave him.

It led Art to a bizarre occurrence with a murder of crows. A huge murder of crows that circled the sky above him and like kamikazed themselves into the ground. Weird scene.

Renee pushed for an investigation when more quartz items turned up missing. Hank came back with a fake report from Albuquerque PD saying that they caught a guy with the missing items.

F- Hank.

Clearly, Hank has some kind of inside knowledge of what is going on in the Boroughs, and he is going out of his way to cover it up. He is easily the biggest piece of crap on this show.

Only Blaine Shaw comes close. Shaw showed up at Jack’s memorial and dropped some lies about how much Jack meant to him. It was sadly obvious how insincere he was being, but Shaw knows more than he is letting on too.

Wally got more bad news about his cancer, which has made its way into Wally’s liver. It left Wally searching for a miracle. Maybe Sam has found it.

The Boroughs has had two exceptional episodes filled with great actors and a captivating supernatural mystery. I know that there will be only one season as Netflix has cancelled season two of the show. I sure how the show did not leave off on a massive cliffhanger at the end of season one, because this is a show that I am fully engrossed in.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #73

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June 14

Spoilers

The Boroughs

“Welcome to the Boroughs”

There are times when I am not happy with the concept of the Sunday Morning Sidewalk. The idea was one episode every Sunday morning for TV shows that I have not seen. Every once in awhile, I come across a show where I desperately want to watch the next episode. The Boroughs is the latest example.

The Boroughs is an 8-episode series on Netflix from the Duffer Brothers (of Stranger Things fame) and when episode one ended, I was wishing it was next Sunday right now.

Taking all of my willpower, I shut off the show, preventing myself from binging it all day long on this lazy Sunday where my schedule is fairly open.

The show centers around a retirement community called The Boroughs and a group of older characters who live there. However, there is some kind of weird, supernatural aspect to the show and, as Ed Bagley Jr. said, “There are owls in the walls.”

If you know about me, I love the evil owl metaphor. On Twin Peaks, the Owls were not what they seemed, and this certainly hooked me immediately.

I was also impressed with how quickly I was able to connect with the characters. They were all so great that, even those that did not get a lot of details, were ones I felt tied to. Such an amazing cast with Alfred Molina, Bill Pullman, Alfre Woodard, Denis O’Hare, Geena Davis, Jane Kaczmarek, Clarke Peters, Dee Wallace, and Eric Edelstein.

The supernatural mystery was not the main component of episode one. It was the introduction of Sam Cooper, played by Alfred Molina, the widower whose wife had signed the contract to move to the Boroughs. The gruff and grizzled man did not want to be in this community, and he was looking for a way out.

I have to say that I loved Bill Pullman’s Jack Willard. He was such a wonderful breath of fresh air in the episode and his kindness toward Sam was very inspiring. I really hope that the creature that was seemingly feeding off Jack at the end of episode one did not kill him.

What is going on in this community? Is there something sinister with the people who organized the community or is there something about the land? Anything is possible, and I am so in with this. As I said, if this was not the Sunday Morning Sidewalk, I’d be well into episode two by now.

Can’t wait for next Sunday.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #72

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Hulk Hogan: Real American

“Hulk vs. Terry”

The final episode of the docu-series on Hulk Hogan was today’s Sunday Morning Sidewalk entry, which was an episode that featured the controversial life of Terry Bollea, after the Wrestlemania classic with the Rock until his funeral in 2025.

I have been talking about the negative points of Hulk Hogan during these Sunday Morning Sidewalk write-ups and how the documentary has brushed over some of them, giving the surface treatment for it. This episode did bring up and look at a lot more of the negativity of Hogan than some of the other ones. However, the biggest thing that they brushed over was the racism tag that followed Hogan over the last few years of his life.

They mention the sex tape, and they do mention the racist slurs that Hogan was recorded saying during the sex tape, but they do not go into great detail about how those words and his overall opinions shaped the thoughts of a lot of wrestling fans. They treat it like a mistake and one that he regretted.

They showed the infamous Netflix debut where Hogan go booed out of the building in LA, and they linked it heavily to the political connection to Donald Trump. While that certainly played a role in that incident, the truth is Hogan’s brand had been more damaged by the racist remarks than his support of Trump. The Undertaker is a well-known Trump supporter, but he has never received the treatment Hogan did from the fans.

They covered the Hogan Knows Best reality show and dealt with Hogan’s marriage falling apart and his cheating on Linda. They do not mention the accident that Nick Hogan was involved with that injured his friend.

They spent a lot of time on how Hogan’s body was breaking down and mentioning his multiple back surgeries, which was a horrific amount. Some of the images they showed of Hogan was tough with the scars on his back from the operations.

Many of the actual one-on-one interviews with Hogan for this doc were well done and reflective of his time and his mistakes. The doc may have left out some important bits, but I thought the four episodes were fairly well done on the whole.

Next week, the Sunday Morning Sidewalk stays with Netflix as I start the Duffer Brothers’ new show, The Boroughs.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #71

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Hulk Hogan: Real American

“Hollywood Hogan”

It has been a couple of episodes so far that I was wanting the Hulk Hogan: Real American documentary on Netflix to look at some of the more negative aspects of his life. Episode three came along and they dove deep into several of the controversies Hogan found himself in during the 1990s. Of course, they downplayed much of it.

Steroids? The lies on Arsenio Hall? The steroid trial? NWO? Downfall of WCW? Finger poke of Doom? These were all part of this episode of the doc and, to a certain extent, they were all dealt with in a way. This felt more balanced of an episode than the previous two, as some of the warts did seem to come out.

Hearing about these moments from Hulk Hogan’s own lips was a fascinating thing. It was also time for Bret Hart and Jesse Ventura, who had said positive things in previous episodes, to state their true feelings about Hulk Hogan.

The doc went all the way through to Wrestlemania 18 with his match against The Rock, which changed course for the character once again.

The doc included the infamous moment in LA where the crowd chanted F-you Hogan. That was a more recent event. The tag for the end of the episode, with Hogan saying that he wished he had ended everything after Wrestlemania 18.

One more episode of the doc remains for next Sunday.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #70

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Hulk Hogan: Real American

Episode 2: Hulkamania

The second episode of the Netflix documentary Hulk Hogan: Real American featured the time frame from when Hogan returned to the, at the time, WWF through his winning of the championship all the way to reclaiming the title from Sgt. Slaughter at Wrestlemania 7.

There was so much covered during this hour episode. In his career, it looked at Wrestlemania I, Wrestlemania III, Wrestlemania VI and VII. In his family, it looked at his marriage to Linda and the birth of his two children Brooke and Nick. All with Hogan doing voice overs and narration.

We got an interview from President Donald Trump speaking about what a great guy Hulk Hogan was.

Much like last week, the negative things about Hogan during these years (Richard Beltzer, Road Schedule, drug use) were addressed but just surface. There was interesting part about Hogan’s brother showing up, asking for money, only to wind up overdosing. There were some real emotions coming from Hogan in this section of the doc, but he did not want to go into depth on it either. It clearly still affected him even after this many years.

The doc seemed to go back to the time when everyone would bash the Ultimate Warrior. There was a time when the Warrior was back in the good graces of the WWE but the section on the Warrior and Wrestlemania VI felt more like the Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior, a WWE produced doc that bad mouthed Warrior the whole time.

Next week’s Sunday Morning Sidewalk sounded as if it was progressing into the negative time of the steroid trial. I am interested to see how this doc, which has been very heavily positive toward Hogan (even long time critics such as Jess Ventura and Bret Hart were recorded saying positive things about him), deals with this time of Hogan’s life.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #69

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Hulk Hogan: Real American

“The Rise”

This week, I start the next Sunday Morning Sidewalk show on Netflix, the documentary featuring the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.

Hulk Hogan: Real American started off with images from Hulk Hogan’s funeral. Imagine working on your documentary, with plenty of access to Hulk Hogan himself, and have the subject die. It certainly gives the documentary series a beginning and an end.

The first episode was about the rise of Hulk Hogan, from a kid growing up in Tampa, Florida to the arrival of the biggest star the industry of Pro Wrestling ever saw.

There were plenty of interviews during the doc from not only Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan’s real name), but also people he met and dealt with during the time such as Jerry Lawler, Bret Hart, Jimmy Hart, Brian Blair, and even Jesse Ventura.

The thing is that there was not much negative mentioned. They did not hear the negatives that you usually hear from Hart or Ventura about Hogan. They talked about him being green in the ring, which he clearly was. They mentioned Verna Gagne, but had no video of his opinion of Hogan.

The only negative was the time Vince McMahon Sr. fired Hogan for going to shoot Rocky III. The rest of this episode was basically the typical story of a wrestler making his way through the Indies to make it big.

They did make some references to some controversies surrounding Hogan, so I am interested to see exactly how they deal with the second part of his life. The early days are easy to show him as a “superhero” as his persona, but later on, things got tougher. Will they just touch on this or will this be a major aspect of the doc? I have my suspicions.

This was an intriguing start, but I want to see more in depth from this doc over the next three weeks.