Karen Townsend
Latest from Karen Townsend
Sometimes the host of a beauty pageant can provide as much entertainment as the contestants. Even a perfectly timed eye roll can leave a mark.
It was too good to be true. The November 26 episode of CBS’s FBI, titled “Salvation,” almost delivered a solid story about the agency’s bust-up of a vicious gang in New York City. Instead, the episode ended with a gratuitous sop to the open borders crowd.
Usually, political messages or social justice statements are delivered in speeches from award winners. In the 2019 American Music Awards, the messages were delivered through costumes and scenery. The show aired November 24 on ABC.
In the November 7 episode of ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, titled “Papa Don’t’ Preach,” 25-year-old Cassidy Gardner (Hayley Chase) is brought to the emergency department of Pacific Northwest General Hospital after a fall on her basement stairs. Tests show that she is bleeding in her spleen and also that she is 8 – 10 weeks pregnant. Cassidy is disappointed to learn that the baby survived her fall.
A strong pro-life message was delivered by a pregnant woman who was facing potential life-threatening complications during a necessary surgery in the November 4 episode of ABC’s The Good Doctor titled “45-Degree Angle.” It is noteworthy when a television show sends a moving message that the life of the unborn is precious.
Aging acting coach Sandy Kominsky, once a successful actor, and his best friend, his longtime agent Norman Newlander, are back in Season Two of Netflix’s The Kominsky Method. Airing on October 25, the eight episodes, each one-half hour long, are an easy and enjoyable binge. The only problem is that Chuck Lorre, the Executive Producer, is an openly anti-Trump member of the Hollywood community so there are a few random anti-Republican, anti-Trump remarks.
Dr. Aaron Glassman recently married his girlfriend after a very short courtship. Much to his horror, as she went about putting her things away in his home, Glassman noticed she has a gun. Oh, the horror.
The third season of Big Mouth was released on October 4 on Netflix. The middle school kids are approaching graduation and anything and everything goes in the pursuit of understanding their maturing bodies as they go through puberty in this twisted adult-oriented series about horny kids.
It took a really convoluted story to give an opportunity for a Muslim FBI agent to accuse another Muslim agent of radicalizing young Muslim men to become terrorists but somehow the Season Two premiere of CBS’s FBI managed to do it. In the September 24 epsidoe “Little Egypt,” what began as a bombing at a Syrian restaurant in Queens and first assumed to be a hate crime by area white supremacists was quickly discovered by the FBI to be a false flag stunt by an angry Muslim man who had been attacked by three white punks and left in a coma.
The Chairman and CEO of the Television Academy calls it the “platinum age of television.” Frank Scherma spoke about how connected television viewing makes friends and family as it is a shared experience. Mostly, though, these awards shows prove it is the platinum age of bloated egos and groupthink.
It was bound to happen in Trump’s America. A show about a global media company owned by a conservative family patriarch has to include a show host with a love for the Hitler era, right?
Who knew that a star of the show GLOW on Netflix was a constitutional scholar? She's not, and yet, actress Alison Brie declared with certainty on the stage of the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards Monday night that what America is doing to immigrants is “unconstitutional and frankly disgusting."
The third (and hopefully the last) season of Netflix’s Dear White People series began airing August 2 with ten half-hour episodes. The only remarkable aspect of this season is that it feels like it is just the same old, same old kind of stories. They pick up right where they left off in previous seasons mocking conservatives and Republicans. Frankly, it’s gotten boring.
The seventh and final season of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black began airing on July 26 with thirteen hour-long episodes. The intention is to fill in the stories of the inmates of Litchfield Maximum Prison in New York and explain what happens to them as the series ends. In an odd twist, the stories of two former prisoners are used as indictments of America’s current immigration laws.
In Trump’s America, liberal Hollywood writers will take any opportunity available to insert some of their favorite narratives into the storylines of television shows. The most popular right now is thinly veiled references to President Trump and his supporters.
A ten-episode series centering around a traditional multi-generational African-American family in Georgia sounds like an interesting idea. The series is heavy on heartwarming family stories and family history. Netflix almost gets it right, too ... until it doesn’t.
It took quite a journey to get there, but Showtime’s Our Cartoon President found a way to call a group of conservatives a "white-power rally" and President Trump the "Grand Wizard." Along the way, prominent conservatives in public life, like Ben Shapiro, were dragged into the fray.
The July 2 episode of Freeform’s Good Trouble, titled “Doble Quince,” was written around the quinceañera Jazmin Martinez (Hallie Sahar) never had. Not to put too fine of a point on it but the reason the transgender woman didn’t have a quinceañera is because at the age of 15 years old, when the coming-of-age celebrations traditionally happen in the Latino community, “she” was a he.
What better way for a silly liberal animated cartoon show to mock President Trump’s views on global warming than for him to embrace its reality because he is profusely sweating? Trump is convinced by the Generals – Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly – to support finding solutions to global warming to save the planet, and the military, too.
A group of vigilantes, Los Vigilantes, in an eastside Los Angeles Latino neighborhood is not happy that the large outdoor mural on the side wall of Vida’s bar has been replaced with a Mexican beer ad. In the June 23 season two finale of the Starz show Vida, titled “Chapter 16,” the group targets two Latina sisters over the issue of gentrification.