![]() Azaria has always played the character with good humor and innate warmth, but his performance reaches new heights as Brockmire faces his own mortality, struggling to leave a mark in a world that’s falling apart. Brockmire’s fourth and final season features the man staring down a fractured, dystopian nation, ravaged by inequality and violence and disease (sound familiar?), trying to carve out an honest legacy built around giving back instead of serving himself. At the beginning of the series, Brockmire was a punchline, a man more famous for his meltdown-gone-viral than his announcing career, but he eventually climbed his way out of the gutter and back to respectability. On the basis of that sketch alone, there was no way to predict it would lead to one of the most compelling, vulnerable performances of the past decade. Hank Azaria’s role as the verbose, frequently drunk baseball announcer Jim Brockmire began its life as a throwaway Funny Or Die sketch. With perfect inflection, Fonda helped generate one of the most compulsively rewatchable television moments of the year, a joyous glimpse of the “before times” that one could turn to on YouTube whenever they needed an isolation pick-me-up. She opens the envelope and immediately recognizes the responsibility she carries, pausing just the right length of time before delivering a reading of “ Parasite” that perfectly transitioned into the un-Oscars-like explosion from the audience. And only three years removed from the Moonlight/ La La Land debacle, presenter Jane Fonda gave one of the best performances of the year by fully understanding both the gravity of the moment- Parasite becoming the first foreign film to win Best Picture-and the energy of the crowd in the Nokia Theatre. But even without the notoriety of being the last award show without jokes about masks and hand sanitizer, this year’s ceremony had an unmistakable energy as Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite gained momentum throughout the night, leading up to the announcement of Best Picture. It may seem a lifetime ago, but this year’s Oscars were a last gasp for the pageantry of a theater full of celebrities a month before COVID-19 shut down the country. ![]() But we’ll gladly follow Da’Vine Joy Randolph to wherever she winds up next (like we could even help it). The second season of High Fidelity was reportedly going to concentrate on Cherise’s journey, which just makes it even more of a damn shame that Hulu couldn’t find a way to give the show another season. It couldn’t be done, because Cherise was bound to offer even more outrageously funny patter, often matched with a dynamic dance move. Randolph didn’t draw attention as much as demand it, daring the viewer to take their eyes off of her for a nanosecond. Heaven help you if you crossed paths with Cherise whilst buying a Michael Jackson record, dissing Lauryn Hill, or refusing to recognize the greatness of “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Her Cherise was as unbelievably fun to watch as Barry was: fiercely opinionated, convinced that the whole world was wrong when she was right, blessed with unwavering self-confidence that compelled her toward a music career even before she could actually play anything. Da’Vine Joy Randolph refused to watch the prototype for her High Fidelity character-Jack Black’s Barry in the 2000 movie-thereby becoming a scene-stealer from a scene-stealer.
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