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One Day at a Time: “The Politics Episode”

Every time I'm ready to give up on this series, it surprises me. But not always in a good way.

For example, the most recent episode was the first effort by a major TV series to find a way around the rules of social distancing by using animation to alleviate the need for having cast members stand so close to each other. And while the animation was nothing to make a fuss about, it worked well enough that I looked forward to seeing future episodes filmed in a similar fashion.

Unfortunately, the script was another matter. Granted, one could expect only so much from a thirty-minute sitcom episode but I still found it hard to put up with the constant parade of political cheap shots masquerading as jokes.

Yes, I get it. Nowadays is a very frustrating time to be a liberal. On the other hand, it is also frustrating to be a conservative -- especially one who does not automatically agree with the current occupant of the Oval Office. Moreover, there used to be a time when Norman Lear shows found time to focus on nuances that most sitcoms avoided. However, if the current version of One Day at a Time is any indication, those days are long gone.

Anyway, I could have lived with a sitcom whose political beliefs were different from mine if the jokes were actually funny. But like the conservative show Last Man Standing, the writers often assumed that their political humor was a lot more clever than it actually was.

It was not until toward the end of the show when the show showed a hypothetical dialogue between lead character Penelope and her conservative cousin Estrellita that the show showed any sign of genuine wit. Ironically, the one thing that won me over was the way the show managed to evoke the specter of Fidel Castro in order to explain the political viewpoints of Estrellita and Penelope without turning it into a cliché. A lesser show would have either ignored Castro or else exploited him for a number of political cheap shots. But the show managed to find a way around all that that evoked genuine sympathy from me for both Penelope and her cousin -- and for that, I am grateful.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

One Day at a Time: “Supermoon”

A lot of the episodes that I've seen of this series have been surprisingly meh, making me wonder what exactly TV critics saw in this show in order to make it a "critically acclaimed" series. I don't expect every TV show about Hispanics to feature characters who act like the Hispanics I know in real life -- especially since few of those Hispanics are Cuban-Americans like the ones in this show. On the other hand, I would like to see some type of recognizable emotion in the characters who do appear on the show as well as the commitment on the part of the writers to at least try to keep things interesting. But up until this episode, I've been disappointed in all that.

Then, toward the end of the episode, Lydia -- the mother of the lead character -- talked about visiting her home in Cuba and not feeling at home and then suddenly for the first time since I started watching this show, I saw something I could identify with. After all, when I last visited my hometown of Detroit back in the 1980s, I had a similar feeling. A feeling that, yes, Detroit will always be my home -- but not in the same way that Dallas was. Dallas was where I grew up. Where I first fell in love. Where I first met my best friend. For the longest time, I did not want to admit this. After all, I loved Detroit and I missed my kinfolk there. For many years, I felt closer to them than to anyone in Texas outside of my own family. And yet the last time I visited there, I found myself missing Dallas. And like Lydia, I was forced to face the fact that my former home was no longer my home.

I still don't yet know whether to regard this episode as a lucky fluke. After all, the writing is still very mediocre and while I have a strong affection for Rita Moreno and Justina Machado, I can't help but feel that both actresses have done better work on other TV shows. And yet part of me is starting to become optimistic about this show's future -- as odd as that seems in the Age of Social Distancing.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

One Day at a Time: “Pitching Pennies”

Geez. It used to be the one thing one could expect from a Norman Lear show was a bit of sympathy for working class folk, if not a bit of understanding for the way they are. But apparently all that went out with the twentieth century.

Thus we get a lot of fuss made over the fact that a hard-working nurse like Penelope (the lead character, played by Justina Machado) refused to spend money unnecessarily -- hardly an unheard thing among the Hispanics I knew growing up. But we see little -- if any -- effort put into explaining what made her that way. Indeed, the very idea that Penelope needed to be "fixed" because she did not believe in spending extra money seemed offensive.

I suppose I should take heart and see my reaction to this episode as yet more proof that I'm not as Americanized as I think I am. And yet I suspect this reaction more accurately means that I have more in common -- philosophically, at least -- with the average white American-born senior citizen than I do with the "woke" individuals who worked on this episode.

Oh, well. As much as I like the idea of a Hispanic sitcom based on what was once one of my favorite TV shows, it seemed fairly obvious that this show was not made with people like me in mind.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

One Day at a Time: “Checking Boxes”

I finally got a chance to catch up with this show and my first thought was: Is that all there is to it?

And my second thought: This is supposed to be a critically acclaimed TV series? Dios knows that I tend to have a soft spot for comedy but for some reason -- okay, a lot of reasons -- this series didn't work for me.

As much as I admire supporting actress Rita Moreno and her past work and as much as I respect Justina Machado's work on Six Feet Under, I could not help feeling a little disappointed in their latest show. I would like to hope that it gets better as time goes on but since this is the first show of the fourth season, I'm not optimistic. And while I don't kid myself that the original One Day at a Time was a flawless classic, it did have a sense of story and character that used to be quite common in popular TV sitcoms. The newer version seems more content to rely on PC stereotypes and PC-related jokes that just don't work.

Oh, well. It lasted three seasons prior to this one so apparently somebody likes it...

R.I.P. Bonnie Franklin

American actress Bonnie Franklin, best known for her role as Ann Romano on the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time, took her last bow today at age 69.

She will be missed.