{"id":22654,"date":"2025-11-15T14:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T22:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=22654"},"modified":"2025-11-15T14:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T22:04:11","slug":"the-beast-in-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2025\/11\/15\/the-beast-in-me\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beast In Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8iNHGKcP0cM?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Are you watching this?<\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t start until finishing &#8220;Death By Lightning&#8221; first, which I do not recommend, despite all the positive reviews. The dialogue is positively stilted. Just because the action took place over a hundred years ago, that does not mean people spoke in a stiff, non-colloquial way. It&#8217;s only four episodes, and we continued because we wanted to know the history, but at this point, I wish I&#8217;d just read the Wikipedia page.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Death By Lightning&#8221; is American filmmaking at its worst. Concentrating on look as opposed to dialogue and story. Yes, &#8220;Death By Lightning&#8221; looks fantastic, takes you back to the pre-automobile days, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Shea Whigham as Roscoe Conklin is fun to watch, but he reminds me more of comedian Kevin Pollak than any politico I&#8217;ve ever encountered\/witnessed.<\/p>\n<p>Nick Offerman is such an oaf, the role of Chester Arthur is played so broadly, that there&#8217;s no way this guy could be nominated for Vice President, NO WAY!<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Macfadyen as assassin Charlie Guiteau&#8230; At times delved into Forrest Gump territory. A cartoon. Sometimes he was believable, other times not.<\/p>\n<p>And Michael Shannon as Garfield himself is so retiring, so downbeat, that this guy never could have been elected president, NEVER!<\/p>\n<p>So when &#8220;Death By Lightning&#8221; was over I was wary of watching another American production, so I made a deal with Felice, first we&#8217;d watch an episode of &#8220;Delhi Crime,&#8221; and then one of &#8220;The Beast In Me.&#8221; I needed something foreign, to clean the palate, to keep me interested.<\/p>\n<p>And it was fun to see the old characters in season 3 of &#8220;Delhi Crime,&#8221; although the human-trafficking plot and the constant changing of locations gave me the idea they&#8217;d run out of ideas, that maybe the series had continued too long, but it was good, and we will finish it, but then we pulled up &#8220;The Beast In Me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hype. You can feel it for the new Vince Gilligan show on Apple, &#8220;Pluribus.&#8221; With news features about Rhea Seehorn and Gilligan himself. But in the modern era a series dripped out week by week is so antique. You think you&#8217;re building buzz, but in truth you&#8217;re crippling it. Because if you can binge, you get really excited about a show, there&#8217;s a lot to talk about and you do!<\/p>\n<p>And people will be talking about &#8220;The Beast in Me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then again, it&#8217;s hard to take the temperature of the public in today&#8217;s America. It&#8217;s hard to know what is going on.<\/p>\n<p>I point you to this article in today&#8217;s &#8220;New York Times&#8221;:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Conservative Media Picks an Epstein Story Line and Sticks to It &#8211; Right-wing outlets have focused on a single redacted name in the 23,000 pages of correspondence related to Jeffrey Epstein that were released on Wednesday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Free link: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/14\/business\/media\/epstein-trump-emails-conservative-media.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1U8.O3JY.nBEXq85oEne_&amp;smid=url-share<\/p>\n<p>I might be the only American who doesn&#8217;t really care about Epstein. After all, he&#8217;s dead. But a moralistic nation has to punish anybody attached to him and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The release of the e-mails was all over the news on Wednesday. It dominated.<\/p>\n<p>Unless you were on Fox. I scanned the website and had to scroll down, down, down for a reference, and the next day I couldn&#8217;t find one at all, although maybe if I scrolled ad infinitum&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There are two different narratives here. And that&#8217;s laughable, since it was the Republicans who were so interested in Epstein and the e-mails\/information.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s a poor boy to do?<\/p>\n<p>They used to play in a rock and roll band.<\/p>\n<p>Now they scroll TikTok and watch streaming television.<\/p>\n<p>And &#8220;The Beast in Me&#8221; is now number one on Netflix, America&#8217;s, the world&#8217;s, number one streaming service, and that means more people are exposed than&#8230;are even watching cable TV news.<\/p>\n<p>So you should watch &#8220;The Beast In Me,&#8221; I want to know your take.<\/p>\n<p>Like &#8220;Death By Lightning&#8221; (and why that title?), &#8220;The Beast In Me&#8221; is impeccably shot. It captures the east coast feel, made me yearn for the area. The greenery, the change of seasons, the rain&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>So we don&#8217;t know exactly what is up with Claire Danes&#8217;s character. And she&#8217;s portraying anxiety\/nervousness so well. These tics&#8230; Is Danes the new Meryl Streep or is she always like this?<\/p>\n<p>I never saw &#8220;Homeland,&#8221; but I did watch the Israeli show it was based upon, &#8220;Prisoners of War,&#8221; which the &#8220;New York Times&#8221; said was the best foreign series of the decade, and I&#8217;m not sure I agree, but it was wrenching. All I really know about Claire Danes is she was in &#8220;My So-Called Life,&#8221; a cult show before it was stripped by MTV. She was an atypical teenager, with a crush and&#8230;then Danes went to Yale and now she&#8217;s 46 with three kids. How did that happen?<\/p>\n<p>But Danes demonstrates an inner strength in &#8220;The Beast In Me,&#8221; she&#8217;s got her ideals straight in her mind, even if she&#8217;s wavering on the periphery.<\/p>\n<p>And then you&#8217;ve got Matthew Rhys&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Who somehow I didn&#8217;t even recognize. He was softer in &#8220;The Americans,&#8221; too soft for &#8220;Perry Mason,&#8221; but he&#8217;s so intense here&#8230;I guess I identified him more with the type than the underlying identity.<\/p>\n<p>I know people like this. This is the modern paradigm. Men who have so much money they think things should always go their way&#8230;they believe they&#8217;re right and entitled. And if you stand in their way&#8230;they&#8217;ve got tons of cash and lawyers to make you go away.<\/p>\n<p>So to what degree do you cope with a bad neighbor?<\/p>\n<p>I squirmed watching Rhys&#8217;s dogs come into Danes&#8217;s yard. People love their dogs, they can do no wrong, complain and you&#8217;re a pariah.<\/p>\n<p>Are you entitled to peace and quiet?<\/p>\n<p>I kept thinking if I was Danes in this show, I&#8217;d move&#8230;because I didn&#8217;t see Rhys ever bending.<\/p>\n<p>But then Danes interacts with Rhys&#8230; She doesn&#8217;t want to, she&#8217;s squeamish, and he tries to steamroll her and she is flummoxed, but she stays true to herself, and he doesn&#8217;t like it.<\/p>\n<p>But you can never say no to a man like this.<\/p>\n<p>He ultimately traps\/convinces Danes to go to lunch and doesn&#8217;t obey traditional rules of conversation. It&#8217;s not exactly that he&#8217;s browbeating her, but he&#8217;s digging deeper and deeper and&#8230; Is this a connection?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve only seen one episode. Don&#8217;t tell me if you&#8217;ve watched more, and you probably have, this show is hard to turn off, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Where exactly is this going? Is this a traditional American production, a ramping up of hostilities, or something more nuanced, with unexpected plot twists.<\/p>\n<p>Now what happens at the end of the first episode disappointed me, it was foreshadowed and predictable.<\/p>\n<p>But Danes living alone, in a large dark house&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This show is creepy.<\/p>\n<p>And despite not wanting Rhys&#8217;s money, she needs money.<\/p>\n<p>And&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Check this show out.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you watching this? We didn&#8217;t start until finishing &#8220;Death By Lightning&#8221; first, which I do not recommend, despite all the positive reviews. The dialogue is positively stilted. Just because the action took place over a hundred years ago, that does not mean people spoke in a stiff, non-colloquial way. It&#8217;s only four episodes, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-5To","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22655,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22654\/revisions\/22655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}