My Love to London

Quite a few years have passed since I've been there.  I went to London twice in the late 1980s.  However, the absolute joy of being in London both times is still very special in my hurt.  I loved meeting people and having conversations with them.  I loved the opportunity to work there (my Paul McCartney interview for VH1), I loved sightseeing, book shopping, taking the Underground and there was my sheer glee of being in a city in which I did not feel penalized for practicing common courtesy.  The news over this weekend about another attack in London has broken hearts all over the world.  When I heard the news on TV, it brought tears to my eyes.  I wanted to put up something here, post some kind of item that would send my love to London.  I'll do it with a song, a song introduced by one of my favorite singers -- Petula Clark.  Hers was one of the top pop voices of the 1960s.  New songs were written for her to sing in a 1969 musical remake of the 1939 classic film GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS.

A lot of us American kids back then who were buying her records and watching her on TV variety shows had no idea she'd been making movies in England through the 1940s and 50s.  She had the female lead role in MGM's musical remake opposite Peter O'Toole.  He got one of his several Best Actor Oscar nominations for his performance.

My sister and I saw this film, using our high school student discount cards for a Saturday matinee at the movies.  The critics overall may have given this film a lukewarm reception, but my sister and I loved it.  We were totally entertained and touched.  Petula Clark was not like Greer Garson in the original 1939 version.  In the remake, the woman who falls in love with the shy, lonely schoolmaster is a stage entertainer, a musical hall showgirl.

The musical GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS has a fabulous original score by Leslie Bricusse and John Williams.  Here's one of its songs.  Petula Clark introduces "London Is London."

We love you, London.  My thoughts and prayers are with you.

He Was in AUNTIE MAME

1958.  Rosalind Russell disrupted notions of how women in their early 50s were perceived when she energetically repeated her Broadway success in the film adaptation of AUNTIE MAME, a hit play based on a best-selling novel.  The movie may have come out in 1958 but, boy, does it ever fill a need today.  This big, colorful comedy about a loving, larger than life family member who embraces cultural diversity, supports the fine arts and shouts down bigotry as she lights up the lives of those around her is just the kind of tonic we need now in this Trumpian Age.  If you've seen AUNTIE MAME, doesn't it feel like the White House has been taken over by Dwight Babcock and the conservative Knickerbocker Bank?  Honestly!  AUNTIE MAME, we need you now more than ever.

Little Patrick, the young nephew sent to his only living relative after his conservative Chicago father dies suddenly in a steam room after working out, is introduced to a new life and new people when he lives with Auntie Mame in Manhattan.  She has a few close longtime friends and two domestic staffers that are all treated by her like dear, extended family.  One such person is tall, handsome, intellectual Acacius Page.  He's the vegetarian, yoga-practicing Greenwich Village instructor who will accept Patrick into his very liberal school, one that is "wholesome and natural."

There's Acacius Page in the white shirt quoting the ancient Greeks.

When narrow-minded Dwight Babcock visits the school, he blows his top when he finds unclad Patrick in class.  As Patrick calmly and honestly explains, the class was playing "fish family."  And, as Acacius Page had taught the boys, "...we were doing what gentlemen fish do."

Acacius Page was played by actor Henry Brandon, a native-born Berliner whose family emigrated to the U.S. when he was still a baby.  He was stage trained and, although he may not have been a big star like a Joel McCrea or William Holden, he worked consistently and was a good character actor.  Recently, I was watching John Ford's classic 1956 western, THE SEARCHERS, on television.  Ever since I first saw this movie on color TV when I was in college, I've always been fascinated by the close-up of the blue-eyed Indian chief villain in the story.  So last month when the movie was on, I made it a point to see who the actor with the big blue eyes was playing "Scar," the Indian chief.

It was Henry Brandon!  All these years, I never realized that Auntie Mame's dear friend was the same guy who played the nemesis in THE SEARCHERS.

Here's one more.  Around Christmastime, I always love seeing Laurel & Hardy's 1934 version of BABES IN TOYLAND.  Well, guess what?  Young actor Henry Brandon, in his early 20s, put on old character make-up and played evil Silas Barnaby.

Three characters I've noticed for decades in those three different features and I never realized until last month that all three parts were played by the same actor.  Now that's good character acting.

Brandon died in 1990 at age 77.  He was gay and had a long relationship with the love of his life until his partner passed.  His partner, Mark Herron, had been Judy Garland's fourth husband for a year or two.  He and the screen legend were officially divorced in 1967.  In her autobiography, Lorna Luft, one of Garland's three children, wrote very sweet things about Herron.

Apparently he was a good man who didn't use or abuse Garland and treated the kids quite well.  Mark Herron died of cancer in 1996.

Brilliant Satire on Race in America

It's like Woody Allen's ZELIG blended in with the most memorable segments of Dave Chappelle's TV show on Comedy Central to make an intoxicating Molotov cocktail-like 90-minute mockumentary.  It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004.  The title is C.S.A.: THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.  Before I tell you what it's about, let me give you a little film history.  Let's look at GONE WITH THE WIND first.  The 1939 Hollywood classic was made into a stage musical in the 1970s.  I kid you not.

The film was a box office blockbuster and the big winner of the Academy Awards for 1939.  Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American person nominated for an Oscar and the first to win.  You already know that, I'm sure.  She won for Best Supporting Actress.

The next Black performer to be nominated for an Oscar was singer/actress Ethel Waters.  She was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for 1949's race drama, PINKY, directed by Elia Kazan.

However, the next person in Academy Award history to get an Oscar nomination for playing a Black person was a very white British actress.  Flora Robson had played Queen Elizabeth I in 1937's historical film, FIRE OVER ENGLAND.  She played the housekeeper who narrates William Wyler's 1939 drama, WUTHERING HEIGHTS.  She played one of the British nuns in 1947's BLACK NARCISSUS.

But in Hollywood, she was covered in dark make-up and played the Black Haitian maid to Ingrid Bergman's Creole beauty character in 1945's New Orleans love story, SARATOGA TRUNK.  Robson was a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for that performance.

That fact may cause some folks, like myself, to wonder "If the part was good enough to get a woman an Oscar nomination, why didn't they just let a Black actress play the Black maid?"

That kind of history is lampooned in this mockumentary.  The entire feature, commercials and TV station promos -- everything -- is done like a documentary airing on a TV station.  The documentary is how America changed after the Confederate side won the Civil War.  Historians speak, we see clips of history and old movies.  That's the brilliance of this alternate history.  If you're a serious fan of classic films, you should see D.W. Griffith's influential 1915 epic, THE BIRTH OF A NATION.  I've seen it a couple of times.  Technically, there are great production elements about this silent film.  But Griffith's blatant racism in images of Black people sets my teeth on edge.

The version of Griffith's film in C.S.A.:  CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA has such genius that it made me gasp.  The DVD  came out in the summer of 2006.  I was working on Whoopi Goldberg's national radio show then.  I saw the DVD.  I raved about it to her and I wanted to interview its African-American writer/director Kevin Willmott on the radio show.  At that time, he was a professor at the University of Kansas.  I contacted him and gushed about how extraordinary his work was -- the concept, execution and all that writing.  His keen knowledge of American and Hollywood film history.  It's amazing. 

In fact, I still do not understand how Quentin Tarantino won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for DJANGO UNCHAINED when he basically wrote a new twist on a character introduced and played by Franco Nero in a popular 1966 western called...DJANGO.  Tarantino even gave Nero a cameo in his western.  C.S.A.: THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA made seem a bit slow in spots in last half hour but you have to admit that, overall, it's original, smart, provocative and it makes a point.  Willmott co-wrote the 2015 film CHI-RAQ with its director Spike Lee.

Whoopi, unfortunately, was not enthusiastic about giving Mr. Willmott airtime back in 2006.  I still feel he deserved some.  Now that we've got a former network TV reality competition show host who had no prior political experience as America's current president -- a millionaire who repeatedly proclaimed that President Barack Obama was not a real American and demanded to see his birth certificate -- Kevin Willmott's mockumentary might be ripe for re-appreciation.  See for yourself and let me know what you think.  Click on this link:    https://youtu.be/exnwTWfFRM8.

A Double CINDERELLA MAN

If you're up for a double feature movie rental with a bit of a theme to it, I've got an idea for you.  The first one comes from director Frank Capra, the man who gave us IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.  It's from the 1930s, during the Great Depression here in the U.S., and that financial hardship is reflected in this comedy/drama.  It stars Gary Cooper and the marvelous actress who was the muse to James L. Brooks when he wrote the role Holly Hunter played in BROADCAST NEWS.  Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur star in 1936's MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN.

The film opens with a lone car speeding on a highway.  It speeds out of control over a bridge and the person in it is killed. The person was a multi-millionaire and his fortune goes to a tall, young, handsome, tuba-playing relative in a small town called Mandrake Falls.  From Mandrake Falls, Longfellow Deeds has to relocate to Manhattan where a bunch of shady executives think he's just a simple-minded hick.  They think they can easily weasel the fortune away from him.  Wrong.  He's like a big kid in the Big Apple but he's no chump.  He is, however, a huge story for some newspaper to scoop.  Meet Babe Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaperwoman who's the smartest guy in the newsroom.  She'll assume a fake identity to meet the millionaire, get the exclusive story on him and scoop all the other papers in town.  You guessed it.  He'll fall in love with her -- not knowing she's a reporter -- and she'll fall in love with him -- knowing she'll have to reveal herself and deal with the romantic consequences.

Jean Arthur was one of the best and brightest female stars of the 1930s and 40s.  One whose popularity continued for decades.  She was also one of the shyest stars.  In the early 1950s, she was such a dramatic hit as the gun-hating frontier mother in SHANE, that Paramount Pictures wanted her to do three more films.  But she decided to make 1953's SHANE her last film.  In 1966, she starred in THE JEAN ARTHUR SHOW, a CBS sitcom.  It lasted only one season, but heck...not bad for someone who started her career in the silent film era of the 1920s.  In the early 1970s, she was still getting film offers.  Jean Arthur stayed retired from films and taught at Vassar.

In the 1956 drama, GIANT, actor James Dean did a piece of business looping a small rope while a rich rival tries to screw him out of some ranch property he owns.  Property that's way more valuable than the lowly ranch hand realizes.  A number of film critics wrote about young Dean's acting brilliance doing that casual rope bit in that office scene.  Well, those critics -- all men -- missed that Jean Arthur went there before James Dean did.  Notice her first scene in the movie as she listens to her newspaper boss give orders.

In another scene, Babe and her boss are discussing how to get the exclusive on the young millionaire.  Babe is doing a trick with a 50 cent piece.  Notice that, during the trick, she drops the coin.  That drop doesn't seem like a rehearsed, scripted move but Jean Arthur looks under the seat cushion for the coin and goes on with the dialogue in the most natural way.  She was terrific.

Mr. Deeds came into a $20 million fortune and a palatial Manhattan residence.  The newspaper proclaims him "The Cinderella Man."  Deeds has no idea how his innocent escapades with his sweetheart Mary (reporter Babe Bennett) wind up in the paper with photos, but he continues his carefree new life as a millionaire.  Then, a man hit hard by the Great Depression makes his way into his palatial home with a gun.  Poverty has infected him like a disease and made him a desperate madman.  He can't find work.  His wife and kids go to bed hungry.  And he's read that this Deeds had fun by feeding donuts to a horse.  Those horses are eating and that poor intruder's family isn't.  The man is hysterical but he comes to his senses before he hurts anyone.  He's sorry for what he's done.

It's a strong, critical scene.  Deeds will be moved by the man's pain and desperation.  Deeds will feed him and employ him.  The experience has such a profound effect on "The Cinderella Man" that he uses his wealth to help other men knocked down and out by the Depression. His compassion and his helping hand to his fellow American threatens the fat cat execs who greedily wanted his money.  The wealthy "Cinderella Man" who selflessly helps the poor will have to go to court to prove his sanity.  This is a definite Capra classic.  To me, Capra was like the Charles Dickens of Old Hollywood.

Pair that classic with a Ron Howard film from 2005.  Howard directed CINDERELLA MAN starring Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger.  Based on a true story, the action is set in the 1930s...just like Capra's tale about a "Cinderella Man" in MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN.  Russell Crowe, in one of best American screen performances, plays a working class family man hit very hard by the Great Depression.  He could be like the poor guy with the gun in Capra's film.

Crowe plays James Braddock, a former boxer getting any day laborer work he can to support his New Jersey family.  Before Braddock was forced to quit boxing due to an injury, he had a most loyal and trustworthy manager named Joe Gould.  Gould is played by Paul Giamatti.

Gould presents Braddock with one more chance to box.  Mrs. Braddock (Zellweger) doesn't want him to box and thinks Gould is just out to make a buck.  She's wrong.  Braddock could win money to feed his family again.  With Gould's help, he has a shot at the heavyweight championship.  His opponent is the formidable and cocky champ, Max Baer.  A top sportswriter dubs Braddock "The Cinderella Man."

Braddock comes to represent every guy who got knocked down by hard times and dared to get up and keep punching.  There is a lot of heart without sappy sentimentality in this movie.  Braddock takes the blow in the ring because he loves his family and do what he can to take care of his family.   Of all the films directed by Ron Howard, this is one of my favorites.  Click onto this link and see a trailer:
https://youtu.be/nyuri18gwdM.

I like Renee Zellweger.  But in CINDERELLA MAN, I think I would've gone with a Naomi Watts or Julianne Moore -- someone who could play the wife with a touch more kitchen sink gravity

Many critics had high praise for this Ron Howard movie.  But the public just wouldn't go see it.  The same thing happened with Ron Howard's 2013 film, RUSH.  In both cases,  moviegoers missed very good films with excellent performances.  Paul Giamatti got a very well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for CINDERELLA MAN.  Ron Howard previously directed Russell Crowe in A BEAUTIFUL MIND, a film that took home Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.

There you have it.  I hope you enjoy the CINDERELLA MAN double feature.

Brava, WONDER WOMAN!

On my recent trips to the cineplex, I bought tickets to see smaller films about real people.  The Hollywood major studio assembly line of overblown comic book superhero sequels had overwhelmed and exhausted me.  All those big budget movies with the extreme special effects and the impressively muscled men flying through the air and kicking villainous ass struck me as the same sausage being cranked out and served on different, more decorative plates.  It's still the same old sausage.  After a while, they all seemed the same.  That's why movies like MOONLIGHT, HELL OR HIGH WATER and HIDDEN FIGURES were like a balanced meal with wine after a steady diet of sugary snack treats.  Also, the big comic book superhero adventures were all lead by men with big biceps.  This season, the one superhero movie I am eager to see puts a female in charge.  WONDER WOMAN has finally made it to the big screen.

OK.  The fact that WONDER WOMAN finally got a movie deal is right up there with us finally seeing an African-American woman on ABC's THE BACHELORETTE who is being wooed by an interracial group of men.  I know history is being made on the TV show and the network is patting itself on the corporate back...but, please.  We're over fifteen years into the 21st Century.  We had President Barack Obama in the White House for two terms.  High time we got an African-American bachelorette or bachelor.  In fact, it should've already happened.

The same applies to Wonder Woman on the big screen.  Superman, Batman, The Incredible Hulk -- each had a popular TV series and each made it to the big screen.  Wonder Woman was played by Linda Carter in a popular 1970s TV series.  But the big boys who run Hollywood apparently didn't think she could carry a movie.  She was strong and, to them, a cute pretty little thing to keep on the small screen.  That's how it seemed.

I watched Wonder Woman on TV.  I loved Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman.  I loved Debra Winger as her younger sister, Wonder Girl.  (Yes. Debra Winger.)

I know jack-shit about The Green Lantern.  But Ryan Reynolds got a green light to play THE GREEN LANTERN in a 2011 movie.  No big screen close-ups for the popular Amazon warrior princess, though.  I feel there was Hollywood sexism in her lack of big screen exposure.

Well, WONDER WOMAN is here now and the movie was directed by a woman -- Patty Jenkins.  She directed Charlize Theron to a very well-deserved Best Actress Oscar win for 2003's MONSTER.  Jenkins also wrote the MONSTER screenplay.  In that, Jenkins looks at the dark side of female power and femininity in this story about real life serial killer, Aileen Wuornos.  Note:  Look up news footage of Aileen Wuornos and then watch Theron's uncanny recreation in MONSTER.

Gal Gadot plays Diana Prince also known as Wonder Woman.  Besides Patty Jenkins as director, another reason why I want to see WONDER WOMAN is that she cast Chris Pine as the leading man.  From what I've seen in clips, she embraced his keen comedy side.

I watched Chris Pine be serious in STAR TREK movies and UNSTOPPABLE and saw him as a drop dead handsome young dramatic actor.  Then came news that, due to scheduling conflicts, he replaced Jake Gyllenhaal as Cinderella's Prince Charming in Disney's film version of the Broadway musical INTO THE WOODS.  After the preview screenings for critics, our main buzz was "Wow!  Who knew that Chris Pine could sing?  And really well!"

Then, in 2015, I attended an "upfront" for a TV outlet.  "Upfronts" are held to promote a TV show's or a network's new season.  It's a publicity party.  This one for Crackle was held in Manhattan's City Center theater close to Carnegie Hall.  The presentation included clips for the upcoming product.  The upfront ended with outtakes from a new animated series.  Chris Pine was the voice for one of the characters.  The montage of Chris Pine clips was so hilarious that press people who were headed up the aisles to leave stopped and stayed to watch and laugh.  Chris Pine ad libbing was like early Robin Williams funny.  So now I'm thinking..."He's handsome, he can sing...AND he's funny."

After that came HELL OR HIGH WATER, one of the best movies of last year.  In fact, it was an Oscar nominee for Best Picture.  Chris Pine is excellent as the bank robber in that drama.  He's just so talented and handsome that I could easily hate him.  But I don't.  Here's a trailer for WOMAN WOMAN.

I am very ready to see this action/adventure.  I'm glad she's here.  I hope WONDER WOMAN has a wonderful time at the box office.  In the field of big screen comic book action hero adaptations, WONDER WOMAN and director Patty Jenkins have shattered a glass ceiling.

Women in War: SO PROUDLY WE HAIL

When I was a kid, this old Paramount movie aired frequently on KTLA/Channel 5 during my summer vacations from school.  I loved watching 1943's SO PROUDLY WE HAIL.  It's one of those old movies that made me ask my parents about history and, later, go to the library to get more information.  SO PROUDLY WE HAIL was one of Hollywood's many World War 2 movies made when America was in that war.  Those movies were mostly dramatic, they were patriotic and they were usually focused on men in war.  SO PROUDLY WE HAIL focused on women serving overseas.  They were military nurses.  Our mother was a registered nurse.  Dad served overseas.  Both confirmed to little Bobby that, yes, there were nurses who served in the war.  SO PROUDLY WE HAIL covers the Battle of Bataan. We see the heartbreak, humor and heroism of three nurses in the Philippines.  Have you seen Goddard Hall on the New York University campus?  Well, that building was named in honor of a SO PROUDLY WE HAIL star.  Paulette Goddard got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for playing one of the three military nurses who goes from hospital duty to Philippines jungle duty.

When TCM viewers see her in classics like Cukor's THE WOMEN, Chaplin's MODERN TIMES and his THE GREAT DICTATOR, I wonder if they know a building on the NYU campus is named in her honor.  In Goddard's will, she left about $20 million to the school.  Naming a building in her honor was a great "Thank You" card.  Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake star in SO PROUDLY WE HAIL.

We meet the nurses shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor and we follow them on their voyage to the Philippines.

With those three female stars in the leads, of course there had to be romances to go along with the war story.  That's what moviegoers in the 1940s wanted.

In the above pic, you see Paulette Goddard dealing with a shy G.I. who won't let the nurse give him a sponge bath.  That G.I. is played by actor George Reeves.  He had roles in GONE WITH THE WIND and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY.  However, television in the 1950s would make him a bigger star than movies ever did.  He was TV's Superman in a weekly series for kids.  Ben Affleck played the late actor in a story about his career, TV stardom and mysterious death in a good 2006 movie called HOLLYWOODLAND.

Is SO PROUDLY WE HAIL an excellent World War 2 film in a league with FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, BATTLEGROUND and 12 O'CLOCK HIGH?  No.  But it moves, you care about characters and there's the originality of it being an action-packed war film that's a female-driven story.

 I can't remember ever seeing this film in the Turner Classic Movies line-up.  And I don't recall seeing it in a Memorial Day schedule.  But I wish it would be aired on a Memorial or Veterans Day to remind us that, back in World War 2, women also served.

Veronica Lake starts off as the angry nurse who doesn't make friends.  Then we learn why she's angry.  Lake lacked the acting chops of a Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Astor or Claudette Colbert, but this film has one of her best dramatic outings during her Paramount years.  The actress was famous for her "peek-a-boo" hairdo in films.  Here she is in 1941's SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS.

This hairstyle was such a pop culture phenomenon at that time that it was lampooned as a great visual gag in Billy Wilder's THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942), a wartime comedy, and even in classic Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears cartoon. (Mama Bear has the hairdo.)  In the 1997 drama L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, Kim Basinger played the upscale Hollywood hooker who is a Veronica Lake look-alike for her clients.

As a military nurse, Lake could not have worn her famous peek-a-boo hairdo while in uniform.  However, Paramount's screenwriters did come up with a clever, intense and memorable way to work it into the action.  Colbert is the top star, Goddard got the Oscar nomination, but it's the Veronica Lake act of valor scene that steals the picture.

SO PROUDLY WE HAIL.  Golden Age Hollywood studios didn't give us many films highlighting American women in war.  This feature was a pioneer in that field.  If you like classic films, it's worth a look at this one for its feminist power.  Mark Sandrich directed it.  Allan Scott earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay.

1943's SO PROUDLY WE HAIL was inspired by the memoir I SERVED ON BATAAN, written by Lieut. Col. Juanita Redmond Hipps, a World War 2 Army nurse who served in Bataan and Corregidor.  She escaped during the last few days before Corregidor surrendered.  Col. Hipps died in 1979 and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Thanksgiving with MASTER OF NONE

You know Denise, Dev's lesbian friend, if you followed Season 1 of MASTER OF NONE.  That's the fresh and fabulous series created by and starring Aziz Ansari.  On this Netflix series, he plays Dev.  Dev is a young Indian dude, a Muslim, and an actor in New York City.

Season 2 kicked off with Dev in Italy on vacation and learning how to make pasta.  Dev returns to New York and we see that he has a job as host on a Food Network-type channel.  He hosts a pastry competition show.  Dev does a lot of eating in Season 2, but I don't recall him wanting to eat any of those cupcakes.  The Thanksgiving episode, to me, is an instant classic.  I loved it.  I've lived it.  It covers the friendship of Dev and Denise who've been friends for most of their lives.  They're like brother and sister.

In the Thanksgiving episode segments, Denise comes out to Dev -- and to her mother.  Her mother is played by Angela Bassett.

Before I get to that, let me tell you again why I love MASTER OF NONE -- especially its current second season.  I lived and worked in New York for over 20 years.  I did several years working on local morning news programs which started at 6:00.  Mass transit was my way of getting to work and my hours had me on subway trains between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning.  I wouldn't be the only one heading to work in the "before the chickens wake up" hours.  The seats would be filled with other commuters.  People of all colors, shapes, ages and smells.  We all had one thing in common -- our income level. That level was "barely getting by."  (Yes, I did work on local TV but, truthfully, I could have made more money annually as a dental hygienist or a postal employee.)  Those other folks are the doormen, janitors, cooks and other kitchen crew in the local diners, the cleaning women, delivery people and others who work hard and become invisible on a daily basis.  But they're the ones who are at work by the crack o' dawn to keep the city running so that upscale white folks like that female quartet on SEX AND THE CITY and the two couples on WILL & GRACE can have Manhattan as their playground.  If it's cold and snowy outside and they want to stay indoors where it's festive and warm, those upscale types send out for food.  Aziz focuses not on the people who sent out for food, but on the life of the person making the delivery.  I love that about this Netflix series.

The Season 2 episode "New York, I Love You" is like a valentine to the New York City I know.  Dev, Denise and Arnold are on their way to a movie.  Arnold mentions that he's heard it has a great surprise twist at the end.  Dev and Denise are irritated.  Arnold didn't tell them the ending but they'll be expecting a surprise twist because he mentioned it.  THAT broke me up laughing.  I will not mention a surprise twist when I'm reviewing a movie for that very reason.  In fact, I have blocked people on Twitter who have revealed the surprise ending of movies simply because the films are over 20 years old and the blocked Twitterers felt those old endings were fair game.  From the trio's movie talk, we meet an apartment building doorman and a privileged resident who obviously thinks all Latino, doormen on the staff look alike.  We go on to meet an interracial couple having problems with its sex life.  She's black. He's white.  She's a shop clerk, deaf, and they both sign.  We meet an African cabdriver who lives with other African guys and they all want to go out for some nightlife.  A little wackiness ensues.  But they wind up in Chelsea, get some late night fast food and meet some friendly young black women.  They meet them in a fast food joint.  A roommate of the African men works there in the kitchen.  What gets mentioned in conversation?  The movie Dev, Denise and Arnold were talking about at the top of the episode.

This is the real New York.  It's the multi-cultural, multi-racial New York City that Woody Allen still refuses to reflect in his movies after all these years.

The "Thanksgiving" episode.  That one deserves Golden Globe and Emmy nomination attention.  Inspired by the real life story of Lena Waithe, the MASTER OF NONE actress who plays Denise, we go back to the early years of the little Denise and little Dev friendship to see where the bond began and what holds it together.  Through of number of Thanksgiving dinners over the years, we see them grow up and we see her mother grow into dealing with the fact that her daughter is gay.  In this episode, Aziz Ansari and his team accurately show that, as Denise tells Dev, coming out is different for black people.  That is so true.

I came out to my mother in 1992.  It was not pretty.  At Christmastime in 2005, she asked "Are you still gay?"

Angela Bassett is at her best as the single, feminine mother.  So is Kym Whitley (left) as Aunt Joyce.  The mother is not one who would ban her child from the house due to her sexual orientation.  She would wonder if it's her "fault" that her daughter is a lesbian.  I felt like I knew that family.  The tone and some of the statements were so familiar, so real to me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, Aziz Ansari, for the "Thanksgiving" episode.  I saw some of my life in that one.

The mother would like to meet a good man.  Over the years, she meets a couple of different women that Denise is dating.  One is absolutely clueless. If she saw a lobby sign that read "Wet Floor," she probably would.  Even frustrated Denise didn't realize how intellectually-challenged her date was.  Her date cannot stay on topic during Thanksgiving dinner conversation and the way Dev highlights her cluelessness via an Instragram name is very funny.  It's then that the heterosexual mother probably realizes something I said to a straight friend of mine years ago:  "When it comes to love, we may be batting in different leagues. But we're all playing the same game."