From TCM to TLC.
One of my many thoughts catching up on the new reality series “The Baldwins” — a show that is as boring as it is boorish, both television Benadryl and a moral septic tank.
As a close watcher of everything Alec Baldwin over the many years — all the zigs, the zags — I remembered how, less than a decade ago, he was the hand-picked host of “The Essentials” on the classic old movies channel TCM. Chosen to replace the legendary Robert Osborne on the segment after his passing. A plum gig that involved presenting golden oldies like “Rear Window.”
This was, of course, in the latter part of the 2010s when the winky Baldwin was a blue-chip figure in the fame economy. The quintessential working actor, whose career spanned decades and was a link, in a way, to a faded Hollywood — having worked with the likes of Sean Connery and director Mike Nichols, and once even earned a Tony nom playing the Marlon Brando role in a theatrical run of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Whose long IMDb scroll includes unforgettables like “Glengarry Glen Ross,” and whose marital boom-and-bust with Kim Basinger had itself settled into ’90s toxic nostalgia — but nostalgia, nonetheless.
Still harnessing the good will that came out of his run on TV’s “30 Rock” — which itself was a comeback, after lots of tabloid fuss in the decade prior — our Alec had, by then, settled into largely secondary roles, but in largely halo projects, films with Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett.
Just as saliently, too: he’d entered the pantheon of quintessential New Yorkers (like a Fran Lebowitz, or the way a Regis Philbin or a Liz Smith once moved in the swirls of Manhattan). Baldwin, after all, is the guy who holds the record for the number of times hosting “SNL” (17). Who was selected as the official announcer of his beloved New York Philharmonic. Fancy.
Who, in his hunkier young buck days, even once escorted Jackie O to a Broadway opening, on a double date with Carly Simon and her then-husband. “Jackie Kennedy wants to go on a date with me?” Simon recalled him wowing in her memoir.
Life comes at you fast, though.
One moment you’re doing movies with Meryl Streep; the next — faster than you can say “It’s Complicated” — you’re doing a “docuseries” on the American network best known for its “90 Day Fiancé” meta-verse and shows like “Dr. Pimple Popper.”
All part of the landscape with which I came to “The Baldwins,” which features Alec, his bride, the pseudo-Spanish yogi señora Hilaria, and their seven (seven!) children. A show purporting to be an heir to the Gosselins, it’s all family, family, family, hijinks, hijinks, hijinks — except for the fact that they were shooting against the backdrop of the case going to trial, last summer, surrounding the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins (the 42-year-old died, shot by a gun Baldwin was holding on the set of the film “Rust” in 2021).
So, yeah, like “Jon & Kate Plus 8” meets “Presumed Innocent”: the show. Which, full confession, might have been compelling except that they mostly talk around the deets of the trial, and/or leave huge blanks in the timeline, and instead resort to blatherings involving the kids’ seating chart that Hilaria is preparing for a family trip to the Hamptons. Who’ll sit where? Logistics! Kill me now. At another point in the first ep, they all go to an old-timey barber shop! Relatable! New York, New York! Sigh.
Alec himself is a shell of a man, with more bags under his eyes than at Maison Goyard, with nary a glimpse of his once marketable debonair side. In fact, I’m not entirely sure if Alec knows where he is, in wrinkled clothing, his hollowed eyes. In a fugue state?
Hilaria, meanwhile — who’s added four cats to the household, despite the fact that Alec is allergic to cats, as we’re told — keeps saying it is her goal to make their home life as normal as possible in these difficult times. (I know! A camera crew!)
Did they really need moolah that much? Why were we even here? Leave it to someone on Reddit who summed up the very folly of this show, musing on their possible objectives: “For her: the thirst for fame. For him: image rehab.” Unfortunately, though, “they’re about 15 years too late, too. Thinking a reality show about their family will go over well with today’s audiences really highlights how insulated and out of touch they are. They’re trying to ride on the heels of a trend that died out a decade ago.”
A few places my mind wandered while watching “The Baldwins,” I gotta confess:
1. What ever happened to “the town” that Basinger once bought? (IYKYK)
2. Is Ireland Baldwin (his daughter with Kim) close at all with her cousin Hailey Baldwin, who is Mrs. Bieber?
3. I kinda like that movie “Malice,” from the ’90s, with Alec and Nicole Kidman! Kinda forgotten … but Aaron Sorkin wrote it!
4. Remember when Alec briefly dated “Charlotte” from “Sex and the City,” a.k.a. Kristin Davis? I do.
5. Where are the nannies? Give me the nannies!
It wasn’t lost on me either that Episode 2 of this TLC mess was airing on the same night as the Oscars a few weeks back — the same Oscars that Alec once hosted! Back in 2010, with Steve Martin! Remember?
Eureka! Suddenly, I saw it: for a show that’s not particularly interesting, it is fascinating to me in the way it’s become a sacred text on the very miasma of fame. What goes up goes down: sing it, sister.
All things considered … will I continue to watch? Of course, I will. I’m a cultural masochist that way.
