Chernobyl -- The cautionary tale of all cautionary tales. A harrowing example of what happens when truth is subjugated to delusion in the extreme. The first 2 episodes are absolutely riveting, even maddening. It drifts into misery porn a bit in the later episodes (there are five total) in an effort to make a point that has already been made, but it is otherwise quite well done. What's worse is that by most accounts it is extremely accurate. That's good considering that it will likely become the eventual definition of the event in public consciousness.
It is, simply put, the story of how delusion in the service of power and arrogance killed tens of thousands of people (although officially still only 31) and destroyed countless lives. But it is also the story of how scores of men volunteered for suicide missions to prevent it. In the Orwellian horror show that was the Soviet Union, where any hopes and dreams were thwarted outright, where depression and despair underlay everything, people still valued each other's lives enough to sacrifice like that.
Excellent show. Not something to cheer you up.
Aside: In the interest of everything being a nail and Chernobyl the hammer, you have to wonder about what happened in Wuhan.
Tiger -- Every documentary has to follow a narrative. (Perhaps the best ones track more than one possible narrative and let the viewer resolve the ambiguity themselves.) The narrative of Tiger, the story of Tiger Woods, turns Tiger into Citizen Kane, and makes a compelling case.
We start with Tiger as a youth. Yes, he is being groomed and monitored and controlled as we all know, but he also still has some attachment to normalcy. He has a bunch of standard high school friends and they have silly and goofy times. He even has a high school sweetheart. He appears to be a proverbial "nice kid": friendly, a bit introverted, a bit innocent. Then adulthood hits and any aspects of himself are crushed. He is set up, not just by his father, but by the expectations of popular culture, as a figure of enormous responsibility. A savior-lite, if you will. One who, through his talent and popularity, will be a uniting force for all mankind. That is not hyperbole. That is how his father publicly described him and how Nike promoted him. Of course, we all know how it came crashing down. But Tiger goes deeper into the psychological cause and effect, and does it very well.
Tiger's lack of self combined with the shadow of his father leads to trouble. He takes to spending time training with Navy Seals -- his father was a green beret -- and fantasizes about joining them. He also starts womanizing -- his father was an inveterate womanizer -- which leads to his ultimate crash. All the while, injuries are keeping him in a fairly constant state of pain, which he must deny to meet expectations. The death of his father rattles him. Interestingly, it could have been a new beginning for him, but it just tightened his spiral.
We all now know the stories of the scores of women he had extra-marital relationships with, but in what is probably the key reveal of this documentary is that these were not quickies with club tramps or lurid trysts with Onlyfans whores. These were typically normal work-a-day women -- a diner waitress, an administrative assistant -- and a number of them declare their ongoing love for him to this day. They report his vulnerability and desperation. They were complicit in his subterfuge out of sympathy. It's really quite remarkable and unlike similar public scandals. And it cements the image of Tiger as a tragic figure. (It's also an interesting angle on the psychology of a certain aspect of womanhood and I do not mean that in a condescending or negative way.)
In the final sequence, as Tiger is pulled over by the Florida State troopers, intoxicated and completely disoriented. They ask where he was coming from. He says Orange County. Sad that he didn't even realize what state he was in, but then we cut back to his high school sweetheart in Orange County and we replay a video of what were probably some of the last carefree moments in his life. All we needed at this point was a voice-over of "Rosebud".
Exceptionally well done. It's hard not to wish the best for Tiger.
Wandavision
I'll probably have more to say about this once the season concludes, but nicely done (so far) and very cool that Marvel is willing to take chances like this; doing something very much out of the ordinary. It could have been Law and Order with superheroes -- which is probably what it would have been had network TV gotten involved or if it was made by Sony. A lot of fun, but I would suggest waiting until the series is complete then binge the entire thing. A half hour at a time has been frustrating.