a) "Living With Yourself"
It's a credit to Paul Rudd as an actor that he can turn off his seemingly irrepressible charm enough to play a much more miserable version of himself in "Living With Yourself," as well as the more upbeat clone version of himself. At its best, this show reminds me of "Santa Clarita Diet" in that it takes some realistic and relatable characters and then throws them into a crazy situation and has them react pretty much as anybody would -- not quite as funny or as consistently entertaining, but I was still impressed by how dark the show could get and then bounce back with something like an insane fight scene or a choreographed dance routine set to a Rick James song. Aisling Bea, who was hilarious just recently in her series "This Way Up," doesn't really get as much of a chance to be funny in her role here, but she really pulls off a difficult role well and helps make the show work almost as much as Rudd.

b) "Watchmen"
I was skeptical about the idea of a series with new stories within the Watchmen universe, partly because it's been a decade since I read the graphic novel once and saw the movie maybe twice. But Damon Lindelof did interesting things with the last 2 seasons of "The Leftovers" after running through the novel and continuing on from there, and this has a bit of the same texture of that while seeming immediately far more ambitious. I like little things like the squid rain to denote that it was a sequel to the book and not the Zack Snyder movie. I liked the movie well enough, but something like this certainly highlights where it could've grappled with the source material's themes a little more, to say nothing of the ending. It kinda makes me hope that after the HBO series does a few seasons of this 2019 timeline they go back and do a season adapting the original 1985 story.

c) "Modern Love"
I've never read the NYT column "Modern Love" and was skeptical about some romantic first person essays being adapted into an anthology series. But man, the first episode of this show totally got me, I even shed a little tear at the poignant little tale (it also features Cristin Milioti getting pregnant by a guy named Ted, which seems like a weird unintentional callback to "How I Met Your Mother"). The next couple episodes were also pretty entertaining.

d) "Raising Dion"
As much as comic books have explored the idea of a child developing superpowers at a young age, stuff like "X-Men" usually delays that moment until around puberty, which resonates on a level but also just makes things a little less complicated. And then you have something like Jack Jack in the Incredibles movies, which gets a lot of comedic mileage out of the terrifying idea of an impulsive little baby having dangerous powers. Dion from "Raising Dion" is 7, so you get a little of both ends of that spectrum, where he's still an immature little kid and things go out of control really easily when he starts teleporting and floating and moving things with his mind. And since the show is mostly from his mother's perspective, you get all the emotional intensity of parenthood with this added heightened reality. That said, the execution of the idea is a little iffy to me in the first couple episodes, and at a point even as a very patient father I feel like the show is making me dislike the kid and get mad at him for making a mess of things all the time, like they make the kid oddly unsympathetic and one-dimensional, even for a 2nd grader.

e) "Emergence"
This is another show about a kid with superpowers, but it's more of a mystery with a weird conspiracy. And it's pretty decent, but I just can't bring myself to care that much about the big overarching story. The more human-scale character stuff is more interesting, though, Allison Tolman is such a compelling screen presence.

f) "Looking For Alaska"
I watched an episode of this and rolled my eyes so hard that I was not at all surprised to see that it's based on a book by The Fault In Our Stars author John Green. And I can appreciate that some YA books are good and I'm glad it gets kids interested in novels, I just don't like his cheesy precious dialogue. They did a good job of evoking 2005, though, at one point someone prints out MapQuest directions while listening to a song from Hot Fuss.

g) "Perfect Harmony"
This show is a comedy about a ragtag community choir, stars Anna Camp from the Pitch Perfect movies, and has the word 'perfect' in the title, so it's pretty clear what they're going for, it might as well have been a spinoff. What's surprising is that my wife, who loves those movies, doesn't seem to be that into it. I find it charming, though, Bradley Whitford being cantankerous is pretty good television.

h) "Sunnyside"
I was sad to hear that this was the first cancellation of the new fall season ("Bluff City Law" is the second, which I don't feel as bad about). It wasn't especially funny, but it had potential, Kal Penn is such an ideal sitcom lead and I enjoyed the kind of downfall and redemption arc of his character. Real sign of the times to have multiple sitcoms (this and "Superstore") having major plotlines about ICE detention.

i) "Bless The Harts"
"SNL" writer Emily Spivey based "Bless The Harts" on growing up in North Carolina, but nobody in the core voice cast is from the south, so I find something really irksome about listening to Kristen Wiig and Ike Barinholtz speak with a broad sketch comedy twang. But even taken at face value as a knowing and affectionate animated series about the blue collar south, it ain't exactly "King of the Hill." And it's already been renewed for a second season, shit.

j) "Almost Family"
Now here's a show that I hope gets cancelled as soon as possible. It just doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody that a show about a fertility doctor secretly using his own sperm to father his patients' children shouldn't be a quirky, upbeat show about a group of women who just discovered that they're half-sisters. It's just tonally all wrong when the subject is medical rape.

k) "Batwoman"
Between "Gotham," "Pennyworth," Joker and "Batwoman," the idea of doing Batman stories without Batman is basically a cottage industry unto itself now (kind of like the 'Garfield Minus Garfield' comic strips but edgy and dark). Batwoman seems like a good idea for a series on paper, but I don't know if Ruby Rose can really carry a series. In classic Batman tradition, the villain, Alice (and the Wonderland Gang) played by Rachel Skarsten, is more interesting than the hero.

l) "All Rise"
It sounds like a parody of network TV that there's a frothy CBS legal drama about a sexy judge called "All Rise." But it's possible I'm just reading the title that way because Simone Missick is, like, mind-bogglingly hot. It's a nice show, but it kind of reminds me of "Ally McBeal," and I don't know if that show has aged well.

m) "Limetown"
Like "Homecoming," this is a TV show based on a podcast and a fictional mystery story about a government conspiracy. It's probably not fair to me to compare it too much, since the "Limetown" podcast actually predates the "Homecoming" podcast, but tonally it does feel similar to me, and I adored "Homecoming" so that's a high bar. I'm not sure what to think so far, though, it's got a very tense and creepy atmosphere but I don't feel like I've totally made sense of the story. One of the minor characters only seen in flashbacks is played by Stanley Tucci, though, so I'm curious what's going on with that guy.

n) "The Birch"
A horror show on Facebook Watch with bite-sized little 13-17 minute episodes, about some kind of sinister tree spirit that kills bullies and bad people. The special effects are decent but the storytelling and the acting just kind of fall flat.

o) "Sorry For Your Loss"
"Limetown" is promising but "Sorry For Your Loss" is still by far my favorite Facebook Watch show, although I feel weird watching any of this stuff at a time when I just seem to hate Mark Zuckerberg more every day. Elizabeth Olsen is so good in this, I've already resigned myself to the idea that there probably won't be a 3rd season of it because she's also doing a series about her boring MCU character. I'm a little uncomfortable with the big story arc of "Sorry For Your Loss" being a widow falling in love with her husband's brother, it's just weird and bad and shouldn't be romantic, but the characters are all really vividly rendered and sympathetic.

p) "Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal"
People seem to really like this Adult Swim show that's like a violent serious story about cavemen living at the same time as dinosaurs, but I dunno, it just kind of feels a little pompous and ridiculous to me. "Castlevania" did the bloody adult cartoon thing more to my liking because it had more of a sense of humor about itself.

q) "Cake"
I like the idea of "Cake," FXX's 'short-form comedy block,' essentially a bunch of live action and animated sketches from different creators. But I've only seen a couple of really amusing things on this show so far, and a lot of eye-rolling stuff like sub-Lonely Island 'white girl rapping about white girl things rap video' concepts. And I particularly don't like the 'Oh Jerome, No' bits in every episode that feel like excerpts from a really bad sitcom.

r) "Rhythm + Flow"
Hip hop and "American Idol"-style talent search reality shows have always been strange bedfellows. "Rhythm + Flow" does a lot of things right that they could've gotten wrong, including getting a good lineup of hosts/mentors that are fun to watch (T.I., Cardi B and Chance The Rapper), and doing whole episodes in cities that are full of future rap stars. But even as entertaining as the show can be to watch, it still feels like an exercise in futility with a foregone conclusion that if anybody in this show becomes a successful rapper someday, it won't be because of this show.

s) "Untold Stories of Hip-Hop"
There are so many radio shows and podcasts dedicated to interviewing rappers now and I can't stand most of them. But Angie Martinez is undoubtedly one of hip hop's best interviewers and it was a great idea to base a show around her getting stories that rappers haven't told in public before. There have been some great ones, particularly Snoop's story about Biggie in the first episode.

t) "In Search Of..."
It's kind of sweet for Zachary Quinto to host the reboot of the show Leonard Nimoy used to host. But I never saw the original, so it kinda reminds me of the show William Shatner hosted recently, "The UnXplained." There's just so much non-fiction TV these days about all the big classic mysteries like the Loch Ness monster, but the "In Search Of" episode about Nessie was really interesting and it felt like they dug deeper than I've seen other shows go.

u) "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?"
Nickelodeon's been rebooting a lot of their old '90s hits lately, including a new "All That" and this new miniseries of "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?" My 10-year-old has been watching it with interest, cracking jokes about how stupid the kids were for going to something called 'the carnival of doom,' but then that night the show gave him nightmares, so maybe it is a little too scary for his age.

v) "Kids Say The Darndest Things"
One thing you'd think nobody would be in a rush to reboot anytime soon is a show that was last hosted by Bill Cosby. But Tiffany Haddish is a pretty ideal host and obviously the appeal of the format is evergreen.

w) "Lego Jurassic World: Legend of Isla Nublar"
In 2016, there was a "Lego Jurassic World" miniseries on Nickelodeon that I was amused to notice had voices from almost every main actor from the Jurassic World live action movie except for Chris Pratt (which seemed ironic since he was at the start of this whole phenomenon as the star of The Lego Movie). But the other movie stars like Bryce Dallas Howard and BD Wong didn't return for this newer miniseries, so it's just a bunch of voice actors who do other cartoons. Still pretty cute and amusing though.

x) "Mao Mao: Heroes Of Pure Heart"
I already wrote about this a bit in my Complex piece about summer TV, but this is really one of my favorite shows on Cartoon Network that my kids watch these days, I love Adorabat.

y) "The Deuce"
It sucks that this show stars James Franco, who is probably more exploitative of young actresses in real life than the pornographers the show is about, but as always he's just a small part of a big ensemble so I try to just ignore him. I supposed the fast forward between seasons is essentially to kind of telling the story of the changing culture and business, but it kinda doesn't feel like the characters who were in 1971 when the show debuted two years ago are in 1984 now, even the season 3 theme song is from the '70s (although I adore "Dreaming" by Blondie).

z) "American Horror Story: 1984"
Another show that is now in 1984 that wasn't before (plus that Wonder Woman sequel coming up, 1984 is really having a moment). I always watching "American Horror Story" kind of waiting to see how they screw it up, but so far I like this season. Old school summer camp slasher movies are one horror subgenre they haven't really touched so far and the twists they've put on the conventions haven't been too obnoxious and meta yet.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at 1:57 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.