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mensamaster
Reviews
Bargain Block (2021)
Basements? HVAC?
Love the show and the concept behind it but am perplexed that there is never any information given on each house's basement nor the condition of HVAC.
Very odd.
Inventing Anna (2022)
Wasted Talents; Simplistic Treatment
Lots of talented people in this show but poorly used because it is such a melodramatic piece of work; it tried valiantly to be sensationalistic, but wasn't. I was mostly looking forward to this show because of Julia Garner; she was so good on "Ozark" and I was looking forward to a very different yet just as excellent performance here. What a disappointment. Whatever accent she was going for, she found one that made her at times quite difficult to understand.
Anna Chlumsky is another fine actor...wasted. Her character is just too smart to not notice that she continually gets pulled in by Anna, and for some reason there were so many close up shots of Chlumsky's face throughout this series that they began to get uncomfortable to view.
The trio of Jeff Perry, Terry Kinney, and Anna Deavere Smith (a fine group of actors) come across as a combination of The Three Stooges and three doddering simpleminded Baby Boomers.
Laverne Cox was so one note, her performance was hard to watch/listen.
As for the storyline, Anna was a con artist who got caught.
She was very good at reading other people and getting them to do what she wanted to get done. The only person close to Anna, the only person Anna cared about, was Anna.
For me the two most telling scenes in the series were when Chlumsky's character talked to Anna's parents in their house in Germany and when Anna, from prison, had the late night conversation with her lawyer's very young son.
We learn from her parents that there never really was a connection between them as parents and Anna as their child. From the conversation Anna had with the young boy, we get to see someone (Anna) who gives a very simplistic explanation to the boy that the best thing you can do is learn to manipulate people to get what you want.
At the end of the series we see how many of the characters benefited from their having at one time been connected to Anna. The final shot of Anna on the prison bus I assume is supposed to make the audience feel sorry for her because she did all the work and everyone else benefited. I saw a con artist who got caught and was going to jail.