#SetTheVCR: September 02-08, 2024

Rebels, Fight Night, Kaos and the Perfect Couple: already sounds like fun TV recommendations. We’re heading into the Fall, an idea #SetTheVCR season.

Monday, September 02

Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef (3 p.m. (EST) / Netflix)

Watch live on September 2nd (12 p.m. PT / 3 p.m. ET) as hot dog-eating champion Joey Chestnut faces off against rival Takeru Kobayashi in the ultimate wiener-takes-all competition. I’m Team Chestnut.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: KAOS: SEASON 1 (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

As discord reigns on Mount Olympus and almighty Zeus spirals into paranoia, three mortals are destined to reshape humankind’s future.
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“Jeff Goldblum plays Zeus: King of the Gods, ruler of the world. He’s cruel, stylish and all-powerful. That is until he’s not.” I’m not sure what’s going on here. “Zeus’s one time friend and now prisoner, Prometheus, is orchestrating a plan to bring him down. The plan involves three disparate humans, all of whom are totally unaware of their cosmic significance or the part they must play in saving the world.” I don’t full get this nor do I understand the tone. I’m also not a fan of Greek mythology; it’s fine in Wonder Woman comics…Netflix TV shows less, so. However, I’m a fan of Kaos, so I’ll give this a shot.

Tuesday, September 03

One of a Kind (Anytime / MLB.TV)

In addition to a 23-year run that featured greatness on the mound, the MLB Network documentary will also highlight Greg Maddux’s unique clubhouse personality that his teammates still talk about to this day. Among those interviewed for One of a Kind, the latest edition of the MLB Network Presents docuseries, are Maddux, Barry Bonds, Randy Johnson, Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1 (ANYTIME / HBO MAX & CRAVE)

Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.
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The Chapter 1 in the title sets you (the viewer) up to expect more: Horizon: An American Saga is indeed devised to be 4 chapter…4 movies. Chapter 2 will have its world premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 7, 2024. I’m not sure what the status of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 is; especially since Chapter 1 struggled to find an audience. According to the TV Guide: “Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure will take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.” So this all happens before Back To The Future III where Marty travels to 1885 to rescue a time-stranded Doc. Just for historical context, you know?

Wednesday, September 04

Slow Horses: Season 4 (Anytime / Apple TV+)

Slow Horses is a darkly humorous espionage drama that follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in an MI5 dumping ground department known unaffectionately as Slough House. Season four opens with a bombing that detonates personal secrets, rocking Slough House’s already unstable foundations. Premieres today with the first two episodes, followed by one new episode weekly, every Wednesday through October 2.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: IMAGINARY (ANYTIME / STARZ)

A woman returns to her childhood home to discover that the imaginary friend she left behind is very real and unhappy that she abandoned him.
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Good Guy dolls have sayings when you pull the string including: “Hi, I’m Chucky and I’m your friend till the end. Hi-de-ho.” And of course there’s “Hi, I’m Chucky…wanna play?” Chucky was creepy Teddy Ruxpin. Similarly, Imaginary is creepy IF (you know the recent Ryan Reynolds movie about IFs…imaginary friends.) In this horror movie: “Imaginary friends are spirits who tether to the young and can become sinister if abandoned.” Of course: “a woman returns to her childhood home and discovers her stepdaughter’s imaginary friend is more than imaginary.” Excellent. And we’re off! Wanna play with some Imaginary friends today?

Thursday, September 05

The NFL Season Begins (8:20 p.m. / NBC)

The NFL’s 105th season begins with the league’s annual primetime Kickoff Game, as the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Baltimore Ravens at Arrowhead Stadium. The regular season is set to end on January 5, 2025. The playoffs are then scheduled to start on January 11, and conclude with Super Bowl LIX, the league’s championship game, at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, on February 9, 2025.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: THE PERFECT COUPLE: LIMITED SERIES (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

Amelia Sacks is about to marry into one of the wealthiest families on Nantucket. Her disapproving future mother-in-law, famous novelist Greer Garrison Winbury, has spared no expense in planning what promises to be the premiere wedding of the season – until a body turns up on the beach.
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Nicole Kidman’s latest “this family has deep dark secrets, nothing is exactly as it seems” TV series. If you liked Big Little Lies, Expats, The Undoing…I’ll even toss in Eyes Wide Shut (even though it ain’t TV; same basic story, though) you’ll dig this. Kidman is the new Donald Sutherland: creepy and dark and tall. Indeed; as the Netflix description reads: “As secrets come to light, the stage is set for a real-life investigation that feels plucked from the pages of one of Greer’s novels. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect.” I get so bored so quickly with resentment of rich people. Complaining about wealthy people is like being annoyed an Amazon delivery is delayed. As in: so what? The “everyone is a suspect” bit is appealing, though. The Perfect Couple will adapt Elin Hilderbrand’s best-selling 2018 book of the same name. So…was it Nicole Kidman in the study with the lead pipe? Let’s play Clue with the Perfect Couple!

Friday, September 06

Tell Me Lies: Season 2 (Anytime / Hulu & Disney+ Canada)

Season 2 picks up as Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco return to college, not speaking after their dramatic breakup at the start of the summer. Yet while very much at odds, they find themselves in a new version of their addictive dynamic – which is as infuriating as it is inescapable. Meanwhile, the story expands deeper into the lives of Lucy and Stephen’s friend group, as the fallout from Season One impacts all of their lives in unexpected ways. It Is What It Is.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: REBEL RIDGE (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

A former Marine grapples his way through a web of small-town corruption when an attempt to post bail for his cousin escalates into a violent standoff with the local police chief. He didn’t start this fight, but he will finish it.
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I dunno who Aaron Pierre is…as an actor can he handle a gun? Does he have a decent body count and cool kills? He plays a former Marine in this Netflix movie: can he carry himself like he’s been training to be a weapon? Dude is taking on Don Johnson who goes full on Boss Hogg; racism and all I assume. I’m siding with Don on this one, I know and trust him. Jury’s still out on Aaron Pierre. Let’s see what kind of ruckus he brings to the party. Though Rebel Ridge mirrors a long Reacher episode (same concept as Season 1). And if we’re being honest? From a Netflix perspective I’m more interested in Rebel Ridge than say Rebel Moon.

Saturday, September 07

The Boy and the Heron (Anytime / HBO Max)

Saturday Morning Cartoons: While the Second World War rages, the teenage Mahito, haunted by his mother’s tragic death, is relocated from Tokyo to the serene rural home of his new stepmother Natsuko, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the boy’s mother. As he tries to adjust, this strange new world grows even stranger following the appearance of a persistent gray heron, who perplexes and bedevils Mahito, dubbing him the “long-awaited one.”
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: APOLLO 13: SURVIVAL (ANYTIME / NETFLIX)

Just nine months after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, NASA faced its greatest crisis — three astronauts stranded halfway to the moon on a spacecraft that had suffered a catastrophic explosion.
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“Houston, we have a problem.” Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. That was the plan, anyways. Apollo 13 was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970. However, if you’ve seen the Tom Hanks movie you know: the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) ruptured two days into the mission. The damage disabled its electrical and life-support system. The crew, supported by backup systems on the lunar module (LM), instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. Spoiler Alert? The fated mission was commanded by Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), with Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) as lunar module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), who was grounded after exposure to rubella. You know and I’ve referenced the classic Ron Howard movie from 1995. That was a biopic and often those are not accurate. This is a documentary…journalism and all that. Shall we attempt to go to the Moon?

Sunday, September 08

The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History of Hollywood (Anytime / MGM+)

Michael Connelly (Bosch, The Lincoln Lawyer) takes us on a wild journey into the twisted story of the massacre at Wonderland Avenue on July 1, 1981 – one of Hollywood’s most famous murder cases that has fascinated people for more than 40 years. This case symbolized an era in Los Angeles – involving sex, drugs, rock n’ roll… and murder. It is the real-life story that inspired Boogie Nights. The four-episode docuseries is based on Connelly’s Audible podcast series and directed by Alison Ellwood.
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SAMMY SUGGESTION: FIGHT NIGHT: THE MILLION DOLLAR HEIST (9:00 P.M. / SHOWCASE & ANYTIME / PEACOCK)

Based on the acclaimed iHeart true-crime podcast, the series follows the infamous story of how an armed robbery on the night of Muhammad Ali’s historic 1970 comeback fight changed not only one man’s life but ultimately transformed Atlanta into the “Black Mecca.”
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The TV Guide says: “When a hustler named Chicken Man (Kevin Hart) hosts an afterparty to celebrate the fight with a guest list of the country’s wealthiest, the night ends with the most brazen criminal underworld heist in Atlanta’s history. Suspected of masterminding the crime, Chicken Man is hellbent on clearing his name but must convince his old adversary, J.D. Hudson (Don Cheadle), one of the first Black detectives in the city’s desegregated police force, who is tasked with bringing those responsible to justice.” So, like a Black Oceans 11 with Samuel L. Jackson? That works. I’d gamble on that.