I mentioned that I started watching The X-Files last summer and never got around to completing the season, so here it finally is. The first season was... okay. I really enjoyed the two-part premier but it's hard to say any other episode lived up to the high standard that they set. It's weird to think that this show was such an instant success, when even diehard fans like Trev admit that it took a few seasons to really get cooking. Another thing I hear is that the stand-alone singular episodes are the best of the series, and the more serialized ones are typically pretty crappy, yet here I am early in the series, wishing for more backstory and events that flesh out the universe Scully and Mulder live in. I'm sure soon enough I'll be converted, as it sounds like the middle of this show's run was supposed to be the best part.
Take my surprise at The X-Files' incredible success from that last paragraph, and multiply it by 100 for The Walking Dead. At least The X-Files has the excuse that there weren't many great shows to compete with. What made The Walking Dead such a huge hit when it seems like so many shows do what it does better? Is it just that there's zombies? I mean, Daryl is a cool character, but he's hardly the biggest badass on tv- why are people so in love with him? Is it the motorcycle? What stings is that back when I quit the show on three separate occasions it was usually definitively bad tv, and I could feel superior to the masses. Now it's mediocre, and so I watch to join in on the zeitgeist, and I'm no better than anyone. Do I care who died in that shitty cliffhanger? Hell no! Besides, we all know it's Glenn anyway, a guy who's characterization is... um...
I was late getting off of the American Horror Story bandwagon, finally ditching the show halfway through the dreadful Hotel incarnation, so I wasn't really looking forward to Ryan Murphy's second "American Story" series- American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson. Take my Walking Dead surprise and multiply it by another 100, and that's how surprised I was by this. Yes, 10,000 times more surprised than I was about The X-Files! It was really fantastic, maybe the best thing I've seen on tv yet this year (this was written back in like, March). It helps that it's based off of a completely unbelievable case that seems perfect for a miniseries adaptation, bursting with plot twists and memorable characters (the series barely even had time for Kato Kaelin, one of the oddest characters to come out of the whole thing). It helps that Murphy focused so heavily on prosecutor Marcia Clark, a tenacious underdog who gets absolutely brutalized inside the courtroom and in the tabloids. Sarah Paulson didn't do much for me in her roles in American Horror Story, but she was incredible here as Clark, carrying the whole show on her back at times. Unfortunately I fear this will go the way of Serial in its second season based on a poor story selection- Hurricane Katrina just doesn't have that flash and fun that the OJ Simpson case had. Prove me wrong, Ryan Murphy.
11/22/63 was one of the stronger Stephen King books I've read, so I was intrigued by this Hulu-produced miniseries starring James Franco as an English teacher who stumbles back in time to the '60s, trying to stop the assassination of John F Kennedy. The resulting series was okay, at times drawing me in with the conspiracy theories combined with simple Americana that made the book so interesting to me. But even with a mere eight episodes, there were plenty of moments where little was happening and plenty of material could have been cut. It almost feels like this would have worked better as a 2-hour movie. Franco feels a little miscast too, lacking that everyman quality that characterized the protagonist. But at least unlike that Under the Dome adaptation from a few years ago, Hulu has the good sense to just let this single season stand on its own.
I don't have much to say here beyond what Stan did, except for how conflicted I am about the finale, which was both perfect and kinda bad at the same time. It successfully wrapped up most of the character conflicts in realistic ways, and yet the main story for the season- the attempted formation of a charter school, ends in such an overly-saccharine way that felt completely at odds with the rest of the show. Oh well, goodbye, Togetherness. You were good.
Animals, however, was not so good. So far the only cartoon I've liked that let its voice actors improvise now and then was Home Movies so many years ago. Two bad Rick and Morty episodes and this pile of garbage make me think that success was a one-time fluke and the idea should be put to rest for good. I hated Animals so much- its poor animation (admittedly that was a stylistic choice), its unfunny jokes wasting the talents of so many funny people, that horrible silent side-story where a corrupt mayor goes on a rampage. The few times the show shined was when it dropped all story completely and turned into a music video- first when the A$AP Mob showed up as a bunch of rapping cats, then again when Kurt Vile takes drugs with a bunch of squirrels. Other than that, this was crap.
Consensus all over the internet seems to be that Girls had a major comeback in season five, and I agree- I was excited for it to come back with every episode, it was so on fire. But what made this season different? The first idea that occurred to me was that this was the season where the writers made no mistake that our main characters were at all decent people, and wrote them in a way so we would relish and laugh at every failure they made. Oh, look at how shitty Hannah is being on a summer road trip! I'm glad Fran is ripping her apart (verbally) and that her ex is quietly banging one of her best friends. And hey, Marnie pronounces Ecuador so pretentiously, good thing she's stuck married to that loser Desi. And yet, this doesn't really cover it. Because the characters do periodically redeem themselves. Hannah gives a reading at The Moth to end the season and appears to finally be at peace with what's happened to her. Marnie reconnects with an old flame in one of the best episodes the show has produced and it appears to help her finally give her some backbone. Jessa for the first few episodes is really pushing herself to be a better person- studying hard for school and avoiding any contact with Adam, which he of course ruins. Even Shosh shows off her marketing skills to save Ray's coffee shop. So I don't know, maybe this was the season where no one was too awful, and everyone was a more well-rounded and funny character? The initial hubbub of the series has died down completely, and there's only one more season to go- let's hope Lena Dunham and everyone else stick the landing.
Better Call Saul will probably never live up to the heights of Breaking Bad, but that's fine. It's a spin-off of perhaps the greatest show ever, and it makes a strong case for being the best show on tv right now. I was going to come back and write more than that, but I'll let it be.
While I watched the first two seasons of this show and enjoyed them somewhat, I was not on the bandwagon that so many people were- I'm still surprised AVClub ranked its first season as the second best show on tv in 2014. It's funny, but pretty forgettable most of the time. I think I liked this third season a little more than the previous ones, but not by much. If I feel like making some more tv cuts in 2017, Broad City is likely near the top of the list.
Here's another one that could make for an easy cut. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a show that to me always felt like it was on the precipice of greatness, but just never got there. Imagine if The Office or Parks and Rec were about cops never got much better after their first seasons. It's also a show where I just can't get myself to suspend disbelief- none of these people really seem like cops to me, and of course they don't, they're mostly comedians. But that disconnect keeps me from investing too much in the show. Maybe I'll give it another half-season or so.
This one's nothing amazing, but one of the better comedies I've been watching. I didn't expect "girl escapes from captivity to start a new life in New York City" to carry a quality show for too long, but two seasons in, Kimmy Schmidt is still great. I hope David Cross sticks around next season too.
Here's another one of the few unscripted shows I'll post about. If you've ever followed Vice Media on Twitter or Facebook, you might think it's just another crap factory similar to Buzzfeed or Gawker. I assure you, give the HBO show a shot! It's completely different! It's a news program that usually covers two stories in 30 minutes, and given all that time, they can really dive in deep on these topics, usually covering stories that other networks won't touch- some of the best episodes this season focused on the emerging business relationship between China and Africa, the effect of the meat industry on the environment, and an excellent look at women's rights in Afghanistan. Sure, the show can be a downer sometimes, and the parody Documentary Now! made about sending hipsters into warzones is close to the truth. But it's still the only news program I watch with regularity.
Ho hum. I'll probably ease up on my series-per-month pace with Peep Show now, since each season is having less of an effect on me than the last. It's still very funny, but it's definitely not treading any new ground. A potential wedding before or at the start of season four could shake things up a bit.
It's been another up and down season for Saturday Night Live, but one with perhaps the most glaring misstep in several years- an episode hosted by then-potential, now-confirmed republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, which was just awful on every level regardless of politics. Still though, there were bright spots- Kate McKinnon is flourishing, and with her breakout role in the recent Ghostbusters remake, my guess is she's going to become very famous and we'll consider these "the McKinnon years" of SNL. The show's always going to be pretty rough around the edges- I feel like I watch it more at this point as the comedic minor leagues, where I try to predict who will break out and who will get cut, and if I laugh along the way, that's good too.
More of the same here in the X-Files' second season. There were a few standout episodes, and the show seemed to be at its strongest when it went for a more serialized story over a few episodes rather than monster-of-the-weeks, which it sounds like will quickly change.
Transparent was excellent in its second season, and I wish I finished it in time to place it in my "best of 2015" list. The seasons starts with nuptials just as gut-wrenching as any wedding George R. R. Martin has cooked up, and goes on to feature seemingly unrelated dreamy flashbacks to Nazi Germany, BDSM, feminist gatherings in the woods, and just a small number of characters who don't identify as LGBT in some way. It would be so easy for this balance to not work, for the show to come off as preachy and heavy-handed, but it all works so well that I can't wait for season three of this show to continue to push the envelope.
I've kept up with Modern Family this long because Katie's still very into it, but it seems like the whole thing's just going on a bit too long. Either that or the need for 20+ episodes each season is really sapping any creativity left. It's just not very funny anymore!
For a long time Bob's Burgers seemed like one of the best shows that no one I knew was watching. Now everyone is watching it, and even though its overall ratings are starting to drop, it's got at least two more seasons left and appears its going to be a part of the Fox Sunday night animation lineup for years to come. It's been a steady, pleasant source of laughs for years now, and that reliability has rendered the seasons essentially meaningless to me- the overall quality of the series hasn't increased or dropped in a long time.
On the other hand, the quality of The Last Man on Earth varies wildly from episode to episode. Season two seemed content to spin its wheels and reuse some of the same old wacky sitcom plots albeit in a post-apocalyptic setting, but a few episodes really took advantage of the setting and gave me something new. I'm thinking specifically of the premier, focusing solely on Will Forte and Kristin Schaal's characters, and a few episodes from the back half of the season where a main cast member dies, and is eventually replaced by Forte's long-lost brother. I know sometimes this show just wants to tell dumb jokes about margarita pools and zany facial hair, but there are high stakes in this story! Stop pretending like there aren't!
After over a decade of not watching The Simpsons with any regularity, I finally came back for no real reason for season 27. It was fine. Even people who never liked The Simpsons know that the magic is long gone, so I won't pile on. I have no idea if I'll stick around for season 28, so I'll see how I'm feeling come premier night.
Four seasons into The Americans, and I'm all-in on this show about Cold War-era Russian spies. Season three felt like a slight step down from the incredible seconds season, and while it would be tough for any show to reach those highs again, the back half of season four comes close. What's odd here is that this season felt like so much conclusion, at least to some of the biggest subplots outside of Philip and Elizabeth's main mission- two major characters who felt like they had been hanging out by a thread finally had their stories end here, and they'll be sorely missed. But we've got two more seasons! How can they possibly keep going without getting caught? I've said it before on last year's podcast, but in addition to the excellent acting and writing here, the show nails tension better than anything else on tv in my opinion. It's must-see-live television for me, which really puts it up in a league with Game of Thrones.
Archer keeps chugging along, steadily providing us with a lot of great jokes, but not much else in my opinion. I don't know, seven seasons in, this show just doesn't feel fresh anymore. I appreciate that the season attempted to reboot things similar to the previous Archer: Vice, and the show is still very funny, but it's just not sticking with me in a way that has me desperate for more episodes.
Game of Thrones took a bit of a stumble last year, fusing together portions of three separate books and forced to create some action out of some of the most boring parts of the story- an especially hard sell after easily the most exciting part was told in the season before that. But as season six took us entirely into new material, the show returned to "elite tv" status. There were plenty of moments of payoff that the show had been building to from the very beginning, as well as some great twists that even the most hardcore fans didn't see coming. It was a season that really cleaned house too, eliminating a few unnecessary characters and storylines and streamlining things down into a few major conflicts that will probably carry us through the final two (?) seasons.
Veep's a show that feels like it's improved with every season- what started as a reasonably funny political satire is now one of the funniest shows on television with a ridiculously deep bench of supporting characters. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is at her comedic best this season, especially in a mid-season episode where the passing of her mother is turned into cheap political points. Five seasons in I doubt my recommendation will change anyone's opinion of this show, but I give my recommendation nonetheless!
Silicon Valley, coming off a stellar second season, backpedalled a bit with a decent third. It's just as funny as ever, but a little stagnant. It's funny watching Richard and his Pied Piper employees constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but each season just seems like a constant cycle of this until the big win in the finale returns everything to normal. The stakes are high on this show, but it doesn't really feel like it anymore! Still though, very funny, and I'll continue to watch. I'm probably just nitpicking.
Any time I've spoken positively about the Mindy Project to friends, it's been quickly rebuffed. Okay, so maybe this show isn't one I should recommend heavily. It's a fun little sitcom that takes a lot of influence from romantic comedies, and is the brainchild of Mindy Kaling, who apparently isn't as beloved as I thought. I think most of the derision the show gets comes from a poorly-received first season that I skipped entirely. I enjoyed the second and third seasons plenty, but here in its fourth, despite a move to Hulu that granted the show more creative freedom, the show started to lose me. The main storyline from season three saw Mindy finally move away from the constant dating and one-night-stands and start committing to a real relationship with Danny, a fellow doctor that she's clearly supposed to be matched up with in this show-universe. But then in season four the storyline fell completely apart, with Danny and Mindy acting completely out of character and fighting about nothing constantly. The show returned to being about Mindy dating some new guy every episode or two and lost its central relationship in a way that felt completely unnatural and screamed of outside influence- the popular theory was that Danny's actor, Chris Messina, was trying to get a movie career started and didn't have time for this little Hulu show anymore. The show's been renewed for another season and it looks like Messina will be back in the fold in a larger capacity, so hopefully Mindy and company can right the ship.
Alright, I have to admit that here at the end of the fourth season of Orphan Black, I'm totally lost. I don't really understand the motivations for like half of the characters anymore, and I have no idea where this is going. It's a science fiction mess whose rules are clearly getting made up as it goes along. Yet somehow, I care anyway, because the core four main characters are just so fun to watch. If they just turned this show into a spinoff featuring nothing but Alison and Felix hijinks, I would watch.
Stan recommended Master of None pretty hard during last year's tv podcast, so I always knew I'd get around to it at some point. And here we are 8 months later. It's good! It's a comedy that's not always funny but it tackles some pretty big issues without getting preachy. The central relationship is adorable. And while the main dialog is usually kinda dumb, I have to admit it sounds incredibly realistic, because people say way more dumb stuff in real life than on tv. It's good! Watch it!
Maria Bamford's new show about dealing with her mental illness and trying to get her career back on track has Mitchell Hurwitz's fingerprints all over it, which is a winning combination, but I have to admit that Lady Dynamite was just exhausting to watch. I feel like I "appreciated" it more than I "enjoyed" it. Maybe I should try some of her stand-up to get a better feel for her humor? Trev says she's one of his favorites. This is absolutely not for everyone.
Now that I'm most of the way caught up on the best of what Netflix has to offer, I wanted to try dipping my feet into some of the B-level shows to see if I'd like them- Narcos, Bloodline, House of Cards, hell, maybe even Marco Polo if the feeling strikes me. First up is Narcos, and while it definitely doesn't pack the emotional punch of Orange is the New Black, Lady Dynamite or Master of None, I was pleasantly surprised. The show details the rise of Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel, who sold unimaginably large amounts of cocaine to the United States in the '80s. The show isn't perfect- not every emotional beat really lands, it spends a lot of unnecessary time focusing on two bland drug enforcement agents trying to bring Pablo down, and it's extremely heavy on subtitled Spanish- great for authenticity, but definitely not easy for binge-watching. But it's still pretty fun to watch! Apparently some liberties have been taken with history, so I'm not sure how much of the story matches up with reality, but there's a lot more here than your usual gangster/kingpin tale. Escobar really is just a bizarre person whose values are hard to place, and Wagner Moura is a treat to watch playing him. Season two comes out in a month. I'll watch, but given how quickly the first season burned through story (the cartel is already a massive success by the end of the first episode!), I'm curious how long this can stay interesting.
Marc Maron is one of my favorite podcasters, delivering insightful interviews with a lot of very interesting people; his TV show hasn't been nearly as good as his podcast, but I've stuck with it for the past four years for reasons that don't make sense to me. And I was rewarded with easily the best, most focused season of the show, as the fourth and final season sees Marc recovering from his drug relapse in the season three finale and setting out to figure out a life in which he can truly be happy, away from the glamor of show business. The common criticism of the show is that it's a half-assed Louie, but I don't buy it- Maron never really gets abstract at all and the show has an internal logic that Louie never adheres to; still, it's clearly the lesser of the two shows about slightly less successful versions of their respective comedians, and no one needs to watch this- the payoff of one very good season wasn't worth it.
Finally, the fourth season of Orange is the New Black, a show that to me has just been on fire stretching back to its season two finale. Season three ended with a glimmer of hope, a beautiful final scene in which nearly all of the inmates manage to escape the confines of Litchfield to a nearby lake for an hour or so of freedom from the drudgery of prison life. That looks like it might be the last moment of happiness in the show though, as season four digs deeper than ever before into the problems that result of making a prison for-profit. The overcrowding, slashing of freedoms, and complete inability of the staff to see the inmates as humans, all of this boils over into a finale that seems like one of the most controversial TV episodes in years. Orange is the New Black isn't slowing down at all four years in, so I'm excited to see where this goes next (and if Piper will remain a central character- she has to, right? She's right in the middle of that picture!).
