Prisoners of War – hulu

This starts out so slow and so violent that you may not make it over the hump.

But you should.

“Prisoners of War” is the Israeli series which inspired “Homeland.” But they’re not identical. Not that I would know, I’ve never watched “Homeland.” I don’t go for episodic TV, I control my appointments, I’m sick of Hollywood telling me how to consume my media. Kinda like Quibi, refusing to put its mediocre fare on television, refusing to allow it to be shared. And what did Jeffrey Katzenberg blame the failure of his platform on? Covid-19! Quibi was dead on arrival, but those with dollars who invested in this abortion are not savvy users of the internet, they did not know the paradigm had changed, they’re aware of money, but not human interaction.

“Prisoners of War” is about human interaction.

And so much more.

You see the three Israeli soldiers were gone for 17 years. They were just reservists, out on a weekend call. Kinda like “Gilligan’s Island,” but with much more intensity and much more meaning.

They’re fighting for their lives every day in Israel. The Arabs attack and they retaliate and…it’s endless.

The only thing we’re at risk of in these United States is Covid-19, unless of course you’re a minority, an African-American, Asian or Latino. Latinos are screwing our country by trying to cross the border illegally. The Asians? They’re to blame for Covid-19. As for African-Americans… You can’t even go out for a jog safely. You’ve got to be hyperaware at all times.

But the white people in the United States? They think they’re immune, that nothing can touch them, that they’re entitled to rule forever. To the point where nitwits strap on guns and mingle with their brethren demanding governors open up the nation so they can die. I kid you not. There’s a war going on in America, and it’s not against Covid-19. As a matter of fact, we already lost that one. What’s the first rule of warfare? Know thy enemy. Can you say those in charge knew the coronavirus? I think not. As for freedom…where does it end. Should you be able to shoot a black man because he peeked in on a construction site? Or if they’re just walking around and you’re scared? To fight Covid-19 we have to all be in it together. Actually, there was a story how in eastern Europe everybody locks down…because they’ve experienced so much hardship in their lives that they understand it. Hardship in America is not getting a trophy, or not getting into the college of your choice. Our perspective is way off.

Not that Israel has it all together. The religious right is oftentimes out of control. But what critics of the nation just can’t fathom is that Israel can only lose once, and then it’s over. The country’s sheer existence is on the line every damn day. And its citizens’ too.

Not that I want to make this an exploration of the Middle East at large. That’s a waste of time just like debating Trump. You see, the Israelis stole the Palestinians’ land and they’ve got to give it back. Forget the anti-Semitism lurking under all this, the truth is there’s been an ongoing campaign to sell this perspective, especially for the last two decades. To the point where Jews are threatened on college campuses here in the States. That’s right, we can’t get along here, never mind over there.

But all our causes here are external, it’s not us. We’re fighting for others. What if you’re fighting for yourself, what if your life is on the line?

“Prisoners of War” is not “Fauda,” certainly not the third season of the Lior Raz show. The first two seasons of “Fauda” ended with no winners. Illustrating the flaws of both the Israeli and Arab positions. The third was very much pro-Israel. But “Fauda” was all about action, whereas “Prisoners of War” has long stretches where there’s no action at all.

You see “Prisoners of War” is mostly about the internal, feelings, relationships… Kinda like those people who break up and say they’re over it instantly. They’re either lying, or sociopathic. That’s not how human beings work. We’re riddled with feelings. We have nightmares. But we rarely share them.

“Prisoners of War” covers so many issues of relationships. How you pine for someone for years, and then when you finally get back together…it doesn’t work. Timing is everything in relationships.

And humans are riddled with questions of loyalty. Did they do the right thing, do they have any friends, are friendships more important than..?

And just like the Israelis, the Arabs are people too, with their own complaints. But where is the baseline vis a vis the two countries. That’s another issue…do you have a future in Syria? Or…

This show is so well done that you cannot predict it. You think you know where it’s going, and then not only does it go a different way, but in a fashion you could not imagine. This is not American TV, all about the image with little about the soul. That’s right, if you want to know about the soul over here you’ve got to watch cartoons, literally. Like “The Simpsons” or “South Park” or a Pixar movie. They have more humanity than the blockbusters. Because human beings can’t speak their truth. And our high concept shoot-’em-up, comic book blockbusters are just what we want…mindless entertainment, so we can go back to advertising ourselves on social media and consuming.

If you’ve ever been to Israel, you know that they don’t dress up. That’s another thing that will stun you, no one’s wearing a suit at a bar mitzvah. It’s too damn hot and what you wear doesn’t represent who you are. In America, if you put on a fancy suit and drive an expensive car you’re immediately seen as a winner, even though you’re oftentimes not. And, even if you make all that money, you’re not immune to heartbreak. Come on, how many of the winners still have the same spouse? They keep trading up, as if there’s an ideal they can get to. They don’t have to put in the hard work to sustain a marriage, because there are endless opportunities. Oftentimes, their main characteristic is bravado. That’s right, they can brag, but they never cry. Unless they commit a faux pas and have to go to rehab. Ain’t that America, if you go to rehab all your sins are washed away.

So the people in “Prisoners of War” are riddled by memories. That’s one way I envy the youth, it’s all new to them. As you get older you get worn down, you’ve had too many losses, you’re not willing to take the risk.

And what do you do to keep yourself whole? What do you invest your time in so you don’t have to look inside, at your little life.

And do you have a constitution, and do what’s right, or do you do what’s expedient? Because your whole life could go by while you’re doing what’s right and…

You see there’s no map in life, no playbook, no guarantee. You work your whole life to retire and then you die of a heart attack mere weeks after you’ve stopped working. At this age, I don’t count on a single plan, I’m always prepared for something to go wrong. If you can’t pick yourself up and soldier on… You’re gonna get in a car accident, you’re gonna have health problems, there’s nothing you can do to avoid bad things happening to you. Stay at home, and you’ll slip in the bathroom.

Have you missed your life? Have you kept yourself in a straitjacket because you did not want to make the hard choices?

You dream of something for years, and then when it arrives…now what?

You think if just one thing happens you’ll be saved.

You think that the rest of the world doesn’t matter. If you don’t go there, it did not happen. But then the Saudis kill Khashoggi and then invest in Live Nation. You can’t escape it.

The scenes in captivity are brutal. You can barely watch them. Which is just the point. And we’re just that brutal in the U.S. We waterboard people. We’re two-faced. We abhor torture, cry foul and then we torture. Huh?

We’re all just people, trying to get along. Can we rely on others? Do they lie to us? How do you keep on going in a sea of duplicity?

The horrors they experience in this show are far beyond the ones we experience here. Oh, we have school shootings, but the answer for many is more guns! Don’t address the issue, look to its causation, just up the ante! But if a loved one dies in one of these senseless situations, you never ever get over it, you’re a member of the walking wounded, meanwhile there are people who deny the event ever happened! What next, you weren’t even born?

Now the reason HBO and streaming eclipsed network were because they employed a different model, Netflix most especially. When you try to reach the broadest number of people, you end up with something homogenized that most can’t even relate to. We have the same problem in music. Once the business people get involved, you’re screwed. If they could create the art, they would, but they can’t, so they lord it over you, the creator.

So, at this moment in time, if you want to feel human and connected, you’ve got to watch a TV show.

Hell, “Prisoners of War” nailed my divorce better than any other piece of art I’ve ever experienced. You see once you stop living together, your lives diverge. Sure, some people can get back to the garden, but most cannot. It’s just too hard, it doesn’t work anymore.

So the reason I even bothered to watch “Prisoners of War” is because it was rated the #1 international show of the last decade by “The New York Times.” Take a look, the vaunted “Killing Eve” is only #9. Fleabag is #13. “Money Heist” is #21. “Broadchurch” is #27! Wouldn’t you be interested in checking out #1? I mean what kind of show can top all of those?

One not like any of the above, even though some are great.

Yes, it’s subtitled. And as I said earlier, it can be unbelievably slow and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a television show with more violence. But you stick with it and it becomes part of your life. It’s no longer entertainment, you’re invested in the outcome. You can tell yourself it’s just a TV show when you get too scared or too anxious watching it, but it doesn’t work, because you care just that much!

So, “Prisoners of War” is a commitment. Don’t tell me you tried a few episodes and you think it’s crap. This is not hit and run, this is something more serious, you’ve got to dedicate yourself to the show, and when you do it’ll pay dividends.

Just like life.

“The 30 Best International TV Shows of the Decade – The 2010s saw a radical shift in the trade balance when it comes to television series. Our critic counts down the finest imports, from ‘Fleabag’ to ‘Strong Girl Bong-soon.'”

Musician/engineer/producer Bob Rock has been on every side of it, from a hit record with his band the Payola$ to engineering “Slippery When Wet” to producing the Black Album. Listen to hear stories of Bob seeing the Beatles at the airport in Winnipeg to being in the studio with everybody from Aerosmith to Michael Buble to Van Morrison.

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He was a hero to our heroes. By time we came along, he was already a preacher.

Yes, our heroes were born during the war. Roger Waters has made a whole career writing about it, and he broke after the Beatles and the Stones.

You see while we in America were riding the zeitgeist, we were ignoring the heroes of our past, mostly our blues heroes, but they were soaking them up in England, and we ended up with not only John Mayall, but Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Peter Green…the list goes on and on.

But on this side of the pond, English blues-rock came after the British Invasion.

Now some boomers were conscious at the end of doo-wop. Some even experienced Fabian and Bobby Rydell. But the Beatles came along and wiped away all that had come before, except for the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, and suddenly music was the focus of attention for boomers across the land, the world, it was kinda like the tech frenzy of the first decade of this century (and the last half of the one before!), music was everything, you had to know about the new thing, hell, Michael Lewis even wrote a book entitled THE NEW NEW THING!

But then it died.

We can debate all day long what the first rock and roll record was. Most insiders agree it was “Rocket 88,” the press often says it was “Rock Around the Clock,” but one thing is for sure, what was happening in the fifties was different from what had happened in the forties. It was a new sound. With Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Fats Domino too, but baby boomers really only knew Elvis, who’d sold out and gone Hollywood, the Beatles of his day, the difference being, and it was a big one, he did not write his own songs. Then again, the Beatles didn’t always either, they covered Little Richard.

So by time most boomers reached consciousness, they thought Fats Domino was dead, the fact that he could be living in plain sight in New Orleans was unfathomable. We all knew “Blue Suede Shoes,” but few of us could tell you it was recorded by Carl Perkins. As for Jerry Lee Lewis and his cousin Myra? That eluded us completely, until Lewis tried to make a comeback, when “Rolling Stone” made everybody aware of rock and roll news, and sometimes history.

So, there’d been a rock explosion, that had mostly expired. Kinda like the hip-hop explosion of the eighties and early nineties, just when you thought it was over, it fired-up with a vengeance, to the point it rules today. Pop, mostly meaningless, was dominating the airwaves, but then the Little Richard and early rock-influenced Beatles broke out, and through the door came a whole slew of acts brought up on the same influences. These were war babies, who’d grown up with hardship, they lived for the music in a way no one is focused today, with so many options for diversion.

We didn’t learn of Little Richard and the Beatles’ infatuation with him from “Meet the Beatles,” but on “The Beatles’ Second Album,” which was really the third, VeeJay’s “Introducing” came before, the opening cut on the second side was…

“Long Tall Sally.”

I’m gonna tell Aunt Mary, ’bout Uncle John

Paul McCartney emoted with exuberance. Even beyond that which was exhibited on the hits, like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You.” It was like he was plugged into a socket and had been shocked. Now they call him “Sir Paul,” but he used to be a scruffy kid from Liverpool, who played the catalog of the original rock and roll of the fifties in multiple sets a night in Hamburg. There’s not a boomer alive who is unaware of this version of Little Richard’s hit, no one today is as big as the Beatles were, forget the charts and statistics, these albums were oftentimes all people had, and they played them until they turned gray, and then bought the CDs and watched the documentary and…

So now, there’s a rock press. Rock info is readily available. And all these English rockers can’t stop testifying about Little Richard. They rarely talked Elvis, they’d mention Jerry Lee, even Ike Turner, but through their lens it appeared that Little Richard was their Beatles, that he meant everything to them.

So we started being exposed to these tracks. Most specifically, “Tutti Frutti.” Huh?

Whop bop b-luma b-lop bam bom

Who knew what the song was about. And this was in the era of one speaker radios and record players, misinterpretation was rampant, and everybody was convinced that there was something dirty in the song, not that they could agree on it.

And then came the covers. Like Mitch Ryder’s “Good Golly Miss Molly.”

Not that the average person knew it was a Little Richard hit, to most people, Little Richard was just a name. But we knew his real name was Richard Penniman, and what he was selling was energy, with no limits, the power of a sound that not only enticed teens, but drew them to gigs where they got caught up in the energy.

By the late sixties, the turn of the decade, covers became more rampant, and they weren’t always hits. “You’re My Girl” (a retitling of “I Don’t Want to Discuss It”), was the second best song on the Rhinoceros album, and the best was the legendary “Apricot Brandy.” And for those of us who got the memo on Rod Stewart, there was an absolutely killer version of the same song, now titled “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want to Discuss It,” closing “Gasoline Alley.”

But still, Little Richard was not a household name, he was nowhere to be seen. He was an oldie, maybe dead himself.

I met him in this era. With his producer Bumps Blackwell. And the funny thing about Little Richard…

Well, there were two funny things.

1. He was not little.

2. He was always on.

Now if you’ve met many celebrities, you know that oftentimes the character on stage is not the one you get in real life, especially if their rep is built on energy. But it was like Little Richard was plugged into that socket 24/7, who even knew how he slept. He’d fawn over himself, crack jokes and take mock offense at the tiniest of slights. It was weird, because he was an icon and he wouldn’t brush you off but he was always in character, meeting him was an indelible experience.

And then he made his comeback.

It was “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” Back when Disney was the business story of Hollywood and flicks were all not high concept blockbusters. You went to the theater on a regular basis, and seemingly everyone saw this pic.

And put a face to the name of Little Richard. And was exposed to his magnetism.

And then suddenly he was everywhere. Even more than Orson Welles. Welles might have made the best movie of all time, but Richard was one of the progenitors of rock, with multiple hits, who could still perform on the same level whenever called upon. His contemporaries acted like old men, Little Richard seemed ageless.

And he became part of the firmament. Someone you always expected to be there. A god from another era here to walk the earth now.

But today he passed.

The news mentioned his son. Which was another point of mystery. Richard was seen as gay, back when “homosexual” was a bad word. I mean who really was this guy, he was a walking enigma!

And yes, he had a thousand watt personality.

But really, it comes down to those records.

Today a track is a means to an end. You build your brand and leverage it. But back in the original days of rock and roll, you didn’t even get rich on your hits. There were no royalties. You made what you got playing live. And if you were African-American, there were places you couldn’t play, and oftentimes white, Top Forty radio, wouldn’t play your songs at all, and if they did, they were covered by some white guy, like Pat Boone.

So, it was about the music.

And the drinking, the drugging and the sex.

This is what a musician used to be. Not someone computer-savvy posting to social media, but someone whose life mostly took place in the shadows. These were people who didn’t fit into regular society, or who didn’t want to fit in, who saw music as their way out.

And they created their own rules. They were renegades, they were outlaws.

And that was the appeal of their music. It was not dumbed-down, there was nothing cut off the edges for consumption, it was all raw humanity, in a way most people couldn’t even express, but resonated with when they heard it.

Now the weird thing is rock history is passing in front of our very eyes.

Sure, there’s the 27 club.

But in the last decade we’ve lost people we shouldn’t have, like David Bowie and Glenn Frey. And before that the inexplicable death of John Lennon.

But now it seems to be a regular feature in the news, celebrities tweet their condolences and everybody moves on. And we no longer live in a rock culture, and a lot of the work of those who’ve passed is not regularly played or remembered.

But Little Richard is different. This is the beginning. This was the moon shot. The fact that this guy was still walking the planet was utterly astounding. And if you missed him… You might have seen the Stones, but without Little Richard, would there be any Stones? Beatles too?

Somehow Richard was not a curio, his hits were stuck in the past, but his performances and his identity were not. Maybe because Richard was singular, anything but me-too. When they created him they truly broke the mold, hell, Richard broke it being birthed. He took on all comers. He could play in any arena. Michael Jackson might have called himself the King of Pop, but Little Richard was the King of Rock & Roll long before, and despite some detours, Richard continued to reign.

The king is dead.

Long live the king.