Have Illnesses Gotten Worse, Or Am I Just a Weak Old Man?
🖐 The Friday High Five #124
Welcome to this week’s Mullet edition of the Friday High 5.
Business in the front: The 5 things I enjoyed this week, free for all to enjoy.
Party in the back: A deeper exploration of something on my mind, for supporters.
Business in the front
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Vibe: Stunts upon stunts, with no story between.
Note: I actually watched this two weekends ago, on Father’s Day, but didn’t write about it previously because I was sick.
Last month I watched an hour-long BFI interview of Tom Cruise that delved into his long career and also surreptitiously served as a commercial for The Final Reckoning. During the talk, Cruise said of the franchise, and the new film, that they start with the stunts and then shoehorn in story around them (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s essentially what he said, unironically and with some pride). To the point that they sometimes have actors and everyone on set but don’t yet know what to do with them.
I doubt anyone who’s ever seen a Mission Impossible is surprised by this. The draw of these films is the stunts, and by extension, seeing what batshit crazy stuff Cruise got up to this time. But if the story underpinning the stunts is half-baked, the action loses its appeal.
The Final Reckoning has two incredible sequences that are worth the price of admission. I genuinely mean that. If it’s still playing near you: Go see it. The stunts are incredible. But it’s not a good movie. The story is muddled, nonsensical, and often just stupid. About an hour in, I shut off my brain and let the images flood my eyes. As Cruise intended.
Library Books
Vibe: Fun and free.
Since I was feeling approximately 200% better yesterday—more on that saga below—we decided to run some errands, which ended with a trip to the library. My favorite sort of trip. All the books I can carry, for free?
You won’t find any rhyme or reason behind the books I checked out. This scattershot approach to librarying is my favorite way to do it. Just wander the stacks and look for stuff that looks interesting. Here’s what caught my attention this trip:
Death Need Not Be Fatal: Never heard of Malachy McCourt, but this book on death and aging looks hilarious, and ties into stuff I’ve been thinking about.
Klara and the Sun: the only novel I checked out. Dystopian fantasy story that was on Obama’s list of favorite books a few years ago.
The Sixth Extinction: Been on my radar forever, if for no other reason than I thought dinosaurs were our first and only extinction.
Bitcoin Billionaires: Written by the guy who wrote the book that became The Social Network.
Discipline Equals Freedom: I’ve heard of Jocko and have even scrolled past his face on YouTube, so I know he’s a former Seal or something. The title appealed to me.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Vibe: Elves, dungeon crawling, and magic items: D&D without the nerdy connotations.
Last year I revisited the original The Legend of Zelda for the first time since the 90s. I loved it. It’s a timeless masterpiece of gaming. Replaying A Link to the Past was a bygone conclusion. It’s long been my favorite Zelda game, though I also haven’t played it since the 90s.
I’d guess I’m maybe 1/3 of the way through the game. It’s great fun, and in almost every way is a much better version of the original. Twice the graphics, clever gameplay innovations, tricky dungeons and foes. However, I’m coming to a surprising conclusion.
I like the original more.
It’s interesting because I was there throughout the entire NES and SNES generations. I played these games when they were new. And my conclusion at the time—one I’ve held for 30+ years—is that A Link to the Past is the superior game. It undoubtedly is superior. But I’m finding I actually preferred the original.
Maybe I’m just gravitating toward simpler pleasures as I age. More on that below.
The Handmaid’s Tale: S1
Vibe: Civilization is a thin veneer.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a drama about an alternate America in which shit has gone really, really bad. Birth rates have plummeted and pollution has wrecked the world. The solution: A theocratic surveillance state in which fertile women are treated like cattle.
I probably picked the single worst time to start watching The Handmaid’s Tale. Things can obviously get much worse in America, but the current trajectory makes this show less a cautionary tale and more like destiny. The really terrifying thing is I can absolutely see people treating it as instructive: “Ah, so this is what we can do once we strip away everyone’s rights. Quasi-Amish sex slaves. Got it.”
I can imagine this was a hard watch when it debuted in 2017. It’s a different kind of difficult in 2025, against a backdrop of Americans regularly getting disappeared.
We’re only halfway through the season. I want to see what happens next while also dread seeing what happens next. It’s riveting drama. But I also want to prepare myself for all possible futures.
Platonic
Vibe: True friendship is strange and beautiful.
It was necessary to balance out the heaviness of The Handmaid’s Tale with something else. Anything else.
Enter Platonic.
This show is about a pair of former BFFs (Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne) who reconnect after a decade. The premise is that these former besties are a man and a woman, seemingly from two different worlds, but united by a quirky, one might say dorky, sense of humor. Platonic reunites Rogan and Byrne, who played a married couple in Neighbors (2014). They don’t have chemistry in the traditional man-woman sense, but they operate on a similar comedic wavelength. Or, rather, Byrne can effortlessly descend to the level Rogan has made a career out of. Which is why you could buy them as a married couple despite everything your eyes told you.
They make way more sense as sex-agnostic friends.
Platonic is hilarious and also strangely sweet. In a different show, there would be an inkling that this friendship could lead to something more. One of the enduring rules of storytelling seemingly is that men and women can’t be friends. That someone always wants more, even just in a passing fancy sort of way. But Platonic resists that temptation. It doesn’t even wink at the audience. It’s refreshing.
Party in the back
After being laid out by a summer cold for a full week, I optimistically—some might say foolishly—declared victory Tuesday. The cold was vanquished. Mission accomplished.
Wednesday it got its revenge.
