Have you ever been at a loss as to what to watch? Too many shows to pick from? We’re here to give you our opinions on what we feel is worth watching. Check it out and then let us know in the comments below what you’re choosing for tonight!
Phoebe’s Choice
I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s been a slew of movies converted down to the small screen the last few years, many of which didn’t seem called for a TV adaptation. For example: Fargo, From Dusk till Dawn, 12 Monkeys, or Minority Report. Adding to that list now is the surprisingly well-done Get Shorty, which has been airing on Epix on Sunday nights. I’ve been watching from the jump, but today I’ll plug you in from last week and maybe my exposition will be enough for you to watch tonight. I know I’ll be fixated.
Last week, the fourth episode of ten started like a Tarantino flick might: a confusing scene that we’ll be headed toward the next hour. Unlike the book and movie versions of this title, the television iteration of Get Shorty follows an enforcer for mobster in Nevada not Miami, and his name is Miles Daly not Chili Palmer. And poor Miles is destined to get tied to a chair in a warehouse in this episode as the first scene showed. He was held at the mercy of his Mexican Mafia boss Amara and her head henchman Yago.
Flashback to that morning, and we found Amara calling Miles to check on the progress of the film she was laundering millions of dollars through. She was also dealing with a war escalating with another local mafia in Nevada. In L.A. where Miles was working as Amara’s proxy, they now had a series of offices set up for their production company to work out of. He and his partner, B-movie director Rick Moreweather, had a sit down with April Quinn, a rep from the studio who couldn’t stand either of them. She informed them that Gravity Pictures was buying out Amara at a profit. Miles decided to keep this information from Amara, reasoning that he got to stay in L.A. as long as she thought he had her money tied up in the movie.
Next a skateboarding drug dealer working under Yago got killed by Amara’s rivals. Rick wanted to ask Amara to invest in a second movie, but Miles obviously didn’t want that and he discouraged him. April & Rick started asking for changes in the screenplay from Louis, who was pretending to have written it. Meanwhile the guy they killed and took the screenplay from, Owen? His ex-girlfriend called the office to ask where he was. She knew they had his screenplay. Rick went behind Miles’s back and called Amara anyway, to see if she’d produce other movies. He inadvertently spilled the beans about the buyout, without realizing the consequences.
Miles told Louis he was being fired as writer, but he was ambivalent about it. Amara called Miles to see if he’d tell her that she was being bought out as producer on The Admiral’s Mistress. Following that, Rick took Miles to a swanky afternoon party to bump elbows with Hollywood bigwigs. They saw April, who had been demoted off her project Lethal Limit 4, relegated now to help them with their weird period piece movie. She was pissed. Miles met a kooky old man by the cliffs behind the party.
Back in Nevada, Miles’s estranged wife Katie dealt with a breakdown from her new boyfriend, Jeff. He told her how the other day, Yago mouth-raped him with the handle of one of his golf clubs. She immediately called Miles to suggest separation is not enough, that maybe they should get divorced. So Miles sent Louis to deal with Owen’s ex-girlfriend while he headed back toward Nevada to mend things with Katie. Once back in Nevada, he was spotted by one of Amara’s thugs. Louis tried to spin a lie to Owen’s ex, but in the end he found shooting her dead was the easiest solution.
Miles talked to Katie and gave her brochure information on acting classes for their daughter, trying to lure them out to California. They were on better terms when he went back to his apartment. Later that night he was abducted from there by Yago, and now we’re right back at the start. Amara had her lawyer there, who verified that Miles had the power to stop the buy-out, as producer. She was about to have him killed when he revealed that he got her the signed picture of John Stamos she’d told him to get. She spared him for now.
The next morning Rick’s secretary told him that a famous director was interested in reading the script. She had to harangue him into calling him back, but it just might work – the director was the crazy old guy Miles met on the cliffs at the party!
On tonight’s episode, “A Man of Letters,†Rick struggles with the casting process as a watchful Amara considers future film investment opportunities; meanwhile, Katie and Emma visit Miles in Los Angeles.
Check it out tonight on Epix at 10/9c.
