No Mister Bond - I Expect You To Die

 A reckoning is at hand. At some point in the very near future, someone is going to remind me that I once suggested that Timothy Dalton was the best James Bond. 

No.

Strike that. 

I once insisted that Timothy Dalton was the best James Bond. I had some way too clever way of describing how Dalton's performance brought back subtleties of the character from Ian Fleming's books that were missing from so many other actors' portrayals of the super spy. It was a conversational gambit that worked really well for a clerk in a video store trying to check out The Living Daylights. "Classically trained actor," blah blah blah, "darker," blah blah blah. Made me sound like a real film buff.

Or a dolt.

Sean Connery is and always will be James Bond. If all he ever did was Goldfinger, that would have been sufficient to have his face emblazoned on the coin to commemorate the character. And yes, I am willing to forgive the blue terrycloth onesie he wore poolside and his offhand remark, "My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!"

I am also willing to overlook the hairpiece he wore in his last turn as 007. Never Say Never Again, unless it's to that toupee. Besides, it wasn't until after he let himself be unapologetically bald that his career really took off. He won his only Academy Award for The Untouchables, still a rough and tumble guy, but one who was not in need of a combover. 

He also played an aging Robin Hood to Audrey Hepburn's Maid Marian who was a sister. He helped bring Indiana Jones back to respectability by playing the archaeologist's father. People Magazine named him Sexiest Man Alive when he was fifty-nine years old. It's almost enough to make you forget about Darby O'Gill and the Little People. But no need, really, since Sean Connery was a giant no matter where he was and what he did. As part of 2020's insatiable need to suck more than any year ever, it took Sir Sean this week as part of the campaign to make this unrelenting vortex continue. But it turns out they took the wrong guy. He'll straighten things out wherever he lands, because that was how he rolled down here. He stomped on the Terra, even in a baby blue romper. And he will be missed. Aloha, Mister Bond. 

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