a) "Stumptown"
This is my favorite new show of the big 4's fall slate, but then a neo noir action comedy with Cobie Smulders and Jake Johnson seems almost engineered to specifically appeal to me, so I'm kinda just hoping it stays good instead of being a flash in the pan. The first 2 episodes a great, though, and next week's is going to have Donal Logue, which really makes me want to compare the show to my beloved "Terriers."

b) "The Politician"
I've slowly come around to enjoying some Ryan Murphy shows (although I think I'm closer to just hate-watching "9-1-1" at this point), but I don't think I'll ever check out his high school shows "Popular" and "Glee," which "The Politician" seems to be, to an extent, a throwback to. But I like the idea that each season covers a different election in the life of a young guy who wants to be president someday, if they keep the show going long enough I think it could be a lot more interesting than the kind of familiar Tracy Flick/Max Fischer ambitious teen archetype it is right now. The first episode was almost too much story, like they should've saved some of the plot for other episodes, but it's promising enough. I like the weird wannabe White House staffer hanger-on friends played by Laura Dreyfuss and Theo Germaine, they're really funny.

c) "Country Music"
I'm only 6 hours into the latest 16-hour Ken Burns opus, but it's pretty great, I'm enjoying seeing so much footage and photographs of people I've mostly read about like Bob Wills and Hank Williams, I'm looking forward to getting into the episodes that go beyond the 1950s. And sometimes it's amusing to hear the very dignified narrator say things like "Chet Atkins remembered thinking, 'hoss, you ain't jivin'.'"

d) "Prodigal Son"
"Prodigal Son" is a show about an FBI agent who talks to serial killers in order to catch serial killers, so perhaps I can't help comparing it unflatteringly to very very good shows like "Mindhunter" and "Hannibal." But I have to say, I actually shouted "oh my god this is fucking stupid" during the first episode of "Prodigal Son," which is not something I do with every pilot. The writing is just really broad and unsubtle and doesn't live up to the moody shadowy look of the show, and Michael Sheen just gives the worst performance as a serial killer that I've ever seen, grinning and bugging his eyes out the whole time.

e) "Criminal: UK"
I'm a little amused that just a few months after they were in "Good Omens," we've got 2 new series where Michael Sheen plays a convicted killer and David Tennant plays a murder suspect. "Criminal: UK" is actually part of an anthology series where there are four 3-episode stories that take place in four different countries, but I haven't checked out the France, Germany or Spain ones yet. The UK one feels a little dry so far, maybe it gets more interesting by the end.

f) "Godfather of Harlem"
Forest Whitaker throwing his weight around as a tough guy is great to watch on the rare occasion that he takes a role like that, so he really comes badass playing Bumpy Johnson in this '60s gangster period piece. But it's a little weird to see Vincent D'Onofrio play a real life crime kingpin who's way less intimidating than Kingpin from "Daredevil."

g) "Carol's Second Act"
Two of this past summer's cancellations that I was most bummed about were "American Princess" and "Speechless," so I was bummed to see actors from both of those shows (Lucas Neff and Cedric Yarbough, respectively) in the first few minutes of one of CBS's most formulaic new fall sitcoms. It's Patricia Heaton from "Everybody Loves Raymond" in one of those '50 or 60-something starts a new career' comedies, this one's about hospital residents, it's all pretty predictable.

h) "The Unicorn"
I used to hate when people were snobs about old-fashioned multi-camera sitcoms, but there are so few of them now, and many of them are on CBS and are terrible, so it was refreshing to see CBS debut a single camera show this fall with a promising cast including Walton Goggins, Rob Corddry and Michaela Watkins. It's actually not about unicorns (so it's not part of the zeitgeist of unicorn-themed cartoons sweeping across kids TV right now). But I feel like the whole show was extrapolated from the one "Seinfeld" episode where they determined that widowers were the most eligible bachelors, except they're doing it a much more crunchy wholesome way, it's a cute little show that has a few laughs, it could grow on me. 

i) "Bluff City Law"
I'm a little surprised that NBC is premiering a legal drama starring Jimmy Smits with a "_____ Law" name and it's not an "L.A. Law" spinoff. They're leaving money on the table, Dick Wolf would never. It's about a father and daughter team taking on civil rights cases, it's very dramatic and inspiring and boring.

j) "Mixed-ish"
I'm kind of feeling so-so about "Grown-ish" and am not sure that doing another "Black-ish" spinoff with a "Wonder Years"-ish look at Rainbow's '80s childhood is a great idea, the first episode fell really flat and the second episode was only a little better. I'm still hoping they do "Old-ish" with Laurence Fishburne, though.

k) "Good Talk with Anthony Jeselnik"
It's been 6 years since the last time Comedy Central tried to build a series around Anthony Jeselnik, but now they're trying again with one-on-one interviews with other comedians. Jeselnik is very into keeping up his standup persona, though, so it never really feels like a conversation, someone will mention that he was nice when they met and he'll say something like "so you have a bad memory" to keep up his whole fearless mean comedy prince of darkness schtick, it's kind of exhausting.

l) "Murder In The Bayou"
This 5-part documentary on Showtime is about 8 unsolved murders in Louisiana, it's pretty dark stuff, I'm not a big true crime guy but this is one of the more interesting cases I've seen a series about, really well directed too. 

m) "Ghosted: Love Gone Missing"
The whole phenomenon of "Catfish" weirds me out but at least they're kinda helping people sometimes and educating the public about how to avoid being fooled by people on the internet. But MTV doing a similar show where people track down exes who "ghosted" them is really fucked up and terrible and irresposible, especially because they use chyrons describing the people as "ghost" and "the haunted." Also, it's hosted by the white rapper who had a song that went "I fuck em with my Vans on" circa 2011.

n) "Couples Therapy"
This Showtime docuseries is not the same show as the VH1 show of the same name where DMX and Chingy would work on their marriages, and honestly they should've come up with a new title. But this show is about normal non-celebrity people and it can be pretty engrossing at times, although I don't watch a lot of reality TV so sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable about how voyeuristic it is to hear this much about people's inner lives.

o) "The Mind, Explained"
A Netflix series produced by Vox that is a little bit of a step up in production values from Vox's little infotainment viral videos, with narration from Emma Stone. I liked the stuff about dream logic and the subconscious, it's a fascinating topic.

p) "Dreamworks Dragons: Rescue Riders"
My younger son never watched the How To Train Your Dragon movies much, but he loves this new Netflix spinoff show, he's already watched every episode like 3 times. It's not as good as the movies but it's pretty cute.

q) "Archibald's Next Big Thing"
I liked this other Netflix animated series where Tony Hale voices a chicken a little more, but my kids haven't really taken much interest in it.

r) "Mysteries Decoded"
This CW series about famous mysteries and urban legends is pretty well done, but it covers a lot of the same ground as the History Channel's recent "The UnXplained," except without William Shatner hosting, so it feels like the lesser of the 2 shows.

s) "Hypnotize Me"
A really stupid game show with hokey staged hypnotism, I'm kind of embarrassed for Taye Diggs has come to hosting to crap like this.

t) "Styling Hollywood"
I like kinda going behind the curtain of show business and how things really work, so this Netflix show about a celebrity stylist working on red carpet events is a good idea for a show, although I didn't really need to see more than an episode or two to get the idea.

i) "Flip It Like Disick"
Scott Disick is kind of a rare figure in the Kardashian-Jenner cinematic universe because he's very rude and unfiltered, so I found this show about his real estate business mildly entertaining. It's funny to think that someone in a boardroom just decided they needed to mash up the house flipping genre and the Kardashian genre into a new show, though.

v) "Mr Inbetween"
The first season of "Mr Inbetween" walked a fine line of making Ryan Shoesmith a fairly likable violent antihero. I haven't really gotten as much of that from the new episodes, though, like I don't really care anymore whether bad things happen to this guy, he's kind of an asshole.

w) "Disenchantment"
I mad mixed feelings about "Disenchanment" last year, but the new episodes are growing on me, occasionally it hits me with one of those really cheesy but unexpected punchlines that makes me laugh out loud like "Futurama" used to.

x) "The Terror: Infamy"
I never finished the first season of "The Terror," but I like that they've turned it into an anthology series where each season takes a chapter of history and kind of adds some heightened reality sci-fi element to it. TV's never tackled Japanese-American internment during World War II so it's very interesting to see it depicted with this supernatural element added, and it was inspired casting to include George Takei, the most famous person who was himself in an internment camp as a child.

y) "Hot Date"
It had been almost 2 years since the first season of "Hot Date" so I had kind of assumed it was canceled until the new season finally showed up recently. Sketch comedy with 2 main actors always seems like at some point they're gonna run out of characters or ideas, but so far they've demonstrated a "Key & Peele"-like ability to keep coming up with wigs and scenarios to riff on and wring laughs out of.

z) "The Affair"
I wasn't sure what to think going into the final season of "The Affair," since last year I was kind of pissed that they killed off a major character in this abrupt, upsetting way that seemed to leave an already sad story feeling very unresolved. But this season introduces a near-future timeline where Anna Paquin plays that character's daughter, trying to piece together what happened, which is an interesting way to bring it full circle. That said, "The Affair" has always been an unusual and frequently frustrating show, and them changing up the format even more, with each episode broken up into 3 characters' perspectives instead of 2 as it's always been, really gives the new episodes a strange new rhythm, I'm hoping these choices will pay off but at the moment I'm not sure they will.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 03, 2019 at 2:59 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.