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Noah Wylie's performance is Emmy-worthy A simple trip to a grocery store sets in motion a chain of tragic events in “The Red Line,” a limited series Sundays on CBS. Noah Wyle (“ER”) stars as Daniel Calder, a teacher whose husband, Harrison (Corey Reynolds), an African American doctor, is picking up milk after a long shift at the Chicago hospital where he works when a holdup takes place. After the thief leaves, Harrison steps forward to minister to the owner’s head wounds. A lone white cop, responding to a 911 call, enters the store and shoots Harrison twice in the back, mistaking him for the thief. Six months later, Calder is trying to function at his job teaching AP history at a local high school while raising his adopted teenage daughter, Jira (Aliyah Royale), also African American. He’s doing a bad job of holding it together. “This is thrust upon Daniel and he’s not ready,” says Wyle, 47. “He has to put on a brave face but internally he’s crumbling. His grief has to take second place. He has to figure out a way to reach somebody and admits he has lost control. And he’s selfish and not above hurting people That’s the part I like. He’s not a perpetual victim. At the same time he’s an antagonist.” First developed as a play by executive producers Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, “The Red Line” — so named after the Chicago metro line — shows how one family’s grief reverberates through Chicago’s shaky sociopolitical structure. Calder wants Paul Evans (Noel Fisher), the cop who killed his partner, to lose his badge and hires an attorney. Feeling she can’t express what she’s going through as a black child who has lost her black father, Jira reaches out to her birth mother, Tia Young (Emayatzy Corinealdi), who’s risen far above the circumstances that found her pregnant at age 15: She’s running for public office and has her own family. For Wyle, it’s his Regina King moment: a mature, robust role that reminds your peers how good you really are. “I was incredibly moved by it. The scripts avoided clichés and went for a deeper sense of inclusion,” he says. “I looked at the project more like a personal odyssey than the next big career decision. I know they went through a few actors before they came to me.” Aware that we live in an age where art must serve politics, Parrish and Weiss admit they first offered the part to the nation’s most public gay actors. “Noah knows that. He knows we did our due diligence,” Weiss says. Availability was the problem. “Most of the actors were in [the 2018 Broadway production] of ‘The Boys in the Band,’ ” Parrish adds. The matter seemed settled once the cast gathered at the first table read and Wyle left the writers in tears. That’s when Weiss said to herself, “Oh, it was always supposed to be him.” If there’s any controversy in “The Red Line” it will be the series’ negative portrayal of the white cops in the Chicago police department, which is in line with other Hollywood portrayals of law enforcement personnel. But Parrish defends her characterization of the policemen in “The Red Line.” “It was very important to not portray the cops as just one thing,” says Parrish. “It was important that Paul not be a sociopath blindly executing people. Or a perfectly good person making a mistake. The truth lies in the ambiguous middle.” “It’s really easy forget how many dedicated men and women risk their lives every day,” Wyle says. “I think Erica and Caitlin did a good job of showing the diversity of the police department. I think it’s honest.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A real-life event had a profound effect on the premise of the CBS limited series “The Red Line.” The eight-episode series picks up almost immediately after the fictional police shooting death of a gay black doctor, Harrison Brennan (Corey Reynolds) and follows three storylines: his husband Daniel (Noah Wyle) and their adopted daughter Jira (Aliyah Royale); Officer Paul Evans (Noel Fisher), his brother (Michael Patrick Thornton) and his partner Vic (Elizabeth Laidlaw); and Chicago alderman candidate Tia Young, Jira’s birth mother (Emayatzy Corinealdi). The program pulls from the headlines, a combination of similar cases across the country. The aftermath of the actual shooting death of a black teenager by a Chicago cop changed history, and changed the script. In 2014, Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by Officer Jason Van Dyke. Initially, Van Dyke was not charged because he claimed McDonald, who was 17, had been behaving erratically, had a small knife and was a threat to the officer. There was dashcam video of the shooting, but it took a judge’s order 13 months later to get the city to release it. The video showed McDonald veering away from officers, contradicting Van Dyke’s account that he had lunged at him with a knife. In October 2018, a jury found Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm — one count for each bullet fired at McDonald. He became the first Chicago cop in decades to be convicted of murder for an on-duty shooting. McDonald was convicted during the filming for “The Red Line”; his sentencing didn’t change the story or the idea that officers are held to a different standard, but it meant precedence for their fictional officer to face repercussions for his actions. Showrunners Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, who have worked together for more than 15 years, created the series from their 2011 play “A Twist of Water,” which debuted at a Chicago theater before moving to off-Broadway. “We returned to those characters and that story that we loved so much,” Weiss told the Daily News. “The cultural conversation and sociopolitical conversation was different between 2011 and 2015 when we wrote the pilot and even more in 2019.” Parrish and Weiss, both white, built diversity into the writers’ room and crew. “From moment one, we made it a priority to listen,” Parrish told The News. “We care more about getting the show right than either of us being right.” In the first two episodes provided to critics, “The Red Line” is a heartbreaking reminder that a story doesn’t end when an Emergency Room doctor declares time of death or a trial ends. Family members are left reeling; police officers struggle to move on. “I was so moved by the immensity of the tragedy,” Wyle, returning to network TV for the first time since “ER,” told The News. “I’m really attracted to characters who go along almost on autopilot and everything that defines them…is stripped away. Where does that leave them?” “The Red Line” looks at what happens next. Wyle’s character Daniel grapples with his emotions while dealing with his daughter’s new reality, while Jira (Royale), who grew up with two fathers in a mixed-race household, is looking for something to hold onto. She picks her birth mother. “She’s trying so hard to get Daniel to understand,” Royale, a relative newcomer to TV, told The News. “She knows her upbringing and she’s thankful for it, but clearly there’s this whole universe she never knew about. She needs someone who looks like her, a woman who looks like her, to get a a better understanding of herself, a better comprehension of what happened to Harrison.” And for Paul Evans, the white officer who shot and killed the innocent black man, a young cop searches for the truth of that night: colleagues, including his partner, have repeatedly told him he did everything right. But that’s not what happened. “It exists in the gray,” Fisher, known best for his role on “Shameless,” told The News. “From the moment that he understands what happens, he’s utterly devastated and questioning himself from that point on.” “The Red Line” is more questions than answers, more doubt than faith. The show doesn’t want you to pick a side or a villain, to blame the white cop for shooting or the black man for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “It’s so easy to ascribe a value judgement to something that you’re hearing the top level detail to,” Wyle told The News. “What we do and why we do things is infinitely more than that.”

SCHMICO overcame some recent struggles and endures! At the start, then at 4:02 (the final minute and a half was a scene from the spin-off, STATION 19): Starting at 3:02: 1:25 (note Nico’s weird facial expressions when he talks) and 3:10:

The NBA has had many brother combos play in the league, but never before have 2 brothers faced each other in the playoffs in a conference final or later… until now. 2-time MVP, future-hall-of-famer Steph Curry of the dynastic Warriors is facing younger brother Seth of the upstart Trail Blazers. What’s a parent to do? Mom Sonya & Dad Dell (a former NBA player himself) flipped a coin before Game 1 to decide who would root for whom. It was pretty easy to identify the results of the coin flip. No word on what they did for Game 2.

This is a witty, engrossing limited-run series that I've truly enjoyed. 8 episodes down, 2 to go. Best 10 minutes of my weeknights the last two weeks.

I barely got through season one. I couldn't stand Kevin's vapidity, Toby's saintliness, and William having the most drawn-out TV death since Dr. Auschlander took about 5 years to die from liver cancer on SAINT ELSEWHERE. I started recording the second season, intending to watch it, but never got the enthusiasm needed to begin.

http://synd.imgsrv.uclick.com/comics/cl/2019/cl190512.jpg

HOT IN CLEVELAND'S MTM REUNION...

A beautiful 22-year-old student fell Sunday morning while climbing a bell tower at Fordham University with friends to snap pictures of the skyline, and later died after the 40-foot fall, cops said. The group of seniors climbed the Keating Hall clock tower at about 3 a.m. when the woman fell through an opening on the first landing of the tower and tumbled inside the structure, striking her head on the ground, cops said. Students told The Post it was a “rite of passage” among seniors to climb the tower, touch the bell and taking photos outside one of the top windows. “I heard they were just getting a better view of the city,” a senior student, Anne, told The Post. “I think they were posting on Instagram when it happened.” The news spread quickly to fearful parents, who warned their kids to steer clear of the structure. “My mom texted me this morning and said, ‘stay out of the bell tower!” said Grayson Brown, 19, a freshman computer science major from Bethesda, Maryland. EMS rushed the injured student to St Barnabas Hospital, where she was in critical condition. “Access to that tower is always locked,” school spokesman Bob Howe told The Post. “University officials are investigating how the students gained access to the tower.” But a student said it is often open at night. “The doors aren’t always locked. They’re unlocked at night when they’re cleaning. They are always doing some kind of cleaning or renovation,” said a senior named Anne who declined to give a last name. It was too early to tell whether the door was open or the lock had been tampered with, Howe said.

Or should I have written Hagen-Dazs?

MI man sues parents over pornography collection A Grand Haven man is suing his parents for throwing out his pornography collection. A court order legally made Gavin Grimm a man. And he is listed as male on his birth certificate, passport and a state-issued identification card in California. (Source: MGN) He says it was no ordinary collection and was worth tens of thousands of dollars. His parents say they threw it out for a good reason. Since it's a civil case with no criminal charges, the names and identities of the parties are being kept anonymous. The man moved back into mom and dad's Grand Haven home in October of 2016 following a divorce, doing household chores in lieu of paying rent, federal court documents explain. He moved out just 10 months later. In December 2017, his parents allegedly delivered boxes of his stuff to his new place in Indiana, but, when they arrived, he noticed many of his possessions are missing. His parents allegedly told him they destroyed 12 moving boxes full of pornography. Unable to work it out with his parents, he called the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department, declaring his collection worth about $29,000. The prosecutor's office eventually declined to press charges in the matter. Just a month later, he began reaching out to his dad through e-mail. According to the lawsuit, he wrote, "If you had a problem with my belongings, you should have stated that at the time and I would have gone elsewhere. Instead, you choose to keep quiet and behave vindictively." His father responded, "Believe it or not, one reason for why I destroyed your porn was for your own mental and emotional heath. I would have done the same if I had found a kilo of crack cocaine. Someday, I hope you will understand." The man reached back out to investigators, allegedly sending one officer 44 emails worth of movies he says were destroyed, listing many as valuable out-of-print films. The prosecutor again declined to file charges. Fast forward to April 2019, he filed suit against his parents, seeking $86,000 in damages.

Stranded dog found swimming 130 miles off Thailand shore rescued This is the heartwarming moment a stranded dog was rescued after being found swimming in the Gulf of Thailand – 130 miles from the shore. Workers onboard an oil rig noticed the pooch’s head poking above the ripples as she paddled through the ocean on Friday. It’s understood the Aspin dog – named Boonrod (survivor) by her rescuers – fell from a fishing trawler,according to the Bangkok Post. Offshore drillers called out to the exhausted mutt and she swam towards them, taking refuge among the rusty metal bars of the rig. The workers then lowered a rope down to Boonrod and pulled her to safety. She stayed on the drilling platform for two nights while a special cage was welded and staff gave her food and water. Boonrod was finally lifted by crane onto another oil vessel passing through the area on Sunday, which delivered her to vets in Songkhla, southern Thailand, today. Oil rig worker, Khon Vitisak, who saved the animal, said he would like to adopt her if no owner comes forward. He said: “We found her trying to swim towards our rig, which is about 220 kilometers (136 miles) from the shore. Thankfully the sea was quite still because the wind was calm. We just saw her small head but if the ripples were bigger, I think we probably wouldn’t have noticed her at all. After she made it onto the bars below the rig she didn’t cry or bark at all. We looked for a way to help her and in the end, decided to use the rope to tie around her body to lift her up. When we gave her water and minerals her symptoms improved. She started sitting up and walking normally.” Animal charity volunteers who are now caring for the dog do not know if she has an owner or if she was a stray. Once she reached the rig, workers nursed Boonrod back to health while they radioed for help and requested a tanker that was returning to shore to pick her up.

Only if it's Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream... and he has more in the freezer.

Hey, buddy... it's the playoffs... pay attention to the game! And if you really like that ass, he has an identical twin, ya know!