Crisis in Six Scenes is an appropriate moniker for Woody Allen’s latest project, since the present iteration of his brand is crisis. To be an Allen apologist in 2016 (which I, for better or worse, but mostly worse, am) is to join a club any rational human being would refuse to be a member of.
My beleaguered brethren and I congregate in alleyways and dark corners of bars and speak reverently of the man’s work in hushed tones, afraid the governing body of what is and is not okay will discover our indiscretions and sic Twitter mobs on us. It’s one thing for Scarlett Johansson and Diane Keaton to defend the man, but they’re not people—they’re celebrities. For private citizens, the act is unilaterally perceived as an unforgivable transgression.
I saw Café Society, his last film, on opening day—the same day the all-female Ghostbusters reboot debuted. Some ally. I only laughed once at Café Society: during the opening credits, at the juxtaposition of clichéd Allen jazz with the comparatively gauche Amazon Studios logo. But I watched it. I watch them all, for much the same reason he apparently makes them—because you, specifically, do not want me to. A sick sense of nostalgic duty leads me, time and time again, to ill-attended matinees where the average age of my fellow patrons hovers around three to four times my own.
I didn’t have to leave my house in a raincoat, however, to catch Crisis; all six episodes of the Woodman’s (I call Woody Allen “the Woodman,” incidentally) first foray into episodic narrative television—which follows the trials and tribulations of a (suspend your disbelief) paranoid nebbish type confronted with the social upheaval of the tumultuous '60s—are currently streaming on Amazon.