Plenty to discuss here at the end of the year! So much, in fact, that I'm splitting fall into three parts. There's just too much television!
Trailer Park Boys: Season 2
I'll apologize in advance - there will be a lot of Trailer Park Boys in this post. I enjoyed Season 1 just fine, but Season 2 is where I really started to see why this show became such a long-lasting cult classic. This season had Julian and Ricky getting out of prison and then growing weed in a trailer to sell back to the prison. They ultimately end up, of course, back in prison. Like I said last time, the show feels like a poor man's Always Sunny with even lower stakes. It works! Also, a young Ellen Page guest stars throughout this season.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1
Speaking of cult classics, I finally got around to checking out Buffy. This first season aired back in 1997 and in addition to being gloriously dated it's got horrifically bad special effects. I loved it - though how much I was laughing at it instead of with it, I can't say. For what it's worth, the whole season gave me a huge retroactive crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar - something I never had during the original run of Buffy, from 1997 to 2003, as a nine-to-fifteen-year-old boy, somehow.
Trailer Park Boys: Season 3
Another season of Trailer Park Boys, another series of ill-hatched petty crimes from Ricky and Julian and friends. It's the third straight season to start and end with Julian in jail, but in a surprise twist (sorry), Ricky manages to avoid jail time this season. Moreover, he ends up taking over as the trailer park supervisor when his arch-nemesis Mr. Lahey ends up in jail. Looks like we're in for a doozy of a fourth season!
Trailer Park Boys: Season 4
It happens to every cult classic that runs for a long enough time, and for Trailer Park Boys it happened in the fourth season: a good old-fashioned shark jump. Where the show used to dabble in subtle humor based on character beats, the fourth season brought in plots like backyard wrestling, a mountain lion on the loose, and a deranged hand puppet with a mind of its own. Still hilarious - but very broadly a situational comedy at this point.
Master of None: Season 1
I really liked this. Aziz Ansari has always been a favorite of mine and I was looking forward to his new Netflix show for a long time. It's "fictional" in the broadest sense, and the main character is pretty clearly just a stand-in for Aziz. Episodes tend to have focused themes - dating, parents, being Indian, working as an actor, having kids - and at its worst the show could feel a bit on-the-nose and preachy. It felt a lot like Louie without all the surrealism, and it was definitely more consistent than Louie. I'm definitely on board for a second season of this one.
The Bastard Executioner: Season 1
It was with hesitation and reluctance that I set a series recording on my DVR for The Bastard Executioner, figuring that mixing Kurt Sutter and medieval warfare could lead to just the worst kind of show. But then, the same show's ceiling could be like a Game of Thrones-flavored second season of Sons of Anarchy. So why not give it a try? Sure enough, this thing flat out sucked. I gave up on trying to follow any sort of plot in about three episodes, and spent the remaining seven just putting this on in the background for any notable violent action scenes. And there weren't even that many! Apparently, the world at large agreed with me that there was nothing to see here; the show's been canceled after just one season, which is almost unheard of on FX.
Trailer Park Boys: Season 5
These seasons all sort of blend together - particularly the middle-of-the-run group. If this season was notable for anything, it was being ten episodes long instead of six or seven.
Trailer Park Boys: Season 6
Again, it's just not clear to me that I need to say anything special about this show at this point. Notably, this season didn't end with anyone going to jail. What a twist!
The Last Man on Earth: Season 1
I kept meaning to check this out last spring, but by the time I was ready to do so, the season was over and none of the episodes were readily available. Gah! Will Forte is the last man on earth - at least at first. I thought the season started out much stronger than it ended, with Forte slowly going insane from existential dread while doing all sorts of ridiculous "the world is a post-apocalyptic playground" things just to stave off boredom. By the end of the season, six other people have shown up - trickling in one by one, usually arriving with perfect comedic timing to foil something for Forte. I don't think the first season ended up being quite as good as its premise would have allowed; it quickly settled into a weird mostly-straight-played suburban sitcom with feuding neighbors, which was funny enough, but not quite as unique as the original premise. I'm looking forward to the second season, at least.
Man Seeking Woman: Season 1
Here's a surreal one from FX that feels like a series of high-concept sketches about modern dating. At its best, this was really clever and very funny. Unfortunately, the episodes varied pretty wildly in quality and the whole show felt pretty hit or miss. Brilliant in one episode, and then ridiculously stupid in the next. Even at its best, Man Seeking Woman felt like a poor man's Master of None. I'll watch Season 2, but it'll probably end up being DVR fodder at most.
Trailer Park Boys: Season 7
Maybe it's just a classic case of diminishing returns, but this seventh and then-final season of Trailer Park Boys just felt like it was going through the motions. Nothing notably funny happened at any point across ten episodes. The main conflict in this season involved smuggling drugs across the U.S.-Canadian border in toy trains, which seemed far-fetched even for this show. The season (and at the time, the series) ended with all the main characters from the trailer park enjoying a little cookout. Understated and pleasant, though not really tonally fitting. This all happened back in 2007, and Netflix has just recently made an eighth and ninth season; there's more for me to watch - I'm just not sure I'm in any rush at this point.
So yeah. I'll be back a month from now with the rest of what I saw in 2015.
I'm sorry. I just don't think I'll ever get into "Trailer Park Boys." Even with your decent pitch that it's the poor man's "It's Always Sunny..." that still doesn't seal the deal for me. Maybe it's the title, maybe it's its blue-color roots, maybe it's look of the characters... I really can't say. But everything about that show (without ever seeing an clip, mind you) seems like it would just rub me the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteIn other news... Just revisited your posts on "Deadwood," as I was thinking about getting into that. Congratulations! Your reviews have successfully scared me away from Milch's mysterious western. I guess I'm more curious about how the series ends. Does the story wrap up nicely, or was it cancelled before a comforting bookend could be established? Now knowing I'll have to slug through each episode only hoping I'll establish some sort of connection be end of the season is quite disturbing, and - honestly - not a mark of compelling storytelling.
Maybe "Sopranos" next? Who knows...
I took a long time to get on board the TPB bandwagon for the same reasons, but it doesn't take long to acquire the taste. That said, after 7 seasons it's gotten old quickly for me. You're not missing anything special.
ReplyDeleteI didn't love Deadwood like a lot of others did, but it is the show I most want to re-watch (with Marissa). I don't think I gave it the chance it deserved, in hindsight - those recaps were written way back in 2009, back when the height of quality television for me was, like, Lost. Deadwood wasn't nearly as slow and long-form as my posts make it sound. All that said, you can't go wrong with The Sopranos. It lived up to all the hype and more for me.