Sean Lemme

I started blogging as a way to lazily pass my high school senior project and somehow I've kept doing it for more than half my life

Shocktober: “Search and Seizure”

The Practice: “Search and Seizure”

Season 2, Episode 7
Original Air Date: October 25, 1997

And now for a little more from the twisted mind of David E. Kelley. Kelley created The Practice as a rebuttal to his Doogie Howser buddy Steven Bochco’s L.A. Law, which Kelley felt overly romanticized the American legal system. If Halloween special “Search and Seizure” is anything to go by, Kelley massively succeeded in making an unglamorous legal drama. In this episode alone the lawyers are sexually assaulted, witness an illegal arrest, bribed by drug dealers, fail at subverting Roe v, Wade, and forced a moral dilemma where they have to choose between faith, ethics, and the law. It’s quite a lot and hard to imagine how this evolves into the borderline comedy of Boston Legal by the end.

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Shocktober: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

Xena: Warrior Princess: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

Season 2, Episode 4
Original Air Date: October 21, 1996

Xena always seemed like a logical next step for me after I finished Buffy and Angel all those years ago, but I never made the leap. In fact, all I really knew about Xena was she uses a metal frisbee as a weapon, she yells in a distinct way when she does finisher moves, and the opening credits are edited like a movie trailer. Oh and it’s as gay as a show on… WB? USA Network? Whatever this was on was allowed to be in the mid-Nineties. Which, if “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is anything to go off of, is pretty gay.

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Shocktober: “When Irish Eyes Are Killing”

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: “When Irish Eyes Are Killing”

Season 3, Episode 4
Original Air Date: October 15, 1995

When John suggested we do another year of TV specials for Shocktober in honor of I Saw the TV Glow, I went straight to Wikipedia’s incredibly thorough list and started looking for any shows that were on my radar. The one that stood out the most was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, probably the most significant piece of Superman media left that I still know nothing about. Aside from this show’s modern reboot, Superman & Lois, I’ve never been that interested in the Man of Steel’s live action TV dramas, his super powers just did not ever seem conducive to television’s low budgets. But I did have some knowledge of Smallville and the Arrowverse content and I even read up on George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman back when Hollywoodland came out. It’s just this Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher thing that I remained totally ignorant of.

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Criterion Month Day 30: Perfect Days

Perfect Days (2003)

Do you know what your perfect day would be? I’m not talking about like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or the best Christmas ever or getting invited to the ultra-hot-people-only orgy. I mean what would your perfect, random, workday, Wednesday be like? I imagine for most of us it would be pretty simple, something like: wake up rested, have a nice breakfast, nothing weird happens at work, maybe lunch in the park or some shit, and have a little time to relax before going to bed and starting it all over again the next day. For better or for worse, days like that *should* make up the majority of our lives. And yet, if I’m speaking for myself, I don’t give myself the gift of perfect days nearly often enough. Far too often I wake up exhausted or spend too much time about stressing going to the gym or put off doing work and chores and preparing food. It keeps me hanging on. I should change that, yeah?

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Criterion Month Day 28: Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Justine Triet’s Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall beguiled audiences last winter with one of cinema’s most unforgettable performances. I’m of course talking about Messi, the Border Collie whose believable overdose scene has been called “the greatest acting performance of my life” by Ayo Edebiri. It’s a thrilling debut by an assured rising star who spent the whole award season laughing it up with Hollywood’s biggest names. He even returned to Cannes this year as a reporter, talk about flipping the script. Yes, his future is almost as bright as those blue eyes but, aside from Messi, does Anatomy of a Fall having anything going for it?

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Criterion Month Day 26: Drive My Car

Drive My Car (2021)

I take solace in knowing that even among cinephiles, my aversion to three hour movies is not unique. Whatever mental barrier there is that stops me from just watching Criterion movies every night all year long is 10 times stronger when it comes to these big boys. And that’s in spite of the fact that some of my all-time favorite movies being super long! I’m sure right around the time Drive My Car got a limited release I was busy finding ways to justify not watching The Beatles: Get Back every night. So long movies are hard to approach. What I need to remind myself is that, once you’re in there, long movies can suck you into them and you don’t even feel the time anymore. And Ryusuke Hamaguchi is one of the best directors to prove that point.

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Criterion Month Day 23: Infernal Affairs II

Infernal Affairs II (2003)

When I found out there was an Infernal Affairs II, my first thought was, “Really? A sequel? Isn’t that like trying to add more water to an already perfect cup of instant noodles?” I mean, the original film wrapped up tighter than a mob boss’s alibi, so I wasn’t exactly sure what more could be said. And after seeing how Martin Scorsese did his American Idol version of the first movie with The Departed, I wasn’t sure how Infernal Affairs II could top that. You know, aside from the fact that Infernal Affairs had already topped it by existing first. But hey, when Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak are behind the camera again, you have to give it a shot, right? So, armed with popcorn and skepticism, I dove in.

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