a) "Castle Rock"
I'm not an avid Stephen King reader, but I was still really intrigued by the idea of a series set in the same Maine town as many of his stories, weaving together various King characters and settings and themes into a new story. And really I'd love nothing more than for this to be 10 times better than the King pastiche "Stranger Things," but 3 episodes in, I'm a little underwhelmed. I like the cast (I'll watch Jane Levy and Melanie Lynskey in anything), and I'm curious to see where the mysteries go and enjoy looking for the little allusions to famous King books, but it's kind of lacking a spark, I wanted more from it.

b) "Sharp Objects"
I really liked the film of Gone Girl and my wife who's read the Gillian Flynn novels says Sharp Objects is her favorite, so I've managed to not let her tell me anything about the book so I can just let the story unfurl in the series. It's funny, though, I've watched 4 of 8 episodes now and I feel like it's mostly been scene-setting at this point, my mind is still kind of reeling at what this is all leading up to. Like another recent HBO miniseries full of movie stars and based on a bestseller, "Big Little Lies," every episode was directed by Jean-Marc Vellee, and it has a lot of the same texture and rhythm, but in a way it highlights the contrasts between them: "Biggle Little Lies" was crowded with characters and plot, "Sharp Objects" is slower and more impressionistic, with lots of scenes of Amy Adams just driving and listening to Led Zeppelin. I don't consider that a problem, but I gather that some people do.

c) "Who Is America?"
I've never really enjoyed Sacha Baron Cohen's work, any of it, the combination of the Balki Bartokomous-grade accents and the shock humor and pranks, it just never appealed to me. So when I heard he had a new show called "Who Is America?" I just went 'oh fuck off.' But this show has already gotten one Georgia representative to resign in disgrace and has convinced Dick Cheney, Roy Moore, and others to humiliate themselves on national television, so I have to admit it's growing on me. The show is wildly inconsistent as it goes from scene to scene and alternates between the 5 characters Cohen plays, but so far every episode has featured at least one or two absolutely insane scenes.

d) "Mostly 4 Millennials"
As with Sacha Baron Cohen, I tend to feel a little old and uptight when it comes to certain Adult Swim programs like "The Eric Andre Show" where I feel like I 'get' the humor but also find it exhausting and repetitive after more than 5 minutes. "Mostly 4 Millennials" is exec produced by Eric Andre and kind of feels like a spinoff of his show, with host Derrick Beckles as a host who is consumed with being a hip millennial who entertains hip millennials but kind of looks like Guy Fieri and literally has Fred Durst as his in-house DJ. There are sharp moments of satire here and there, but for the most part it feels like this endless cycle of loud, transgressive 'random' moments designed to cynically appeal to millennials who are uninterested in traditional comedy -- in other words, it kind of ends up like a very unflattering satire of the Eric Andre/Adult Swim sensibility itself.

e) "Burden Of Truth"
This Canadian show, picked up to run on The CW in the summer, is about a lawyer who comes back to the small town where she grew up to litigate a class action suit for a pharmaceutical company. So the show kind of sets up the main character, played by Kristin Kreuk, as being this reasonable person who's going up against paranoid anti-vaccination activists. But I really have no idea where this show is going, it seems like people who took this fictional company's fictional HPV vaccine are indeed getting violently ill, so I don't know if this show is going to ultimately try to make anti-vaxxers look good or make big pharma look good, I'm kind of uncomfortable with either.

f) "The Outpost"
I grew up in a time when all fantasy shows on TV were campy low budget syndicated shows like "Xena: Warrior Princess." So in a weird way it's kind of refreshing, in a post-"Game Of Thrones" world, to see The CW air something like "The Outpost" that feels like a throwback to "Xena," completely corny and slapdash but still takes itself and its mythology kind of seriously.

g) "Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters"
I'm aware that Bobcat Goldthwait has a long career as a writer/director of dark cult comedies like Shakes The Clown but I haven't actually seen much of that stuff, I mostly know him for stand-up and Police Academy and whatnot. But this is basically an anthology series where he does a different story each week, each of them kind of a weird half hour morality play. My favorite of the first 3 episodes so far is about Dave Foley managing David Koechner's presidential campaign, which succeeds even after Koechner is revealed to be a werewolf. But I also liked the mockumentary about a Justin Bieber-like singer, even if it (perhaps unintentionally) mirrored Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping a bit.

h) "Paid Off With Michael Torpey"
This TruTV game show, where contestants answer trivia questions to pay off their student loans, has earned a lot of attention for basically being an illustration of how terrible the student debt crisis is in this country. But that's very much the point and I appreciate that they're actually doing this and helping people and not just making a joke about it. Also it's pretty entertaining just as a game show. People can actually earn the right to say "I knew that!" when someone else answers a question first and the host will take their word for it and give them partial credit, which is kind of an amazing innovation considering that probably every game show contestant in history wishes something like that existed.

i) "The Grand Hustle"
This BET reality show features a bunch of aspiring entertainment industry movers and shakers competing for the the privilege to work for T.I., mostly by jumping through a bunch of crazy hoops that bring to mind Diddy sending rappers out for cheesecake. I'm not a big fan of these kinds of shows but at least there's a lot of T.I. speaking in flowery language that people tend to get such a kick out of.

j) "Summer Camp Island"
A new Cartoon Network show about anthropomorphic animals at a magical summer camp, with a really cutesy drawing style that contrasts nicely with a sharp sense of humor. My kids didn't seem to take to the show much but I think the wit of the dialogue is a little over their heads.

k) "The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants"
My son who loves the Captain Underpants books and the movie was a little underwhelmed that the animation is more low budget on the new Netflix series, but then that didn't seem to bother him with the "Boss Baby" series. Anyway it's funny, they've definitely retained the tone and humor of the books well and as far as I'm concerned Nat Faxon is as good as Ed Helms if not better to voice the title character.

l) "Succession"
With the first season almost over, this has really been probably my favorite summer TV discovery this year, I've just loved every minute of it. It's nothing groundbreaking in the cable drama world, but it really wrings great character moments out of corporate backstabbing as well as "Billions" (and Eric Bogosian has recurring roles on both shows, if he doesn't have to choose neither do I). I was a little skeptical about Adam McKay and Will Ferrell exec producing a show like this and not giving into the temptation to make everything a joke, but they do a great job of ratcheting up the drama and then letting Kieran Culkin or Alan Ruck deflate it hilariously. I don't know what to say about HBO airing an episode of "Sharp Objects" where a redhead puts a man's hand down her pants 2 weeks after airing an episode of "Succession" where a redhead puts a man's hand down her pants, but maybe that's the network's new creative direction.

m) "Preacher"
Just as I think McKay/Ferrell have brought something to "Succession" that the show might otherwise lack, I like Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen have brought "Preacher" to TV with a unique tone without letting the over comedic sensibility of their movies take it over entirely. I mean, the show is often really funny, but they don't overdo it. The amount of flashbacks and background mythology in the show can sometimes bore me a little but this season has had a lot of great stuff with the core trio of Dominic Cooper/Ruth Negga/Joseph Gilgun that I really watch the show for.

n) "Reverie"
I wouldn't say I think highly of this show, but it has kind of grown on me and I've been impressed at how dark they've been willing to go with the tone and the story, even if it ultimately does have a lot of the trappings of a network procedural.

o) "The Four: Battle For Stardom"
I didn't think much of this show when it premiered in January, but they're already back for a 2nd season and I feel like I'm hearing about it more and more, so it might be here to stay. One of my big criticisms of the first season was they made much ado about 'the four' they started with being hard to beat, and they were all long gone by the time the show got to the finale. There's been a lot less turnover in the second season -- 3 contestants have been in 'the four' for at least half of the season, one of them went unchallenged the entire time. So I've found myself more actively rooting for and against the contestants as I've seen more of them, at the moment I'm really hoping Whitney Reign wins and James Graham loses.

p) "Harlots"
I liked this show well enough in the first season but I didn't entirely know what to make of it, in that it's got one foot in 'gritty realistic period drama' and one foot in 'tawdry soap opera that happens to be about brothels in 18th century London.' But it's really grown on me in the second season, although I'm not really sure why they bothered to add Liv Tyler to the cast in a minor role, maybe she's going to figure more into the plot as it goes. I'm really just so smitten with Jessica Brown Findlay though.

q) "Trial & Error"
I loved this show last summer, which was like a goofy "Parks & Rec"-ish single camera comedy about a small town murder trial. So I was pretty thrilled to hear it would return with Kristin Chenoweth as the new defendant replacing John Lithgow from the first season (although there's a hat tip this season in the form of a character naming their pet goat John Lithgoat). Chenoweth is predictably great by Jayma Mays is still a pretty consistent scene stealer on this show.

r) "The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale"
After debuting Joel McHale's new show, essentially "The Soup" in every respect but the title, a few months ago as a weekly show a few months ago, Netflix has basically decided to test it out as a show for binge watchers, and this month released 6 episodes at once. This doesn't really have any practical impact on the show, since they were already basically pulling back from commenting on current events and zeroing in almost exclusively on reality show clips, so there's no much of a difference from the early episodes. I do feel like they've narrowed what the show is about to its detriment a little, but it's not a big deal.

s) "Rachel Dratch's Late Night Snack"
This TruTV show in its second season is basically a collection of sketches from different writers and actors, strung together with some quick host segments with Rachel Dratch. I've always really liked Dratch, I don't know if she has a big hand in picking contributors for the show or producing the sketches but I wish there was really more of her in the show. The sketches are hit and miss but there have been a few great ones, I particularly enjoy the recurring 'ghost stories' ones.

t) "Killjoys"
I always say that this is my wife's favorite SyFy show and that my affection for it is relatively minor by comparison, but it's really grown on me over the years, I'm glad it got picked up for a 4th and 5th season to wrap up the series. I think over time the show has gotten better at exploiting the contrast between the look of the show -- serious gritty space epic with lots of Dutch angles and color filters -- and the unapologetic goofiness of a lot of the dialogue.

u) "The Affair"
There's a lot of darkness in TV drama these days, and some shows just get to be so much that I don't want to watch them -- I may have finally tapped out to stop watching "The Handmaid's Tale" recently. But I have to say "The Affair" is the most consistent feelbad show on TV -- all these adult problems, all these complicated and strained relationships and storylines involving drowned children and vehicular manslaughter and terminal cancer, it's really a lot. I feel like the show has even eased back from letting Dominic West being a funny fuckup like he was on "The Wire." There has been a little levity in the 4th season -- at one point two of the main characters summarize the first 3 season to a sassy black teenager who literally says "white people are crazy." But it's still depressing to me in a way that few shows are, and yet I still feel drawn to it, and the quicksand of constantly seeing scenes from 2 characters' perspectives and not knowing what the 'real truth' of the scene is.

v) "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee"
I felt bad for Crackle when I heard that their one hit show, "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee," was headed to Netflix. But I really only felt pity, because Crackle has such a shitty user interface that it's already made me enjoy the show more to be able to watch it on Netflix. Almost every episode has a moment where Jerry and/or his guest says something totally asinine, but it kind of feels like part of the relaxed bull session atmosphere of the show that's so different from other talk shows. Also Tracy Morgan asking Jerry Seinfeld "remember Kramer from Seinfeld?" was just one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30, 2018 at 12:19 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.