On a Wing and a Prayer and Mrs. Maisel Season 5: Even When Hollywood Gets it Right they Get it Wrong

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Ah, Hollywood. You recently gave us two excellent offerings, and some jet fuel genius at the studios realized we can’t have entertainment for the Normals without marring it with THE MESSAGE. So the movie and TV series mentioned in the title of this post were both excellent and I highly recommend both. For real. But beware that today’s Hollywood has moved far beyond its old objectives of entertaining us and making their shareholders money (yes, we’re looking at you, Disney), and went out of its way to tarnish both. In both cases, there will be some minor spoilers, but since both are based on historical events the small spoilers can easily be found in advance. First let’s look at Mrs. Maisel.

When Maisel first appeared in 2017, Sister Babe was instantly hooked. The showed featured writers from Gilmore Girls (which you’ll no doubt be surprised, she liked but I never watched), and tells the story of a Brooklyn housewife in the 60s who finds herself getting divorced. After a drunken night out, she finds herself on a stage for an improv night and learns she has an undiscovered talent as a comedian. That night she befriends Lenny Bruce, and I would later learn that this show was a loose interpretation of Joan Rivers’ story. The next five seasons chronicle Midge Maisel facing the obstacles of trying to break into stand up comedy back when it was a completely male dominated field. She also balances this with raising her kids, dealing with her ex-husband, and the help of her overbearing parents. It also takes a lighthearted look at being part of a Brooklyn Jewish family back in the day. It’s a fun show, and the final season was excellent, which is why Hollywood had to pour in some Leftist effluent.

One feature of the final season that I liked was telling some characters’ back stories via flashbacks/forwards. They did a nice job of fleshing out the crew, and it also made for a convenient outlet to inject toxic Lefticity. In the first episode we come to present day where Maisel’s adult daughter is in a session with her therapist. We learn that she’s some kind of physics mega genius. Because of course Girrrrl power! Maisel’s doughy adult son is in Israel training to be a Rabbi. His fiancé, is of course a bad*ss member of the IDF.

Next we jump to flashbacks of Maisel’s dad (brilliantly played by Tony Shaloub), looking back on his kids’ early childhoods. Of course, an old school family puts the son ahead of the daughter, and Dad slowly but surely comes top the realization that his son is kind of an idiot and his daughter is the real talent in the family, and to ensure that none of us miss that point, he says as much in a monologue to his friends. These also tarnished an actual event they chose to highlight in the first episode – Lenny Bruce does one final standup gig that bombs horribly as he’s on his downward spiral. On its own it is a reasonable part to include given the friendship between the two characters throughout the series, but on top of all of the “Girls Rule!” of the season it comes off as piling on.

Next we move on to On a Wing and a Prayer, based on the true story of a pilot in training from a strong Christian family who is a passenger in a plane whose pilot suddenly dies. Given the character’s real life story, themes around faith and family are woven throughout the film. I can only imagine how much it must have nauseated the writers to have to put forward a story like this, but never misunderestimate The Radical Left’s ability to inject their Libtarditude into everything. As a side story, we find in Florida a Tweenage white girl who has an obsession with becoming an air traffic controller someday. She has a number of computers at home that she uses, has all kind of air flight decor in her room, and for good measure, an absentee father. When asked by her nonwhite friend who comes to visit asks her why she wants this career path, she responds that her teacher told her that she couldn’t do it. Yes, this is completely realistic for 2009, when the actual events take place. But I remained curious as to how she would play into a true story, and the girl and her friend would eventually ride her bike to the airport where the emergency landing would take place. They blow past security, get some halfhearted pursuit, and when the plane finally lands and the emergency crews get to work, she turns to her friend and says, “we should probably get out of here”, which they do. We get one last shot of her and her friend back at the house where she shows off her equipment and accomplishments to her just arrived and proud absentee dad. End of her storyline. Yep, we get an extra 10-15 minutes of runtime that contributes nothing to the storyline. But that wasn’t even the final insult.

The movie also featured a series of outside of he main family minor characters of varying depth and storylines. Several of them were flawed but managed to overcome their personal demons and contribute to the life saving effort. Two of the minor characters had little depth beyond being the calm voice of reason in some of the control tower situations, and both happened to be black. During the closing credits we get to see the real life counterparts of each of the cast members, and two were race swapped. Can you guess who they were? Give yourself a gold star if you guessed the two People of Color swapped out for their real life white counterparts! Was this a major offense along the lines of supporting child mutilation? Of course not. But look at the bigger picture – every criticism I’ve laid out here did absolutely nothing to advance nor improve the storyline. Their common thread was Hollywood raising a middle finger to us Normals for having the audacity  to think it’s acceptable to tell a good story without hitting us over the head with THE MESSAGE.

Apparently there has been a writers and actors strike going on in Hollywood for a few months now. It’s hurting both of them as well as the studios. And from what I hear all parties are perplexed as to why they’re not getting more sympathy. The answer is far more simple – most of us simply want all sides to lose.

Like all of my other August posts, I’m still in my News Cleanse month. I won’t be joining the conversation in the comments, but might if I decide to promote this post on my various social media feeds when I tune in again after Labor Day.

Brother Bob is no longer on Facebook (although you can see his archives there), and is back on Twitter again, but is ramping up on Minds and Gab, as well as Parler and GETTR, and has his biggest presence on MeWe.

Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog