Netflix

Alex Honnold gets paid $500,000 for not falling to his death …

Just when you thought The Running Man would never become real television–because watching hunters murder human game show contestants might be unseemly–Netflix screams, “Not so fast!”

Now, the streaming giant didn’t greenlight a dystopian, murderous gameshow that, if you added snow, might resemble present-day Minneapolis, but it managed to pay Alex Honnold, a professional mountain climber, $500,000 to scale a tall tower in Taipei.

The catch: Honnold won’t wear any climbing or safety gear. He falls, he dies.

And, boy, did people watch, with 6.2 million views of “Skyscraper Live.” I wasn’t one of them. I find it ghoulish watching what is ostensibly entertainment, knowing full well the star entertainer might plummet 1,667 feet to his death. Netflix had the dignity to put a 10-second delay on the program in case that happened.

Can you imagine if it did? Now, I’m thrilled it didn’t. But I envision Alex somewhere on the tower, and then all of a sudden, you cut to an image reading, “Technical Difficulties.” They would not have broadcast Alex falling and then cut away before the splat. Netflix is classy that way.

First, if you don’t know who Alex Honnold is, watch Free Solo immediately. It documents how Honnold climbed the 3,000-foot-tall El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in 2018 without a rope. Or anything. It was him, some sturdy shoes, and a bag of chalk for his hands.

Second, Alex Honnold, 40, is a lunatic. He’s mentally sound in almost every way, except that this married father with two kids climbs tall things for a living without anything to prevent him from dying should he fall. It’s called Free Soloing. And climbers absolutely have died in this manner.

If you think you’ve ever had a bad day at the office, like, some typos wound up in your boss’s PowerPoint presentation, just imagine what Alex’s bad day might look like. You’d need a human-sized spatula.

Alex Honnold is the best at what he does, no doubt. He’s freakishly strong and controls fear in ways I cannot comprehend. But all it takes is one crumbling rock, one spooked bird darting from a mountain crevice, and that’s the ball game. I imagine his life insurance policy has some hefty premiums, and his family will be well compensated should the unthinkable happen. But to inflict that on your children and wife strikes me as cruel. Just hang it up, man. Or wear ropes! It’s no longer all about you.

There was a minor kerfuffle over Honnold receiving “only” $500,000 to scale that tower. This is silly. Nobody forced Honnold to accept half a million dollars in exchange for the possibility of him splattering on the pavement. Maybe hire Scott Boras, of baseball agenting fame, to represent you. He’ll net you a fortune.

But this presents the ghoulish prospect of a bidding war to get Honnold to climb something else incredibly tall and dangerous to entertain the masses. Chances are, that’s already in the works because of Honnold’s success in Taipei, and because there’s an audience for it. But I’m not in it. For the sake of decency, I hope I’m not the only one.

Stranger Things Series Finale: The Neverending Story

Netflix’s now-concluded Stranger Things took many children of the 1980s on a nostalgic trip to a decade of ugly sweaters, big hair, and spider-like monsters. Born in 1975, I remember the first two but not the latter. I guess it’s a Hawkins, Indiana, thing.

Most of you reading know what the series is about, so I won’t get into it. Reviews about online about how good (or bad) the series finale was. Titled “The Rightside Up,” you didn’t watch the two-hour plus episode so much as endure it, inevitably leading to you asking to nobody in particular, “When is this going to end?” Much the way many people did while watching Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, leaving the theater with five-o’clock shadow when you entered it clean-shaven.

Now, I don’t take these TV shows seriously. None of Stranger Things made any particular sense to me, but it entertained and that’s all I ask. People much nerdier than are picking the episode, and series, apart becase it didn’t end the way they wanted it to end. Go out and make your own nonsensical show, if that’s the case. But here’s what bewildered me about the finale (spoilers ahead):

  1. The military just let everyone in the Hawkins crew go after several of them murdered US soldiers? That’s right, Hopper, especially, shot and killed multiple men in uniform. Eleven snapped a bunch of their necks, and Murray blew up a helicopter, presumably killing everyone on board. Linda Hamilton’s evil military character basically just vanishes. What happened to her beside smoking even more cigarettes? All of that went unanswered. Despite the Hawkins’s party heroically saving the world, I’m positive some of them committed a few felonies along the way. And, what, the US government says, eh, whatever, you can go home now? Maybe the military was like, “we did some bad stuff, too, like kidnapping children and using them as Mengele-esque test subjects, so it all evens out in the end.” I’m still scratching my head over that.
  2. The big scary spider monster was way too easy to defeat. Yes, the brave party fights and kills the proverbial dragon at the end of the show. This happens both inside the spider with Eleven battling Vecna, and outside with everyone else shooting up the spider-like vessel that’s linked to Vecna. Kill one, kill both, or something like that. Nancy points the party to the tippy-tops of nearby mountains and commands them to attack the best from above! And just like that, they’re on top of the rocks! You have to climb the mountain first! How the hell did they get up there so fast? Whatever the case may be, the spider–easily the size of several city blocks and as tall as Nakatomi Plaza–folded after a Nancy shoots it with a machine gun. We’re talking a kaiju-sized abomination with what would have to be a thick hide dying to bullets that would be the size of amoebas to it. Nancy had help with party members dousing it with flame-throwers and lobbing explosives at it, but if this is the end of the video game, the final boss should not collapse like a Jenga tower at the hands of an excited toddler.
  3. The four main boys–Dustin, Lucas, Will and Mike–graduate high school and are almost immediately invited to a party hosted by the hottest girl in the school. And they opt to play Dungeons & Dragons instead? Come on! I get it, that’s how we’re introduced to them in season one. But they’re all 18 now and have the opportunity to hang out with actual young women (and in Will’s case, young men). Nah, forget that, let’s hang out in a basement brimming with body odor and radon and throw a bunch of mishapen dice on the table while Mike makes up some nonsense about goblins.
  4. Eleven is alive? I don’t know. Mike gives a somewhat plausible explanation as to why. But let’s say she is alive. We’re talking about an emotionally unstable girl who never graduated high school and who massively distrusts authority after being expiremented upon in ghastly ways. How does she support herself? I sincerely doubt she’s wandering around a beautiful valley with roaring waterfalls, the way Mike imagines it. Can she even fill out a job application? I pray she’s not turning tricks in Indianapolis, or committing petty theft just to get by. We could use a little more clarity on that one.

So, those were a few things that stood out to me. The vaunted Duffer Brothers, who created the show, set up a possible sequel in that universe when Holly Wheeler and some of her young friends gather around the Dungeons & Dragon table and start playing. What, are we going back to the nostalgic 1990s now, with references to grunge bands, the Whitewater scandal (which nobody understands), and Newt Gingrich tussling with Bill Clinton? I got news for you: Dungeons & Dragons wasn’t a thing in the 1990s. Magic: The Gathering was. And the last thing I want is another group of kids warding off a stand-in for a Shivan Dragon or Two-Headed Giant while the government conducts more dastardly experiments on people. Gues what else started in the 1990s? Moveon.org. We can only hope.