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Los Angeles Times
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
With ‘Government Cheese,' Apple TV+ vaults into 1960s San Fernando Valley
Set in a version, or a vision, of the northwest San Fernando Valley in 1969, 'Government Cheese,' premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, belongs to a class of visually striking comic dramas that slip in out of the naturalistic 'real' world, while remaining emotionally coherent. I'm thinking of 'Lodge 49' with which this show shares an aerospace company (and a … lodge), 'Mrs. Davis' and 'I'm a Virgo,' and certain seasons of 'Fargo. ' If 'Government Cheese' isn't quite to the level, or the depth, of the best of these, it's a kind of show I like very much, and plenty of good things are therein. Created by Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr, the series starts with the Chambers Brothers' 'Time Has Come Today' on the soundtrack, a musical pun because our hero is named Chambers — Hampton Chambers (David Oyelowo) — and he's doing time at California Institution for Men in Chino for writing bad checks with 'time added for assorted other misdeeds.' (I can't swear that was the intention, but everything in 'Government Cheese,' even the seemingly random parts, feels thoroughly thought out.) He's rough when we meet him there, two years before the main action of the series, but ripe for change; his Native American cellmate, Rudy (Adam Beach), suggests he talk to Gus (Mykelti Williamson), some sort of nondenominational quasi-cleric, who tells him, 'To God we're just pieces on a chessboard and he's the master. … But if you don't follow his path, God will f— you up.' Hampton leaves prison with a head full of scripture and plans for a self-sharpening drill, cooked up during his time in the machine shop. Hampton returns home to his family, unannounced, as if he were merely back from work. Wife Astoria (Simone Missick), working as a receptionist at an interior design firm, sighs uneasily. Younger son Harrison (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), who calls his father Hampton — 'You're not my father,' he says — has steeped himself in local native culture, thanks to a quasi-paternal friendship with Rudy, and dresses like Tom Laughlin in 'Billy Jack' two years before that movie came out. He sports a feather Rudy gave him; eagles will be a motif in his storyline. Only cheerful younger son Einstein (Evan Ellison), an eccentric, prophetically named genius who has decided to become a champion pole-vaulter, seems happy to see him. He calls Hampton 'pop,' like David and Ricky did Ozzie. That they are the only Black family in their middle-class suburb is significant of nothing much, surprising given the tenor of the times, but that's the suburbs for you. Hampton has 'a plan that will make our family the toast of Chatsworth.' But, says Astoria, 'some of us have aspirations that are bigger than Chatsworth.' So there'll be trouble. Exiled by Astoria to the garage, Hampton fabricates his special drill as the family watches from afar. 'Dad's making something out of nothing,' says Einstein, impressed. 'He's like an alchemist.' (He will dub the drill, which works as advertised, the 'Bit Magician.') 'His mother was the same way,' says Astoria. 'She could make the best sandwiches out of nothing but government cheese and white bread.' And there is your title. The focus of Hampton's plans to sell his invention is a company called Rocket Corp (standing in for the real-world Rocketdyne, which had facilities in the hills above Chatsworth), also the focus of environmental protests. To complicate matters — matters, of course, must be complicated — Hampton will learn that he's in debt $2,000 for an unasked-for service from a crime family composed of seven brothers (French Canadian but straight out of 'Fargo') and that they would quite happily kill him if he doesn't pay up, like, now. He doesn't have the money, but his old friend Bootsy (Bokeem Woodbine) has a line on a job, by which he means a crime. Throughout the series, Hampton will encounter various characters, some he knows, some just emerging from the underbrush or out of a vent — Sunita Mani, approachably mysterious, is a series highlight — who will guide or push or bully him along his way, as if he were a figure on a fairy tale quest. At one point he becomes the Biblical Jonah. Ultimately any story that plays with form, as 'Government Cheese' does, is itself about storytelling. Of the Jonah story, we learn from Rabbi Marty, played by Bob Glouberman, that in the end 'nothing happens; it's a cliffhanger, and nobody got around to finish the sequel. … It means you get to choose how you proceed next.' (That is certainly how they do it in television.) One episode opens with a black-and-white low-budget revisionist movie western — titled 'The Long Road Home,' after this series' own theme — in which Harrison winds up as an extra. (Many westerns were shot in the rocky hills north of Chatsworth.) Another begins with an inexpert 'A Day in the Life at Temple Hillel Public Access Film,' in which Rabbi Marty points out that the bound Torah is called a 'Chumash' — it's left to the viewer to make the connection to the Chumash people who first lived in the area, from whom Rudy is descended and in whom Harrison is interested. Indeed, the fact that there's a synagogue in this story at all may be down to that coincidence. And in an episode dedicated to Astoria — a nice change of view — a stereotypical housewife from a TV coffee commercial materializes in her living room. ('Don't you want to be defined by more than just making coffee to make your husband happy? … I'm only alive for 30 seconds every 32 hours; I don't have time to do anything else.') One does worry for Hampton, whether he'll get out of his own way, or out of the way of the people trying to put him out of the way, even though he's not the series' most attractive character. Or perhaps better said, he has the disadvantage of his travails, mishaps and bad decisions occupying the foreground. 'Stop trying to control everything, Hampton,' says Mani's briefly seen, unexplained yet very interesting character. 'And once you accept that everything that happens is meant to happen, then you'll be free.' It doesn't mean people aren't still out to kill you, or put you back in jail. Valley historians will enjoy a cameo appearance by the Newport Pop Festival, the biggest thing to happen in that neck of the woods in 1969.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Reacher's Sonya Cassidy: In Wake of ‘Horrendous' Setback, Duffy's Mindset Is Now ‘Let's Just F–king Do This!'
The following contains spoilers from the March 6 episode of Season 3, now streaming on Prime Video. The good guys lost a really good guy this week on Reacher. More from TVLine Survivor 48's [Spoiler] Details the One Event That 'Changed the Entire Game for Me' Étoile: Amy Sherman-Palladino's New Amazon Series Gets Release Date - See First-Look Photos Kevin Bacon Is a Resurrected Bounty Hunter Chasing Demons in Gory Trailer for Amazon's The Bondsman All season long — ever since DEA Agents Susan Duffy (played by Lodge 49's Sonya Cassidy), Guillermo Villanueva (9-1-1: Lone Star's Roberto Montesinos) and Steven Eliot (For All Mankind's Daniel David Stewart) teamed with Reacher (Alan Ritchson) to fake an attempted kidnapping of young Richard Beck as well as Reacher's thwarting of same — Steven has been tasked with babysitting Cooper (Star Trek: DIscovery's Ronnie Rowe), Richard's 'dead' bodyguard, at a remote cabin. And for several episodes, Cooper had been plotting to somehow escape being bound to a (very uncomfortable) chair. Midway through the fifth episode of Season 3, Cooper saw his chance, when he finally convinced Agent Eliot to fire up a cigarette for him. Mind you, Steven had been warned to allow their 'prisoner' nothing, but he finally acquiesced. After all, how could the rookie fed know that, when his back was turned, Cooper had finagled a swig of rubbing alcohol, which he then spat out at Agent Eliot as he flicked a Bic. The eruption of flame frightened and distracted Eliot, allowing Cooper to knock him to the floor and then beat him to death with his boot. That evening, Duffy returned to her team's base camp to discover the grisly murder scene. Afterward, she called Steven's father to solemnly relay the tragic news, and acknowledge that Steven had essentially saved her own life earlier that day. 'The loss of Eliot is horrendous. Horrendous,' Sonya Cassidy tells TVLine. 'It is unimaginable to lose one of your team, someone who was so young…,' the English actress notes. 'But it's also a tragic sign of where they're at at that point' in investigating Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) and Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee). 'They're losing. People are dying, and they're not getting any closer to taking down these guys or finding Teresa,' Duffy's CI who disappeared while undercover at Beck's,' says Cassidy. 'So in that moment, we're at a crossroads with Duffy. She's like, 'Do I continue doing this? How much longer do I keep trying?' But she is so determined and driven that she chooses the path of, 'His death cannot have been for nothing, so let's just f–king do this'' and take down the bad guys. ''I am not walking away from this, I cannot walk away, having lost a young man's life and still having not having found Teresa.'' In other words, Beck & Co. will come to rue the day that bodyguard Cooper decided he couldn't sit in that damn chair any longer. Because from here on, over the three remaining episodes, 'Duffy can see one path and nothing can deter her from it at this point,' Cassidy avows. Said path 'is very dangerous, it's maybe not necessarily the right thing, but I admire her for it — and it makes for better television, as well!'Best of TVLine Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa' Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)
