On Tue, Feb 9, 2021 at 10:58 AM Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yeah, yesterday Diane Sawyer trended because people suddenly decided her > interview of Spears from nearly two decades ago was bad, which is a bit > like people only just now realizing Geraldo is really bad at his job. > > I miss Ferguson on late night. I understand why he got out when he did, > but I still wish he’d have stayed through Trump. > I wanted to watch the Britney doc on Hulu before responding so I could avoid hot takes. I have taken to watching documentaries about bands from when I grew up, usually on YouTube. There are two types: movie length promotions made for fans where the band is awesome, all their music is awesome, and they'll be beloved until the end of time. And then there are more reflective documentaries, made a couple of decades after the band broke up, where the musicians, managers, record company executives, etc talk about the rise of the band, what life was like at the top, and why it fell apart. Those are the documentaries I watch. I'll even watch if it's about a band or an artist who was very popular but I didn't follow at the time. I figure I can put my biases aside and see if I missed out on any good music. The Britney documentary was not about her music. The frame is a legal battle over conservatorship, a status she entered into in 2008. The first half of the doc is about her life up to 2008 and the second half is about the conservatorship, the legal situation, and a movement from her fans to end the conservatorship. The first half is tough to watch even though it happened in recent enough memory. The tabloids saw dollar signs in covering her and they had no conscience about any damage they might be doing to her and certainly no restraint. And the attitude infiltrated into mainstream celebrity coverage like the Diane Sawyer interview. It would be at least as much of a relief for me to know that she gives up music altogether and goes to live a quiet life somewhere raising her kids (and there's no sign of that happening) as hearing she is recording a new album. As for Craig Ferguson he brought his own vulnerability into his monologues and the show and it was really refreshing to see him so fearless talking about his past. He had an empathy for his guests and I miss that, too. In the late stages of his show he burned out and stopped putting any effort into it. I really liked the show during his peak, but I'm glad he got out of it in time. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiFFEGuM9THGVeGuW7-6Li0qjfWiJubzxUhz0MX_xDzvfQ%40mail.gmail.com.
