Olive Kitteridge: Season 1
This cleaned up at the Emmys and I figured it was worth a shot. Easy enough - four-hour miniseries, no big deal. I really liked it! But it was definitely slow and not for everyone. Frances McDormand was great, for whatever that's worth.
Enlightened: Season 1
Laura Dern plays a spurned fired employee from a giant corporation who goes on a spiritual retreat in order to try to put her life back together. I'd always heard, from a few TV critics, that this was a really underrated show. It isn't. It was fine, at best.
Enlightened: Season 2
The first season focuses on Laura Dern trying to get her job back and make a difference at her giant corporation. It ends with her deciding, no, fuck this place, I'm taking the whole thing down. Season 2 is all about her attempt to bring the corporation to its knees. It doesn't go so well, but the season - and series, thanks to cancelation - ends with Laura Dern literally burning the whole place down.
Review: Season 2
Forrest MacNeil essentially ruined his life in the first season of Review, so how do you turn up the stakes and calamity from there? I guess you have him ruin the lives of everyone he comes across. That's more or less what happens in Season 2, where there are multiple deaths, more than one home is destroyed, and nobody seems to suffer more than those closest to Forrest. The season ends with Forrest's apparent death, but who knows? This could easily get renewed for a third season.
Married: Season 2
This, however, will not; FX has canceled Married, and really, I'm fine with that. This was a solid and enjoyable comedy about realistic people dealing with realistic bullshit. It was fun and good and nice to put on while I folded laundry or something, but it was nothing special.
Fear the Walking Dead: Season 1
Good news - The Walking Dead finally got good a season or two ago! Bad news - this prequel series was as shitty as any six-episode run of The Walking Dead ever was! Blech. This was just boring and bad.
Rick and Morty: Season 2
In my mind, this season season of Rick and Morty wasn't quite as good as the first one was. Call it the law of diminishing returns, perhaps? Still, this is as funny as anything else out there, and here's hoping we don't have to wait another year and a half for the next season.
The X-Files: Season 2
The second season was better than the first one, but this show still isn't gripping me the way it seemed to pull so many people in back in the '90s. More than anything, I think David Duchovny is terrible in this show. He's so stone-faced and wooden in his delivery of every line. For a guy who's seen some ridiculously weird shit, Fox Mulder seems like an absolute dullard. And not a complicated dullard who drowns his sorrows and issues in alcohol or drugs or some other vice - just a boring, steely federal agent who seems to know - and believe in - every conspiracy theory in American history.
Trailer Park Boys: Season 1
Here's another one I should have checked out long ago. This is a silly show with quick seasons set in a Canadian trailer park. It's loaded with trashy, stupid characters who seem to spend as much time in jail as they do at home. There are wild gun fights in like every other episode. I understand the appeal, but this just feels like a very poor man's Always Sunny so far, and nothing more.
I'll be back in two months with the remainder of my fall TV seasons - and probably some more of The X-Files and Trailer Park Boys and the like.
No comments:
Post a Comment