(***** / *****) As perfect a combo of THE WEST WING (if it were set in 1880) - Bradley Whitford's Lyman-as-Blaine more than helped here - and Scorsese's KING OF COMEDY (his most underrated film) as one could ask for. Shannon and MacFayden unsurprisingly superb, though Nick Offerman's portrayal of Chester Arthur should be mentioned in the same breathless breath. Also nice to see a more positive presidential ending for Offerman than the last time he occupied the Oval.
A desire, yet to be met - except by PLURIBUS, SINNERS, and ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER- of being impressed by something again (replays, like my last-night completed RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2) don't count but my god was that, is that, an amazing work of game-art): Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN left me wanting and, indeed, increasingly annoyed the more I think about it; MOBLAND was a great series for someone who's a never watched a mob movie / series before nearly brought down by stunt casting of Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren in roles they were anything but born to play and saved only by, as ever, Tom Hardy (and Paddy Consadine) who I'll watch in anything (MOBLAND being a case in point); Wong Kar-Wai's BLOSSOMS SHANGHAI put me to sleep for the three episodes I watched: It's not that I don't think there's good stuff out there, it's that 98% of what I've encountered feels so anodyne and neutered that, ack, IDK, maybe it's just a phase - a fucking dispiriting phase, but a phase nonetheless. Speaking of dispiriting, more fucking snow.