Should I be watching Alec Baldwin's new reality show? "The Comeback" is my all-time favorite TV comedy.

I'm reading "The Baldwins Isn’t Alec Baldwin’s Comeback—It’s Basically The Comeback/On his cringey TLC show, the actor bears more than a slight resemblance to Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish" (Vanity Fair).

Like Valerie, Alec is an actor who appears to be seeking redemption by turning to a foreign medium that he might have at one time considered beneath him. While Valerie often calls out for her producer “Jane,” it similarly takes Alec about a minute into his show’s first episode to look directly into the camera, as if pleading for help, and explicitly spell out why his five-bedroom apartment is too small for his big family. Valerie attempts to produce her show as she’s being filmed, constantly interjecting about what she thinks should be left on the cutting room floor. Likewise, as they shoot a close-up of him cleaning his garbage can, Alec tosses out a question to the crew: “You don’t really wanna film this, do you?” But when one of his sons says something Alec deems entertaining, he changes his tune: “That was worth the whole day [of filming]! Line of the day!” Alec can’t help but regularly point out the brushstrokes and the mechanics of the show his family is filming as they’re filming it.

"Americans are very uninformed about reality.... That vacuum is filled by the film industry...."

Said Alec Baldwin, who was once so famously uninformed about a gun as he toiled blithely in the film industry. He's speaking to an audience at a film festival in Italy:

Alec Baldwin thinks Americans are "uninformed" about "what's really going on" in the world and says the film industry is helping to plug the gap.

"There's a hole, a vacuum... a gap in information for Americans," the actor said at the Turin Film Festival on Monday. "Americans are… pic.twitter.com/lVBD6UO4pi

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 25, 2024

Who better than Alec Baldwin to play the role of Bret Baier as a complete jerk in last night's "SNL" cold open?

And I liked this "Weekend Update" segment that I think was designed to make the audience hold Trump in contempt... but might make them love him:

"Judge dismisses Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ case/A judge ruled that prosecutors improperly withheld potential evidence from the defense team."

The Washington Post reports. Free-access link.

One of the prosecutors “was aware of the new evidence and yet did not make an effort to disclose it to defense,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in her ruling. “The state’s woeful withholding of this information was intentional and deliberate.”

From the NYT, "Case Against Alec Baldwin Is Dismissed Over Withheld Evidence/Mr. Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial in the 'Rust' shooting came to a stunning end after the judge left the bench to examine ammunition in the courtroom":

"[Alec] Baldwin, who is scheduled to stand trial next month on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer..."

"... on the set of the film 'Rust,' announced that a reality show featuring the couple and their 'seven growing kids' would be coming next year to TLC. Its working title is 'The Baldwins.' 'We’re inviting you into our home to experience the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the wild and the crazy,' Alec Baldwin said in a video announcement with Hilaria that he posted to Instagram on Tuesday...."

The NYT reports, in "Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and Their 7 Children Get a Reality TV Series/'We’re inviting you into our home,' the actor, who is set to stand trial next month on an involuntary manslaughter charge, said as he announced a show about his family on TLC."

When your life is dangerously overcrowded, add a new level of difficulty... and subject 7 kids to it all. It just might work. The best criminal defense is to get all those kids on camera. And let them and the dogs romp around and scream until everyone can see he's suffered enough that family needs a dad.

Hilaria Baldwin evokes empathy — think of her 7 children.

Hilaria Baldwin is stressed pic.twitter.com/Q3cWwsyjSH

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 21, 2023

But why is she still speaking with a Spanish accent? See "Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish accent and suspect origin story, explained/Hilaria Baldwin, a.k.a. Hillary Hayward-Thomas Baldwin, has come under fire for allegedly fibbing a Spanish accent" (Vox, 2020). 

And, fron July 2021: "Hilaria Baldwin Now Claims She's Culturally 'Fluid' After Spanish Heritage Scandal/Alec Baldwin's wife, who was accused of pretending to be from Spain, suggested her critics are denying her right to belong'" (HuffPo)("When you are multi, it can feel hard to belong"/"We need to normalize the fact that we are all unique ― our culture, languages, sexual orientations, religions, political beliefs are ALLOWED TO BE FLUID").

"Alec Baldwin & ‘Rust’ Armorer To Face Criminal Charges Over 2021 Fatal Movie Shooting, Santa Fe D.A. Says."

 Deadline reports. 

In charges set to be formally filed by the end of the month, Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed will each be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in Hutchins’ death.

ADDED: From the NYT article on the subject:

Andrea Reeb, a special prosecutor on the case, said... “We’re trying to definitely make it clear that everybody’s equal under the law, including A-list actors like Alec Baldwin.... And we also want to make sure that the safety of the film industry is addressed and things like this don’t happen again.”

"Normally I would believe the FBI, but I have lost all trust in them. I don't like Baldwin, but the FBI has no ethics anymore."

"Can't trust anything they say. All local police departments have overseeing agencies, like Internal Affairs, Civilian Complaint Review Board, Inspector General etc, who do [you] call to make a complaint on an FBI agent?"

That's the top-rated comment on "FBI report confirms Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger in fatal ‘Rust’ set shooting" (NY Post).

"The brandy snifter portrait is as American as hip-hop, acid-washed jeans and plastic-covered sofas."

"A photo in that style could conjure the same feelings that oversize shoulder pads or a Jheri curl would: cringe. In 2001, the motif was spoofed by 'Saturday Night Live' in a skit that featured Alec Baldwin and Jimmy Fallon, called 'Put It in a Brandy Snifter.' But in the 1980s and 1990s, the brandy snifter photo was an innovative, attainable luxury, and it became ubiquitous in some communities. Its cultural significance is closely tied to the ambitions of the American working class. Mr. Adams’s tribute to his mother also honored the countless other people who see that image and immediately recognize and identify with it, as I did. I wore my peach Easter dress from earlier that year. My mother tied my hair in a ponytail and curled my bangs to the side. My siblings wore polo shirts. The day before, I had applied a glow-in-the-dark, temporary tattoo I got in a box of Rude Dudes bubble gum to my cheek. My face has never been scrubbed harder than Mom scrubbed it clean that day...."

Writes Sandra E. Garcia in "What New Yorkers See in This Portrait of the Mayor’s Mother/Dorothy Mae Adams-Streeter posed for a portrait at her 75th birthday party. Her image, floating in a brandy snifter, has a powerful resonance" (NYT).

Watch the SNL skit here. It crudely mocks low-class white people who think that superimposing a brandy snifter on a photographed portrait is gorgeous and elegant. But now we're asked to show respect for black people who've been admiring the same photography. Fine.

I am encountering brandy snifter photography for the first time, and I'm completely distracted by the inaptness of the association with drinking alcohol. Why would you want the image of your child or your elderly mother inside a brandy glass?! But I can see that people have been doing this for 40 years, and I'm showing that I don't know any of them well enough to have seen that these are their treasured family portraits. The new mayor of New York City is displaying one of his mother, and I am not going to make fun of that photograph. 

"I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them — never.... Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger."

Says Alec Baldwin, quoted in "Alec Baldwin Says He ‘Didn’t Pull the Trigger’ in ‘Rust’ Killing/The actor said in a brief excerpt from an upcoming interview with ABC News that he had not pulled the trigger when the gun he was holding went off, killing the cinematographer" (NYT).

I interpret this to mean that he has no memory of intending to pull the trigger or pulling the trigger, but I think it's highly unlikely that the gun fired without his pulling the trigger. I don't think he can say that he didn't point the gun in the direction that the gun was pointed when it was in his hand. It's got to be merely an assertion that he didn't intend to point the gun at the woman who died (Halyna Hutchins).

Alec Baldwin is...

lying.

either lying or he can't remember but he did point the gun and pull the trigger.

possibly correct that the gun fired without his pulling the trigger.

 

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"Vance deleted his old Trump-insulting tweets. He made his pilgrimage of atonement to Mar-a-Loco. He groveled."

"And he explained all of this in terms of Trump’s admirable performance as president, which supposedly won him over. He was clearly watching a different movie than many of the rest of us were.... On Twitter he bizarrely lashed out at the Times columnist Paul Krugman as 'one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country,' then went after [Alec] Baldwin in a tactless way at a tactless time.... But he gets points for occasional honesty. Shortly after declaring his Senate candidacy on July 1, in an interview with Molly Ball for Time magazine, he acknowledged his past opposition to Trump and bluntly conceded that he needed 'to just suck it up and support him.' Suck it up he has — and how."

From "J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Hypocrisy" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

The tweet about Alec Baldwin was "Dear @jack let Trump back on. We need Alec Baldwin tweets."

"In the movies, the prep is everything. You also need time to clean, inspect and repair guns. You need time to fix old clocks."

"In period films, you are sometimes using antiques. But here, there was absolutely no time to prepare, and that gave me a bad feeling." 

Said Neal W. Zoromski, quoted in "'Rust' movie was turned down by veteran prop master over 'massive red flags'/The Alec Baldwin-starring film was operating on a low budget and wanted too small of a crew, the veteran filmmaker says."

That's at Fox News, which, I see, is generating a lot of "Rust" stories. There's also 

"'Rust' shooting left film locals 'rolling their eyes' at alleged lack of safety measures: 'Just unthinkable'/One local moviemaker hopes to see change in safety guidelines so 'the death of Halyna was not in vain.'" The text — though not the headline — makes a strong pitch for the labor union, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE):

"A friend messages: 'Jake Tapper thinks Alec Baldwin deserves "basic decency" from Republicans. Hahahahahahahahahaha.'"

"These guys can dish out the very nastiest stuff, but they can’t take it, because up to now they’ve been shielded by what Ann Althouse calls 'civility bullshit.' The only trouble is, people have realized it’s bullshit. You want civility and decency? Try displaying some."

Blogs Glenn Reynolds (at Instapundit).

"Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a scene that involved pointing a revolver 'towards the camera lens'... when the gun... suddenly went off and killed the cinematographer, according to the film’s director..."

That's the most exculpatory narrative, "quoted in an affidavit released Sunday night," the NYT reports.

The Times doesn't link to the affidavit, so I'm puzzling over whether it's the director's affidavit and thus his sworn statement or whether it's someone else's affidavit that quotes something the director (Joel Souza) said more casually. 

The account by Mr. Souza explained why Mr. Baldwin had been pointing the gun at the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins....

Not completely. I wish the NYT wouldn't look like it's trying to help Baldwin. Please say only exactly what you know. Souza said something, but we don't know it's true. He's an interested party. And "towards the camera" isn't even the same as "at the camera," let alone "at the cinematographer." If it was "at the camera," wouldn't it hit the lens?

"[T]he same gun Alec Baldwin accidentally fired... was being used by crews members off set as well, for what we're told amounted to target practice."

"We're told this off-the-clock shooting — which was allegedly happening away from the movie lot — was being done with real bullets ... which is how some who worked on the film believe a live round found its way in one of the chambers that day.... There's also this ... one source who was on set and familiar with the goings-on of the crew tells us that when cops showed up, they found live ammo and blanks were being stored in the same area...."

TMZ reports.

There's a lot of blame to go around. Journalists should be careful about adding words like "accidentally" before the facts are established. I think we do know that Baldwin fired the gun. Did he not fire it intentionally? That's a question separate from whether he believed the gun was unloaded. Was he in a situation within his role as an actor where he was directed to fire the gun? I've seen the assertion that the gun went off as he was practicing removing it from a holster, but was he doing that with his finger on the trigger? I guess the story in the movie could be that the character mishandles his gun and it goes off. If so, it would be wrong to write "accidentally fired." 

Alec Baldwin shot and killed the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

I'm reading "Alec Baldwin Fatally Shoots Crew Member With Prop Firearm, Authorities Say" (NYT).

According to Ms. Hutchins’s website, she was originally from Ukraine and grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle. She studied journalism in Ukraine and film in Los Angeles. She called herself a “restless dreamer” and an “adrenaline junkie” on her Instagram profile....

“Rust” is a movie about a 13-year-old boy who goes on the run with his estranged grandfather after the accidental killing of a local rancher....

How can it happen that a prop gun is loaded?

The shooting echoed an accident on a movie set in 1993 in which the actor Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, was shot and killed during a scene when a bullet that was lodged in the barrel of a gun was discharged along with a blank cartridge.

Here's one photo of Hutchins from her Instagram page:

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Halyna Hutchins (@halynahutchins)

ADDED: From Showbiz 411: 

"The pro-appropriation people will say, 'well, Johns is an artist and anything that Johns does is going to be transformative.'"

Said the intellectual property lawyer, quoted in "How did this teenager’s drawing of his knee wind up in a Jasper Johns painting at the Whitney?/A new work debuting in a major exhibition raises complex questions about artistic license and appropriation" (WaPo). 

The teenager, Jéan-Marc Togodgue, had made an anatomical drawing of a knee (because, he says, he wanted to understand an injury to his knee). The artist saw the drawing hanging in Togodgue's doctor's office and copied it as part of a painting. It's painted to look like the original drawing is taped to the painting. 

Johns wrote to Togodgue, "I would like you to be pleased with the idea and I hope that you will visit my studio to see what I have made." 

An artist named Brendan O’Connell — O'Connell's son is friends with Togodgue — called attention to the copyright issue: “This isn’t like him doing the Savarin coffee cup or doing some pop appropriation like I do.... This is somebody’s work that he directly copied."  

In the era of Black Lives Matter, [he] found it particularly offensive that a White artist from the segregated South was using the work of an African teenager in this way.

Jim Carrey's "SNL" performance as Joe Biden "brought a lot of attention to the show, but it ultimately garnered mixed reviews..."

"... with some critics saying that, despite Carrey's comedic talents, his Biden was missing the mark. 'It sounded like a great get at first. Here was a big-time star that could balance out the heft of Alec Baldwin's Trump. But after three episodes, Carrey still hasn't managed to break through,' Vanity Fair wrote in October. 'Maybe he's too physical a performer, or too needy a showman, to capture the flapjack earnestness of the former vice president.' The L.A. Times concurred writing in November that 'despite the aviator glasses, silver hair and "here's the deal" phraseology, the gregarious Carrey has had a hard time exploiting Biden's demeanor on the national stage this year — deliberate, controlled and understated.'"

From "Jim Carrey will no longer play Joe Biden on 'SNL' " (CNN Business).

I'll just say:

1. "Garner." It's one thing to get mixed reviews, but to garner them... That's got to hurt.

2. "Flapjack earnestness"? I struggled to understand. "Flapjack" is not an adjective in my dictionary. But you can use a noun as an adjective. So "flapjack earnestness" would simply be earnestness that is like a flapjack — flat.

3. It's rough getting compared to Alec Baldwin, who's not just an excellent actor but who had the role of Donald Trump. It's a way meatier role than Joe Biden. Not only is the Trump character incredibly colorful and weird, but you're encouraged to make as much fun of him as possible. Biden is bland and dull, and the show wants to prop him up, not tear him down. What could Carrey do to please the crowd?

4. How is "SNL" supposed to go about being funny with the Biden administration? It's not as though someone other than Carrey has a chance.

"You can trust me. Because I believe in science. And karma. Now, just imagine if science... and karma... could somehow... team up... to send us all a message about how dangerous this virus can be. I'm not sayin' I want it to happen. But just imagine."

Said Jim Carrey as Joe Biden in the debate spoof on "Saturday Night Live" last night:



Science and karma. A good comic concept, delivered well by Carrey.

But let's actually think about it... beyond comedy. Science and karma. My first reaction is you show you don't really believe in science if you also believe in karma. But I see there has been some serious examination of the science of karma. I'll just select one thing I found googling the 2 words: "The Scientific Explanation for Karma" by David Amerland (Medium). Excerpt:

The general consensus about behaving in a Karma-aware way (let’s call it Karma-friendly) requires that we engage in actions that are not considered socially bad and have no adverse consequences for others. So, really, when we talk about Karma we talk about engaging in pro-social behavior.

Social and behavioral psychologists define pro-social behavior as behavior that involves a cost for those who engage in it and a benefit for others.... Our actions, in other words, create the primary layer of data that generates culture which then affects the secondary layer of data that is internalized in order for us to create our values, morals, identity, purpose, goals and mission in life....

The brain... is wired to preserve energy in order for us to survive long term. Energy, therefore, is primarily used when there is an accumulation of discomfort that is experienced at a physical level.... In order to engage in an action that will require a considerable amount of energy to be used up it has to change the way it activates itself and establish some efficiencies in its operation. To do this it strengthens the connections between neurons creating pathways that require significantly less energy to transmit information along their pathways....

You see where that's going. Science and karma don't need to "team up." Karma is in the perception of what has happened, and science can explain it all.

Yes, Eddie Murphy came back to "Saturday Night Live" and reprised his old characters — Mr. Robinson, Buckwheat, Gumby, Velvet Jones — but...

... here's what I think is the most important segment from last night's episode, this part of "Weekend Update," where I think you can see that the show knows that Trump himself is doing better comedy than they are and chooses to edit in clips of Trump's hilarious routine:



Yes, they've surrounded his material with their material, but their material isn't as funny. It mainly functions as packaging to protect Trump-haters from their own reflexive aversion to the toxic President. Now, they can enjoy his comedy. They have access to the bad orange man.

Speaking of color, that Eddie Murphy material was full of racist stereotypes — Mr. Robinson, the criminal; Buckwheat, whose one joke is that he cannot articulate words; Gumby, the angry one; Velvet Jones, the pimp — and yet because these were reprisals of supposedly beloved characters by the show's biggest star from the distant past, they were apparently considered okay to present today. This too is packaging. Take something funny that you can't do, do it anyway, but swathe it inside of something that seems to say that this isn't really what it is.

The cold open was the Democratic Debate, and there was no room for Eddie Murphy in that. Well, they could have had him as Deval Patrick barging into the debate, because they had Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg barging into the debate, but what would the joke be? With Bloomberg, they could billionaire-bash. He bought his way in. Obviously, that's not too funny either. So what did they do? They had Trump (Alec Baldwin) crash the debate. The SNL audience wants Trump... wants Trump because they want to hate him some more? Or is this love, packaged as hate? Let me start you 7 1/2 minutes in as Trump swaggers onto the debate stage and trash talks: "You think I'm nervous? What are they going to do, impeach me? Hey, losers! Impeach me outside. Okay? How about that?"



By the way, the Velvet Jones material was full of sexist material. To Jones, all women are whores. One of his many books is about pole dancing. Incredibly, that segment ran right before the music guest, Lizzo, performed a song with dancers who were pole dancing.



I think Lizzo is trying to present a character who's a very independent woman, but Velvet Jones had just been sleazily advising women to find independence through prostitution. Doesn't Lizzo have people to protect her from that sort of extremely disadvantageous framing? Talk about packaging. She got mispackaged by Murphy.