The Kennedys on Reelz

I'm just saying the Joe Kennedy "Character" made for great TV.

I'm sure they took a lot of liberties, and maybe they should have just made a fictional movie about an ambitious, political family, but it was fun.

 

Enjoyed what I saw.

 

Too bad they can't get a two-fer with sonny headed to The Hague. Anyway, I watched this Kennedys series. Thought it wasn't bad. Barry Pepper was amazing. Loved Tom Wilkinson too.

 

I think Katie Holmes is nauseatingly bad at everything she's ever done, so I couldn't make it through more than a couple episodes. And I like Pepper, but he just wasn't Bobby to me.

 

I don't think I have Reelz (at least It wasn't apparent my cable system had it), but even if they did, I don't know if I could watch it. I have never had reason to be impressed by *anything* Kinnear has ever done, so his playing JFK is just trying to legitimize his acting career (it won't, not for me, anyway).

 

Eh, those Yankees all sound alike ...

I watched the entire series on Netflix over the weekend. As has been mentioned, not much in the way of new ground, but seeing it visualized made it seem more vivid. What a screwed-up family. Not sure I'd heard or read anywhere that Joe Sr. offered Jackie a million-dollar trust fund to stay married and help JFK get elected. Was that true, or did the producers take some license there?

They did have a brief Ted appearance in the first episode or two, but it was pretty clear this project was about JFK and Jackie. The RFK stuff at the end did feel like an afterthought, and it skipped Chappaquiddick altogether.

I can see where the family, with the resources it has, would lean on a network to pull some punches as it were. It didn't portray Sinatra in the best light, either.

 

There have long been rumors about a no-divorce payoff to Jackie, fwiw.

 

I did find it interesting that History debuted "The Kennedy Family Home Movies" a week or so ago. I don't know if it was related to the History channel's decision to punt the miniseries, but I am surprised I hadn't heard much about the possibility.

 

On our recent trip to Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod, I found out another few tidbits re the Kennedys. Apparently, old Joe had a house on Martha's Vineyard that, for years, was his little hideaway for his affairs, mostly with Gloria Swanson. Also, on our tour of MV, we saw the driveway for the place where Jackie lived after marrying Aristotle. They said after a few months of living with armed guards at the driveway and the beach, she gave them up when she saw that no one on MV gave a flying flip what she did and left her alone. That property now belongs to Caroline and family. No idea whether she uses it at all.

 

There's a little Kennedy Museum in Hyannis: http://jfkhyannismuseum.org/

 

Yeah, I wanted to go there but we didn't make it. On our only full day on Cape Cod proper, it was beautiful and we went to the BEACH!