Anniversaries are funny things, commemorating the bad as well as the good in our shared and personal histories. Even when the initial event was a happy one, the present state of affairs might be less so, and such markers can be an occasion to look back at plans gone wrong, ideals betrayed, relationships frayed, in order to recapture what was lost, or right the ship sailing forward. It’s a time for reflection, not just celebration.
We are coming down fast on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, generally accounted as America’s birthday — the semiquincentennial, to use the word you may have recently learned and will forget by July 5. If it seems to be less of a moment than it might, perhaps it’s being obscured by the global excitement of the World Cup, or by the practical disasters in Washington that somehow serve double duty as metaphors for and examples of corruption, incompetence, self-dealing and brand-splattering.
That a not insignificant segment of the population, including some elected officials, could do with lessons in civics and history is a truth I hold to be self-evident. Yet as American democracy reels on its heels, it’s a good time for any of us to brush up on the country’s founding and foundational principals. (It’s always good to know what you’re talking about.) Fortunately, your television, and the little television you call your phone, is here to help.
On the heels of the excellent 12-hour PBS film series “The American Revolution,” by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, which is still streaming, comes the five-part Netflix series “The American Experiment.” (Related Burns documentaries “Thomas Jefferson,” from 1997, and the 2002 “Benjamin Franklin” are also available on the PBS site and app, along with Burns’ series on sundry American themes; if you’re looking to get a grip on this country, you could do worse than to watch them all.) Directed by Brian Knappenberger, “The American Experiment” covers similar historical ground, though with greater emphasis on what followed the fighting. (It powers through the revolution; the British surrender halfway through Episode 3.)
The meat of the series concerns the hard and slow — and apparently, sweaty and smoky — work of imperfectly forming a more perfect union, knitting a country together from colonies that, having dispatched a common enemy, returned to feeling they had little in common. Close attention is paid to the crafting of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the currently moribund system of checks and balances, and that pesky electoral college. Not least is George Washington’s imprint on the presidency, including leaving office after a second term and the peaceful transition of power — it was considered a big deal, if not a surprise, that he showed up for the inauguration of John Adams, his successor — traditions generally respected, until lately. You know what I’m talking about, but Knappenberger will tell you with a single contemporary clip, if somehow you don’t.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ted Cruz, Al Gore and Lonnie G. Bunch III are interviewed in “The American Experiment.” (Netflix)
The series is pushed along by talking-head historians and museum people who know their subject so well they can relate it as if they’d been there, and by a scrupulously balanced selection of (not unbalanced) philosophizing Democratic and Republican politicians, in and out of office, as well as Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, former U.S. national security advisor and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to violate his oath of office when Trump pressed him not to certify the 2020 election results, thinks it’s high time for Congress to “take back the authority the founders intended.” Sen. Ted Cruz says without irony that “the framers were worried that we would have an executive that behaved like a king.” Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote in 2016, calls the electoral college “a relic of compromises from the Constitutional Convention” and, laughing, “an abomination, for obvious reasons.” And when former Vice President Al Gore says, “One of the hallmarks of the kind of oppressive ruler that our founders feared might emerge sometime in the U.S. is to put troops in the communities and turn them against the American people,” it takes a severe lack of imagination, or a determined refusal, not to picture current events.
Being reality-based, “The American Experience” is naturally a rebuke to the current administration’s ham-handed attempts to draw a curtain over anything that might offend white MAGA sensibilities — slavery, say — and a reaffirmation that the country is by charter diverse. “How do you understand a nation if you don’t look at all the challenges a nation has faced?” asks embattled Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III. “A great nation doesn’t run from its past, doesn’t hide from its past.”
Points deducted for some stiff dramatic reenactments; I would prefer a picture of an empty desk than one of a miscast George Washington sitting at it. But it’s still worth your while.
“Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War,” streaming on pbs.org and the PBS app, looks at four who didn’t wait to be told they were free: James Lafayette, a patriot double agent; Harry Washington, enslaved by George Washington, who ran away to join the British (who promised slaves a better deal); Elizabeth Freeman, a.k.a. Mum Bet, who in 1781 sued for her freedom under Massachusetts law and won; and Abraham Peyton Skipwith, who bought his freedom and became the first Black landowner in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Va. A lack of visual references is compensated for by original paintings animated with AI. We will have the AI discussion at some point — a title card makes mention of it, out of pride or defensiveness, I’m not sure which — but the stories are the point, and they’re interesting.
For a caffeinated run through the whole of American history, check out Crash Course, the YouTube channel founded by pioneering vloggers John and Henry Green, where you’ll find sprightly series on “U.S. History” (47 episodes, hosted by John), “U.S. Government and Politics” (50 episodes), “Black American History” and, most recently, “Native American History” (24 episodes). They’re highly informative and a lot of fun. (John’s is especially wacky; an ear for ironic humor will be helpful.) Also on YouTube is “250 to 250,” historian Heather Cox Richardson’s update of CBS’ “Bicentennial Minutes,” with bite-sized videos about important people, events and programs across the life of the nation, narrated by scholars, politicians and celebrities. Does it have a progressive bent? If “the story of America has been one of the constant efforts of Americans — from all races, ethnicities, genders and abilities — to make real the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our democracy” is progressive, then yes.
Larry David, left, and Jerry Seinfeld as American explorers Lewis and Clark in HBO’s “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.”
(John Johnson / HBO)
In a quite different key is HBO’s “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America,” and exactly what you might expect from its title and star. A semi-improvised period — or many periods — sketch comedy from Larry David (with “Curb Your Enthusiasm” collaborator Jeff Schaffer), it’s an unreliable history lesson that serves primarily as the further adventures of the headlining kvetch, but in its cracked way it does celebrate, or at least acknowledge, American heritage. The 44th president, Barack Obama, an executive producer with Michelle on the show, approached David to do something for the semiquincentennial. Introducing the series, Obama declares, “We’re not perfect, we can be irascible, heady, selfish, cheap and, let’s face it, some of us will always find something to complain about.”
Its method is to import the Larry of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” into various historical scenarios in which he will, in the usual way, and in a variety of wigs, make trouble by trying to avoid it, or anything that requires extra effort, or tact. The first sketch dresses him up as Robert Livingston, who in this telling writes the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (the historical Livingston worked on the document, but not that way), whose list of grievances to set before the king, includes, “If you are invited to a dinner party you’re legally entitled to know who is coming before you accept,” “If you pick a line, you have to stay in it,” and “No sharing desserts — if you want a dessert, order it, don’t pass it around.”
Many sketches pack in a number of ideas, which can make them feel wayward, some run out of ideas before they end, and even the best ones can go on too long. In a Depression-era bit set at a soup kitchen, you know he’ll be attacked for seeming to cut the line — “chat cuts” is the Davidean phrase — and that he’ll criticize the soup. Coming upon the Boston Tea Party, it’s inevitable he’ll whine about not being invited. “Curb” stars Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin and J.B. Smoove are here, in echoes of their “Curb” characters. (Not Cheryl Hines, though, whose husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is lampooned; Trump takes a licking as well.) Jerry Seinfeld joins David in a Lewis and Clark sketch; Bill Hader and Kathryn Hahn play Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln; Jon Hamm and Sean Hayes the Wright Brothers, and so on. As his former presidential self, Obama’s comedy game is strong. No one who saw his turn on “Between Two Ferns” should be surprised.
Like most sketch comedies, it’s hit and miss, but if you like those particular noises David makes, he makes them here, and I did enjoy its application of New York Jewish and Westside L.A. energy to period scenarios. I am a particular sucker for that sort of thing.
And finally, for an accurate, eccentric comic journey through the past, I recommend the divine “Drunk History” (2013-2019) in which intoxicated narrators tell real tales from American history, while actors, mostly well-known, reenact the narrative, mouthing their words. (Seasons 4 through 6 stream on Paramount+; the Comedy Central YouTube channel posts many other episodes, including a Revolutionary War compilation.) Because the alcohol drives the storytellers toward vernacular expression, these pieces can seem more alive and authentic, more relatable, than big-budget, big-screen productions. The facts are all in place. And it’s very funny.
See you at the Tricentennial.
Anniversaries are funny things, commemorating the bad as well as the good in our shared and personal histories. Even when the initial event was a happy one, the present state of affairs might be less so, and such markers can be an occasion to look back at plans gone wrong, ideals betrayed, relationships frayed, in order to recapture what was lost, or right the ship sailing forward. It’s a time for reflection, not just celebration.
We are coming down fast on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, generally accounted as America’s birthday — the semiquincentennial, to use the word you may have recently learned and will forget by July 5. If it seems to be less of a moment than it might, perhaps it’s being obscured by the global excitement of the World Cup, or by the practical disasters in Washington that somehow serve double duty as metaphors for and examples of corruption, incompetence, self-dealing and brand-splattering.
That a not insignificant segment of the population, including some elected officials, could do with lessons in civics and history is a truth I hold to be self-evident. Yet as American democracy reels on its heels, it’s a good time for any of us to brush up on the country’s founding and foundational principals. (It’s always good to know what you’re talking about.) Fortunately, your television, and the little television you call your phone, is here to help.
On the heels of the excellent 12-hour PBS film series “The American Revolution,” by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, which is still streaming, comes the five-part Netflix series “The American Experiment.” (Related Burns documentaries “Thomas Jefferson,” from 1997, and the 2002 “Benjamin Franklin” are also available on the PBS site and app, along with Burns’ series on sundry American themes; if you’re looking to get a grip on this country, you could do worse than to watch them all.) Directed by Brian Knappenberger, “The American Experiment” covers similar historical ground, though with greater emphasis on what followed the fighting. (It powers through the revolution; the British surrender halfway through Episode 3.)
The meat of the series concerns the hard and slow — and apparently, sweaty and smoky — work of imperfectly forming a more perfect union, knitting a country together from colonies that, having dispatched a common enemy, returned to feeling they had little in common. Close attention is paid to the crafting of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the currently moribund system of checks and balances, and that pesky electoral college. Not least is George Washington’s imprint on the presidency, including leaving office after a second term and the peaceful transition of power — it was considered a big deal, if not a surprise, that he showed up for the inauguration of John Adams, his successor — traditions generally respected, until lately. You know what I’m talking about, but Knappenberger will tell you with a single contemporary clip, if somehow you don’t.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ted Cruz, Al Gore and Lonnie G. Bunch III are interviewed in “The American Experiment.” (Netflix)
The series is pushed along by talking-head historians and museum people who know their subject so well they can relate it as if they’d been there, and by a scrupulously balanced selection of (not unbalanced) philosophizing Democratic and Republican politicians, in and out of office, as well as Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, former U.S. national security advisor and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to violate his oath of office when Trump pressed him not to certify the 2020 election results, thinks it’s high time for Congress to “take back the authority the founders intended.” Sen. Ted Cruz says without irony that “the framers were worried that we would have an executive that behaved like a king.” Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote in 2016, calls the electoral college “a relic of compromises from the Constitutional Convention” and, laughing, “an abomination, for obvious reasons.” And when former Vice President Al Gore says, “One of the hallmarks of the kind of oppressive ruler that our founders feared might emerge sometime in the U.S. is to put troops in the communities and turn them against the American people,” it takes a severe lack of imagination, or a determined refusal, not to picture current events.
Being reality-based, “The American Experience” is naturally a rebuke to the current administration’s ham-handed attempts to draw a curtain over anything that might offend white MAGA sensibilities — slavery, say — and a reaffirmation that the country is by charter diverse. “How do you understand a nation if you don’t look at all the challenges a nation has faced?” asks embattled Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III. “A great nation doesn’t run from its past, doesn’t hide from its past.”
Points deducted for some stiff dramatic reenactments; I would prefer a picture of an empty desk than one of a miscast George Washington sitting at it. But it’s still worth your while.
“Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War,” streaming on pbs.org and the PBS app, looks at four who didn’t wait to be told they were free: James Lafayette, a patriot double agent; Harry Washington, enslaved by George Washington, who ran away to join the British (who promised slaves a better deal); Elizabeth Freeman, a.k.a. Mum Bet, who in 1781 sued for her freedom under Massachusetts law and won; and Abraham Peyton Skipwith, who bought his freedom and became the first Black landowner in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Va. A lack of visual references is compensated for by original paintings animated with AI. We will have the AI discussion at some point — a title card makes mention of it, out of pride or defensiveness, I’m not sure which — but the stories are the point, and they’re interesting.
For a caffeinated run through the whole of American history, check out Crash Course, the YouTube channel founded by pioneering vloggers John and Henry Green, where you’ll find sprightly series on “U.S. History” (47 episodes, hosted by John), “U.S. Government and Politics” (50 episodes), “Black American History” and, most recently, “Native American History” (24 episodes). They’re highly informative and a lot of fun. (John’s is especially wacky; an ear for ironic humor will be helpful.) Also on YouTube is “250 to 250,” historian Heather Cox Richardson’s update of CBS’ “Bicentennial Minutes,” with bite-sized videos about important people, events and programs across the life of the nation, narrated by scholars, politicians and celebrities. Does it have a progressive bent? If “the story of America has been one of the constant efforts of Americans — from all races, ethnicities, genders and abilities — to make real the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our democracy” is progressive, then yes.
Larry David, left, and Jerry Seinfeld as American explorers Lewis and Clark in HBO’s “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.”
(John Johnson / HBO)
In a quite different key is HBO’s “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America,” and exactly what you might expect from its title and star. A semi-improvised period — or many periods — sketch comedy from Larry David (with “Curb Your Enthusiasm” collaborator Jeff Schaffer), it’s an unreliable history lesson that serves primarily as the further adventures of the headlining kvetch, but in its cracked way it does celebrate, or at least acknowledge, American heritage. The 44th president, Barack Obama, an executive producer with Michelle on the show, approached David to do something for the semiquincentennial. Introducing the series, Obama declares, “We’re not perfect, we can be irascible, heady, selfish, cheap and, let’s face it, some of us will always find something to complain about.”
Its method is to import the Larry of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” into various historical scenarios in which he will, in the usual way, and in a variety of wigs, make trouble by trying to avoid it, or anything that requires extra effort, or tact. The first sketch dresses him up as Robert Livingston, who in this telling writes the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (the historical Livingston worked on the document, but not that way), whose list of grievances to set before the king, includes, “If you are invited to a dinner party you’re legally entitled to know who is coming before you accept,” “If you pick a line, you have to stay in it,” and “No sharing desserts — if you want a dessert, order it, don’t pass it around.”
Many sketches pack in a number of ideas, which can make them feel wayward, some run out of ideas before they end, and even the best ones can go on too long. In a Depression-era bit set at a soup kitchen, you know he’ll be attacked for seeming to cut the line — “chat cuts” is the Davidean phrase — and that he’ll criticize the soup. Coming upon the Boston Tea Party, it’s inevitable he’ll whine about not being invited. “Curb” stars Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin and J.B. Smoove are here, in echoes of their “Curb” characters. (Not Cheryl Hines, though, whose husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is lampooned; Trump takes a licking as well.) Jerry Seinfeld joins David in a Lewis and Clark sketch; Bill Hader and Kathryn Hahn play Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln; Jon Hamm and Sean Hayes the Wright Brothers, and so on. As his former presidential self, Obama’s comedy game is strong. No one who saw his turn on “Between Two Ferns” should be surprised.
Like most sketch comedies, it’s hit and miss, but if you like those particular noises David makes, he makes them here, and I did enjoy its application of New York Jewish and Westside L.A. energy to period scenarios. I am a particular sucker for that sort of thing.
And finally, for an accurate, eccentric comic journey through the past, I recommend the divine “Drunk History” (2013-2019) in which intoxicated narrators tell real tales from American history, while actors, mostly well-known, reenact the narrative, mouthing their words. (Seasons 4 through 6 stream on Paramount+; the Comedy Central YouTube channel posts many other episodes, including a Revolutionary War compilation.) Because the alcohol drives the storytellers toward vernacular expression, these pieces can seem more alive and authentic, more relatable, than big-budget, big-screen productions. The facts are all in place. And it’s very funny.
See you at the Tricentennial.
Anniversaries are funny things, commemorating the bad as well as the good in our shared and personal histories. Even when the initial event was a happy one, the present state of affairs might be less so, and such markers can be an occasion to look back at plans gone wrong, ideals betrayed, relationships frayed, in order to recapture what was lost, or right the ship sailing forward. It’s a time for reflection, not just celebration.
We are coming down fast on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, generally accounted as America’s birthday — the semiquincentennial, to use the word you may have recently learned and will forget by July 5. If it seems to be less of a moment than it might, perhaps it’s being obscured by the global excitement of the World Cup, or by the practical disasters in Washington that somehow serve double duty as metaphors for and examples of corruption, incompetence, self-dealing and brand-splattering.
That a not insignificant segment of the population, including some elected officials, could do with lessons in civics and history is a truth I hold to be self-evident. Yet as American democracy reels on its heels, it’s a good time for any of us to brush up on the country’s founding and foundational principals. (It’s always good to know what you’re talking about.) Fortunately, your television, and the little television you call your phone, is here to help.
On the heels of the excellent 12-hour PBS film series “The American Revolution,” by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, which is still streaming, comes the five-part Netflix series “The American Experiment.” (Related Burns documentaries “Thomas Jefferson,” from 1997, and the 2002 “Benjamin Franklin” are also available on the PBS site and app, along with Burns’ series on sundry American themes; if you’re looking to get a grip on this country, you could do worse than to watch them all.) Directed by Brian Knappenberger, “The American Experiment” covers similar historical ground, though with greater emphasis on what followed the fighting. (It powers through the revolution; the British surrender halfway through Episode 3.)
The meat of the series concerns the hard and slow — and apparently, sweaty and smoky — work of imperfectly forming a more perfect union, knitting a country together from colonies that, having dispatched a common enemy, returned to feeling they had little in common. Close attention is paid to the crafting of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the currently moribund system of checks and balances, and that pesky electoral college. Not least is George Washington’s imprint on the presidency, including leaving office after a second term and the peaceful transition of power — it was considered a big deal, if not a surprise, that he showed up for the inauguration of John Adams, his successor — traditions generally respected, until lately. You know what I’m talking about, but Knappenberger will tell you with a single contemporary clip, if somehow you don’t.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ted Cruz, Al Gore and Lonnie G. Bunch III are interviewed in “The American Experiment.” (Netflix)
The series is pushed along by talking-head historians and museum people who know their subject so well they can relate it as if they’d been there, and by a scrupulously balanced selection of (not unbalanced) philosophizing Democratic and Republican politicians, in and out of office, as well as Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, former U.S. national security advisor and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to violate his oath of office when Trump pressed him not to certify the 2020 election results, thinks it’s high time for Congress to “take back the authority the founders intended.” Sen. Ted Cruz says without irony that “the framers were worried that we would have an executive that behaved like a king.” Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote in 2016, calls the electoral college “a relic of compromises from the Constitutional Convention” and, laughing, “an abomination, for obvious reasons.” And when former Vice President Al Gore says, “One of the hallmarks of the kind of oppressive ruler that our founders feared might emerge sometime in the U.S. is to put troops in the communities and turn them against the American people,” it takes a severe lack of imagination, or a determined refusal, not to picture current events.
Being reality-based, “The American Experience” is naturally a rebuke to the current administration’s ham-handed attempts to draw a curtain over anything that might offend white MAGA sensibilities — slavery, say — and a reaffirmation that the country is by charter diverse. “How do you understand a nation if you don’t look at all the challenges a nation has faced?” asks embattled Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III. “A great nation doesn’t run from its past, doesn’t hide from its past.”
Points deducted for some stiff dramatic reenactments; I would prefer a picture of an empty desk than one of a miscast George Washington sitting at it. But it’s still worth your while.
“Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War,” streaming on pbs.org and the PBS app, looks at four who didn’t wait to be told they were free: James Lafayette, a patriot double agent; Harry Washington, enslaved by George Washington, who ran away to join the British (who promised slaves a better deal); Elizabeth Freeman, a.k.a. Mum Bet, who in 1781 sued for her freedom under Massachusetts law and won; and Abraham Peyton Skipwith, who bought his freedom and became the first Black landowner in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Va. A lack of visual references is compensated for by original paintings animated with AI. We will have the AI discussion at some point — a title card makes mention of it, out of pride or defensiveness, I’m not sure which — but the stories are the point, and they’re interesting.
For a caffeinated run through the whole of American history, check out Crash Course, the YouTube channel founded by pioneering vloggers John and Henry Green, where you’ll find sprightly series on “U.S. History” (47 episodes, hosted by John), “U.S. Government and Politics” (50 episodes), “Black American History” and, most recently, “Native American History” (24 episodes). They’re highly informative and a lot of fun. (John’s is especially wacky; an ear for ironic humor will be helpful.) Also on YouTube is “250 to 250,” historian Heather Cox Richardson’s update of CBS’ “Bicentennial Minutes,” with bite-sized videos about important people, events and programs across the life of the nation, narrated by scholars, politicians and celebrities. Does it have a progressive bent? If “the story of America has been one of the constant efforts of Americans — from all races, ethnicities, genders and abilities — to make real the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our democracy” is progressive, then yes.
Larry David, left, and Jerry Seinfeld as American explorers Lewis and Clark in HBO’s “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.”
(John Johnson / HBO)
In a quite different key is HBO’s “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America,” and exactly what you might expect from its title and star. A semi-improvised period — or many periods — sketch comedy from Larry David (with “Curb Your Enthusiasm” collaborator Jeff Schaffer), it’s an unreliable history lesson that serves primarily as the further adventures of the headlining kvetch, but in its cracked way it does celebrate, or at least acknowledge, American heritage. The 44th president, Barack Obama, an executive producer with Michelle on the show, approached David to do something for the semiquincentennial. Introducing the series, Obama declares, “We’re not perfect, we can be irascible, heady, selfish, cheap and, let’s face it, some of us will always find something to complain about.”
Its method is to import the Larry of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” into various historical scenarios in which he will, in the usual way, and in a variety of wigs, make trouble by trying to avoid it, or anything that requires extra effort, or tact. The first sketch dresses him up as Robert Livingston, who in this telling writes the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (the historical Livingston worked on the document, but not that way), whose list of grievances to set before the king, includes, “If you are invited to a dinner party you’re legally entitled to know who is coming before you accept,” “If you pick a line, you have to stay in it,” and “No sharing desserts — if you want a dessert, order it, don’t pass it around.”
Many sketches pack in a number of ideas, which can make them feel wayward, some run out of ideas before they end, and even the best ones can go on too long. In a Depression-era bit set at a soup kitchen, you know he’ll be attacked for seeming to cut the line — “chat cuts” is the Davidean phrase — and that he’ll criticize the soup. Coming upon the Boston Tea Party, it’s inevitable he’ll whine about not being invited. “Curb” stars Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin and J.B. Smoove are here, in echoes of their “Curb” characters. (Not Cheryl Hines, though, whose husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is lampooned; Trump takes a licking as well.) Jerry Seinfeld joins David in a Lewis and Clark sketch; Bill Hader and Kathryn Hahn play Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln; Jon Hamm and Sean Hayes the Wright Brothers, and so on. As his former presidential self, Obama’s comedy game is strong. No one who saw his turn on “Between Two Ferns” should be surprised.
Like most sketch comedies, it’s hit and miss, but if you like those particular noises David makes, he makes them here, and I did enjoy its application of New York Jewish and Westside L.A. energy to period scenarios. I am a particular sucker for that sort of thing.
And finally, for an accurate, eccentric comic journey through the past, I recommend the divine “Drunk History” (2013-2019) in which intoxicated narrators tell real tales from American history, while actors, mostly well-known, reenact the narrative, mouthing their words. (Seasons 4 through 6 stream on Paramount+; the Comedy Central YouTube channel posts many other episodes, including a Revolutionary War compilation.) Because the alcohol drives the storytellers toward vernacular expression, these pieces can seem more alive and authentic, more relatable, than big-budget, big-screen productions. The facts are all in place. And it’s very funny.
See you at the Tricentennial.
Anniversaries are funny things, commemorating the bad as well as the good in our shared and personal histories. Even when the initial event was a happy one, the present state of affairs might be less so, and such markers can be an occasion to look back at plans gone wrong, ideals betrayed, relationships frayed, in order to recapture what was lost, or right the ship sailing forward. It’s a time for reflection, not just celebration.
We are coming down fast on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, generally accounted as America’s birthday — the semiquincentennial, to use the word you may have recently learned and will forget by July 5. If it seems to be less of a moment than it might, perhaps it’s being obscured by the global excitement of the World Cup, or by the practical disasters in Washington that somehow serve double duty as metaphors for and examples of corruption, incompetence, self-dealing and brand-splattering.
That a not insignificant segment of the population, including some elected officials, could do with lessons in civics and history is a truth I hold to be self-evident. Yet as American democracy reels on its heels, it’s a good time for any of us to brush up on the country’s founding and foundational principals. (It’s always good to know what you’re talking about.) Fortunately, your television, and the little television you call your phone, is here to help.
On the heels of the excellent 12-hour PBS film series “The American Revolution,” by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, which is still streaming, comes the five-part Netflix series “The American Experiment.” (Related Burns documentaries “Thomas Jefferson,” from 1997, and the 2002 “Benjamin Franklin” are also available on the PBS site and app, along with Burns’ series on sundry American themes; if you’re looking to get a grip on this country, you could do worse than to watch them all.) Directed by Brian Knappenberger, “The American Experiment” covers similar historical ground, though with greater emphasis on what followed the fighting. (It powers through the revolution; the British surrender halfway through Episode 3.)
The meat of the series concerns the hard and slow — and apparently, sweaty and smoky — work of imperfectly forming a more perfect union, knitting a country together from colonies that, having dispatched a common enemy, returned to feeling they had little in common. Close attention is paid to the crafting of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the currently moribund system of checks and balances, and that pesky electoral college. Not least is George Washington’s imprint on the presidency, including leaving office after a second term and the peaceful transition of power — it was considered a big deal, if not a surprise, that he showed up for the inauguration of John Adams, his successor — traditions generally respected, until lately. You know what I’m talking about, but Knappenberger will tell you with a single contemporary clip, if somehow you don’t.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ted Cruz, Al Gore and Lonnie G. Bunch III are interviewed in “The American Experiment.” (Netflix)
The series is pushed along by talking-head historians and museum people who know their subject so well they can relate it as if they’d been there, and by a scrupulously balanced selection of (not unbalanced) philosophizing Democratic and Republican politicians, in and out of office, as well as Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, former U.S. national security advisor and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to violate his oath of office when Trump pressed him not to certify the 2020 election results, thinks it’s high time for Congress to “take back the authority the founders intended.” Sen. Ted Cruz says without irony that “the framers were worried that we would have an executive that behaved like a king.” Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote in 2016, calls the electoral college “a relic of compromises from the Constitutional Convention” and, laughing, “an abomination, for obvious reasons.” And when former Vice President Al Gore says, “One of the hallmarks of the kind of oppressive ruler that our founders feared might emerge sometime in the U.S. is to put troops in the communities and turn them against the American people,” it takes a severe lack of imagination, or a determined refusal, not to picture current events.
Being reality-based, “The American Experience” is naturally a rebuke to the current administration’s ham-handed attempts to draw a curtain over anything that might offend white MAGA sensibilities — slavery, say — and a reaffirmation that the country is by charter diverse. “How do you understand a nation if you don’t look at all the challenges a nation has faced?” asks embattled Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III. “A great nation doesn’t run from its past, doesn’t hide from its past.”
Points deducted for some stiff dramatic reenactments; I would prefer a picture of an empty desk than one of a miscast George Washington sitting at it. But it’s still worth your while.
“Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War,” streaming on pbs.org and the PBS app, looks at four who didn’t wait to be told they were free: James Lafayette, a patriot double agent; Harry Washington, enslaved by George Washington, who ran away to join the British (who promised slaves a better deal); Elizabeth Freeman, a.k.a. Mum Bet, who in 1781 sued for her freedom under Massachusetts law and won; and Abraham Peyton Skipwith, who bought his freedom and became the first Black landowner in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Va. A lack of visual references is compensated for by original paintings animated with AI. We will have the AI discussion at some point — a title card makes mention of it, out of pride or defensiveness, I’m not sure which — but the stories are the point, and they’re interesting.
For a caffeinated run through the whole of American history, check out Crash Course, the YouTube channel founded by pioneering vloggers John and Henry Green, where you’ll find sprightly series on “U.S. History” (47 episodes, hosted by John), “U.S. Government and Politics” (50 episodes), “Black American History” and, most recently, “Native American History” (24 episodes). They’re highly informative and a lot of fun. (John’s is especially wacky; an ear for ironic humor will be helpful.) Also on YouTube is “250 to 250,” historian Heather Cox Richardson’s update of CBS’ “Bicentennial Minutes,” with bite-sized videos about important people, events and programs across the life of the nation, narrated by scholars, politicians and celebrities. Does it have a progressive bent? If “the story of America has been one of the constant efforts of Americans — from all races, ethnicities, genders and abilities — to make real the belief that we are all created equal and have a right to have a say in our democracy” is progressive, then yes.
Larry David, left, and Jerry Seinfeld as American explorers Lewis and Clark in HBO’s “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.”
(John Johnson / HBO)
In a quite different key is HBO’s “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America,” and exactly what you might expect from its title and star. A semi-improvised period — or many periods — sketch comedy from Larry David (with “Curb Your Enthusiasm” collaborator Jeff Schaffer), it’s an unreliable history lesson that serves primarily as the further adventures of the headlining kvetch, but in its cracked way it does celebrate, or at least acknowledge, American heritage. The 44th president, Barack Obama, an executive producer with Michelle on the show, approached David to do something for the semiquincentennial. Introducing the series, Obama declares, “We’re not perfect, we can be irascible, heady, selfish, cheap and, let’s face it, some of us will always find something to complain about.”
Its method is to import the Larry of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” into various historical scenarios in which he will, in the usual way, and in a variety of wigs, make trouble by trying to avoid it, or anything that requires extra effort, or tact. The first sketch dresses him up as Robert Livingston, who in this telling writes the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (the historical Livingston worked on the document, but not that way), whose list of grievances to set before the king, includes, “If you are invited to a dinner party you’re legally entitled to know who is coming before you accept,” “If you pick a line, you have to stay in it,” and “No sharing desserts — if you want a dessert, order it, don’t pass it around.”
Many sketches pack in a number of ideas, which can make them feel wayward, some run out of ideas before they end, and even the best ones can go on too long. In a Depression-era bit set at a soup kitchen, you know he’ll be attacked for seeming to cut the line — “chat cuts” is the Davidean phrase — and that he’ll criticize the soup. Coming upon the Boston Tea Party, it’s inevitable he’ll whine about not being invited. “Curb” stars Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin and J.B. Smoove are here, in echoes of their “Curb” characters. (Not Cheryl Hines, though, whose husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is lampooned; Trump takes a licking as well.) Jerry Seinfeld joins David in a Lewis and Clark sketch; Bill Hader and Kathryn Hahn play Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln; Jon Hamm and Sean Hayes the Wright Brothers, and so on. As his former presidential self, Obama’s comedy game is strong. No one who saw his turn on “Between Two Ferns” should be surprised.
Like most sketch comedies, it’s hit and miss, but if you like those particular noises David makes, he makes them here, and I did enjoy its application of New York Jewish and Westside L.A. energy to period scenarios. I am a particular sucker for that sort of thing.
And finally, for an accurate, eccentric comic journey through the past, I recommend the divine “Drunk History” (2013-2019) in which intoxicated narrators tell real tales from American history, while actors, mostly well-known, reenact the narrative, mouthing their words. (Seasons 4 through 6 stream on Paramount+; the Comedy Central YouTube channel posts many other episodes, including a Revolutionary War compilation.) Because the alcohol drives the storytellers toward vernacular expression, these pieces can seem more alive and authentic, more relatable, than big-budget, big-screen productions. The facts are all in place. And it’s very funny.
See you at the Tricentennial.
