Alaska Daily and The Company You Keep Prove Network TV Is Not Dead

By

Scott D. Parker

Remember a few weeks ago when I lamented the end of New Amsterdam and wondered if there would be any more network TV shows I’d watch? Well, it didn’t take long before two very different shows landing on my viewing schedule.

Alaska Daily

Curious about the throughline of the series—the disappearance and murder of indigenous women in Alaska—the wife and I watched the pilot of Alaska Daily, the new show starring Hilary Swank. She plays Eileen Fitzgerald, a famous New York investigative reporter in New York who gets fired for asking too many questions. Amid her public humiliation, her old boss, Stanley (Jeff Perry) shows up. He has a job for her: investigating the systemic crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women in Alaska. The sticking point is, obviously, that the new job is in Alaska. Stanley knows Eileen and all he has to do is get her hooked on the story.

She gets hooked and she moves to Alaska where we promptly have a fish-out-of-water story mixed with a this-is-how-we-do-it-in-the-big-city story. But it works well.

The indigenous women story is the season-long arc and little pieces are uncovered in each episode. But you also get a story of the week. In each episode, you’ll see some of Eileen’s fellow reporters either get rubbed the wrong way because of her or learn something from her that they can then use. It’s a good push-pull dynamic.

Two things particularly stand out. One is obvious: the importance of journalism, especially local journalism. In episode 7, Eileen has a long conversation with another character who thinks all she does is twist facts around. She counters the argument by pointing out things that reporters have contributed to society. It’s a general “If not us, who?” argument that I find matches the tone of 2023.

The other aspect of this show I really dig is Eileen herself. She’s single-minded in her devotion to her job, so much so that she sacrifices personal relationships. She’s a loner, and her lover is being a reporter and uncovering the story. We’ve seen characters like this before, but they’ve almost all be male. With Eileen, you get the female version of it, and it’s refreshing.

I find it fascinating that the topic of violence against indigenous women is featured not only on this American network TV show but also on Amazon’s Three Pines. Perhaps with more exposure, more can be done to stop this crisis.

The Company You Keep

On the other end of the ledger is another new show, The Company You Keep. We saw the trailer while watching America’s Funniest Videos one Sunday evening and were intrigued. I didn’t watch This Is Us but I knew the Milo Ventimiglia starred on it. Milo’s also in this show opposite Catherine Haena Kim. He’s a con man named Charlie from a family of con artists: mom, dad, and older sister. She’s a CIA operative named Emma, daughter of a retired senator whose brother is running for his dad’s seat, and no one in the family knows she works for the government.

In the pilot, Charlie’s family earn $10 million from a job but Charlie’s fiancée steals it. Emma discovers her partner is having an affair. Charlie and Emma meet at a hotel bar and a weekend of passion ensues. But they are both secret about their real selves and real jobs. Naturally, they fall for each other but still keep up the mysterious fronts. Cut to the end of the pilot where the bad guys who used to own that $10 million show up at Charlie’s family bar. They demand repayment plus interest, and you have this show’s schtick: A Con of the Week.

And it’s so much fun. It doesn’t hurt at all to have Milo and Catherine look so dang good and look good together. As the credits rolled from the pilot, I said to my wife, “Ah, so it’s pretty people doing cons every week. I’m in.”

The supporting cast is fun, especially William Fichtner as Charlie’s dad. He’s good in just about everything he’s in, but a particular favorite is his role in the 1999 movie, Go. James Saito plays Emma’s dad, an actor who has been in a ton of things, but I particularly enjoyed him in the old Eli Stone TV show.

If you are a fan of heist stories, you’ll probably get a kick out of this.

Crime DOES Pay (For awhile)

A real life jewelry heist story...

Most heist stories focus on what goes wrong - whether it's during or after the robbery. A well-executed robbery where everything goes to plan and the thieves escape doesn't make for great story telling. Or does it?

Surely when a real life criminal decides to rob a jewelry store or start fencing stolen goods, they think they're going to live the high life. Who would submit themselves to so much risk if the payoff was continuing to live a normal, boring life with a shit job? Marvin Lewis figured it out.

I mean, he got caught. We wouldn't know the story if he didn't. But before he did, he bought the cars, the luxury watches, the clothes. He inserted himself in Oscar and Emmy parties and documented his moneyed life on Instagram. He got another guy to keep robbing stores while he partied it up.

Usually, the only thieves who get to drive $200,000 dollar cars and hang with celebrities work for banks (badum-tss), but Marvin got his, at least for a little while.

His most heinous crime? "Loving" Ed Sheeran.

The moral of the story is always supposed to be "crime doesn't pay" and while Marvin defended himself by claiming he'd always been rich, despite not wanting to discuss where his money came from in court, he's facing 57 years in prison. Hope the parties were worth it - and that a great director gets the rights.

Bad, Nasty Women

Fat on turkey and maybe a little hungover from cheap wine and rum cake, I'm still excited about a new project I'm working on and that's a great feeling. A few days ago I went to Facebook to get everyone's favorite heist movies and criminal couples. It was a good time, but watching ol' Bonnie & Clyde got me thinking about Bonnie Parker in relation to my new character and all the bad, nasty women I would interview for research if I could.

First and most obvious - Bonnie Parker.

What I wouldn't give to know if she was a cold blooded criminal with a thirst for fame, or a girl along for the ride. It seems like everyone has an opinion on what Bonnie's role in the Barrow Gang was, but I'd love to hear it straight from her cigar smoking mouth. My theory is she was as mean and nasty as the rest of the gang, but I guess we'll never know for sure.

Aileen Wournos

We've all heard of the "hooker with a heart of gold" but Aileen Wournos couldn't have been further from the trope. Famously saying "I'm a serial killer - I'd kill again!" and presenting herself as a sort of black angel of death for rapists and unsavory men, the truth seems to be somewhere between that and the media's view of her as a cold blooded bitch. I'd love to sit down over a cup of coffee and get some insight into her as a person, but her last cup of black coffee was served just before her execution in October of 2002. I'd settle for a cup of coffee with Charlize Theron, but she isn't returning my calls.

Griselda Blanco

Her name was Blanco and she was the "Cocaine Godmother" and there is something ridiculously cool about that. Griselda Blanco is fascinating because she seemed to really love her job and station. Men like Pablo Escobar are well known and accepted as a sort of default - men in it for the money and power, but women like Blanco are either incredibly rare or underreported. Not only did she hold her own among the criminal men in the cocaine wars of the eighties, but she kept herself in the game even from prison. I don't think many women worry about breaking the glass ceiling in the drug trade, but Griselda Blanco did just that. She lived like a drug lord and, ultimately, died like one - shot in the head outside a butcher shop.

This Woman

All these other women got popped or thrown in jail, but this last lady - no one knows who she us or where she came from. Always more interesting than the criminals who got caught - the ones that get away are the ones we all want to know. This woman's approach is simple and to the point - her face is even caught on camera, but she walks free. Of course, "she" maybe "they", and they may not even know each other. Either way, a lot of jewelry is missing and despite having a clear picture of this woman's face - no one has any clue where it is. 

In this latest work I'm having a lot of fun exploring criminal women who are in it for the money and fame - not the watered down version of women criminals we get in pop culture. They're all misunderstood, vaguely sexy, along for the ride. Even recent history tells a different story - for every "Orange Is The New Black" backstory where a woman falls into crime because of a man, there is a woman who loves what she does, and will do it again. Those are the women I find interesting.