a) "Run"
I think one of the most important moments in the life of a TV series is the end of the first episode. If they can hook you into wanting to see the next episode at that moment, that's obviously important, but it can also just be a great place to really set the story in motion. And while I was glued to the screen for the whole first episode of "Run," in which Merrit Wever and Domhnall Gleeson play college sweethearts who decide to run away together 15 years after the broke up, it was the gut punch of a reveal in the last seconds of the episode that really showed me how much potential this has. It's interesting to see something that's kind of a rom-com but also a very feel-bad kind of dark comedy that's not going to let you have simple feelings about the characters. And Phoebe Waller-Bridge is going to show up at some point in "Run," which was created by her collaborator Vicky Jones, so there's that to look forward to too.

b) "Tales From The Loop"
This Amazon sci-fi show has kind of an interesting format because it's an 'anthology' series but everything takes place in the same world with characters who have some connection to each other. I thought the second episode was more successful than the first in terms of being a memorable one-off short story, but I'm curious to see where else it goes and if it kind of builds up to a larger story arc or just remains a bunch of linked vignettes.

c) "World On Fire"
There are a lot of movies about World War II, but not much in the way of series television. And watching "World On Fire," which just started airing its first season in America but has already been renewed by the BBC for a second season, made me think about how that's probably because it's a lot more bearable to kind of put yourself in the middle of WWII for two or three hours and then be done with it. Watching people live in Europe while it's being torn apart on a weekly basis, it's a whole different thing. "World On Fire" has a big ensemble cast (including Sean Bean and Helen Hunt) and tells a bunch of parallel stories in different countries, saying that it's like "The Wire" if it was about WWII is reductive and maybe too flattering. But it has that texture to it, all these brief and kind of casually devastating scenes of a bad situation spinning out of control.

d) "Vagrant Queen"
SyFy's latest kind of bright and breezy sci-fi action show kind of reminds me of a lot of their other shows -- the network has really staked out a very specific subgenre of sci-fi, all this space outlaw comedy kind of stuff. My wife is still bummed that "Killjoys" is over so I don't think she's that into this show kind of assuming the same niche in their schedule. That said, it's not bad, I like the cast and some of the visual effects look cool and kind of original.

e) "Motherland: Fort Salem"
It's now been over 4 years since ABC Family rebranded as Freeform, but it still scandalizes me a little bit to see them air shows that never would have flown under the ABC Family banner. And "Motherland: Fort Salem" is quite a bit more violent and sexual than anything I've ever seen on Freeform before. I was halfway expecting the show, which basically imagines a modern world shaped by the witches that were on trial in Salem being actual witches with magical powers, to be a playful "Charmed" kind of thing. Instead, it's this crazy thing where witches power the U.S. military, and the opening scene features a terrorist group magically compelling over a thousand people to commit mass suicide. I don't love everything about the show, but I'm pretty intrigued by it.

f) "Broke"
I'm amused that CBS finally canceled "2 Broke Girls" and instantly put a new sitcom on the air called "Broke" that's about 2 girls who are broke. Pauley Perrette was one of CBS's most recognizable stars for the 15 years she was on "NCIS" and it sounded like she left a pretty shitty work environment, so I'm kind of glad that the network gave her a show of her own, but I don't know if she really has the comedy chops to carry a sitcom, even with someone more seasoned and effortlessly funny like Natasha Leggero as her foil.

g) "Three Busy Debras"
A good and deranged Adult Swim show that is kind of a satire of suburban conformity but also just kind of a surreal inside joke thing with three friends who are all named simply Debra. I'm not entirely sure how much I like it yet, although it wins me over more and more with brilliant little one-liners like "I've seen karate and I'm not afraid to learn it."

h) "Dave"
I've never much cared for Lil Dicky's songs as music or as comedy, but the idea of him starring in an FX sitcom made a certain amount of sense -- his face is kind of like if you made a composite of the whole cast of "The League" or something. But "Dave" is on its way to surpass "Atlanta" as FX's most watched comedy ever, which is kind of horrifying -- in its best moments "Dave" is like a halfway decent "Atlanta" knockoff, but at its worst it's like an "Entourage" that earnestly wants you to believe in Vinny Chase's talent and destiny, with dumbass storylines like having to babysit Trippie Redd's nephew. Lil Dicky isn't even the most irritating person on the show because Andrew Santino is on there being belligerent and obnoxious like he always is. But the thing I really hate about this show is that the actress playing Lil Dicky's girlfriend, Taylor Misiak, is absolutely adorable, it's upsetting.

i) "Hospital Playlist"
I really enjoy this South Korean show on Netflix, it's a lot like American medical dramedies with the mix of emotion and wit, but it also has doctors playing in a band together so it's way better than "Grey's Anatomy" or whatever. As with a lot of shows produced in other countries, though, I'm irritated by the episodes being the length of a feature film, most episodes of "Hospital Playlist" run over 80 minutes.

j) "Better Things"
When people talk about traditional sitcoms being cheesy or unrealistic, they usually make fun of the idea that every problem or conflict gets resolved in 23 minutes. But I think it's really the opposite: sitcoms often add a bunch of unnecessary complications and misunderstandings to every social situation to make it fill an episode. It kind of threw me off at first that "Better Things" doesn't do that, that most episodes will consist of a few 2-10-minute vignettes that don't have much to do with each other besides taking place in the same particular day of Sam's life. But it has kind of become part of what I love about the show, that a day in your life might happen to be a few different experiences. It's like a more organic and realistic version of what that terrible "Life In Pieces" show was trying to do.

k) "Cake"
I liked the concept of short little comedy sketches from different creators as a weekly half hour block on FX. But I found "Cake" pretty disappointing when it premiered last fall, and I checked out the second season hoping it would be a different mix of stuff but it's just the same crap, I really just hate the 'Oh Jerome, No' segments, totally giving up on this show.

l) "Good Girls"
"Good Girls" is weird because it's like they're doing a "Breaking Bad"-style edgy show about normal suburbanites turning to a life of crime, but it's on NBC so it feels like it has kid gloves on as far as how violent it will get or how unsympathetic the protagonists will become. At least, that's how it felt at the outset of the third season, when one character who was long thought to be dead had just turned out to be alive, and another character was seemingly killed and also turned out to still be alive. But I feel like they've upped the ante in the last few episodes, the main characters got a totally innocent person killed, so it finally feels like there's some dramatic stakes and they're not just constantly getting out of trouble and hitting the reset button. But also the show can still be light and comedic, they've really found what makes Mae Whitman's character funny.

m) "Westworld"
I try to be patient with "Westworld" because it can take them a few episodes to set up the chess pieces for the really good moments, and I appreciate that they're trying to expand the scope of the already big story, and it still has one of the most impressive casts on TV. That said, it does bum me out to think that a show that had Anthony Hopkins and James Marsden in its first season has a Need For Speed reunion with Aaron Paul and Kid Cudi in its third season. This week's episode was kind of dumb with all the big obvious music cues and Aaron Paul's character coming off really slow to figure things out.

n) "Future Man"
"Future Man" is in some ways as clever and inventive a sci-fi show as "Westworld," just one that doesn't take itself the slightest bit seriously. Each season of the show has kind of shaken up the Etch-a-sketch and given the characters a different setting and challenge. And while the third and final season wasn't quite as consistently entertaining as the first two, it was a solid conclusion to the show and they finally played the card of having exec producer Seth Rogen in a recurring role. Derek Wilson as Wolf is really one of the funniest characters on TV the last few years, I hope he gets a lot of work after this show.

o) "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"
The 'Halloween heist' episodes were a tradition on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" in the early seasons on FOX. But the last couple seasons on NBC have started in January/February, so they cleverly found a way to do the Halloween episode the week of Easter this time around, I enjoyed that. I kind of roll my eyes every time a sitcom does the whole familiar dance of having two characters not like each other, and then date, and then get married, and then try to have kids but they usual

p) "How To Fix A Drug Scandal"
I remember when this story was in the news like 10 years ago, it's interesting to hear it in detail. I really like the theme music, too, a cool little groovy song with saxophone.

q) "Atlanta's Missing And Murdered: The Lost Children"
This stuff happened before I was born, but I'm kind of surprised I hadn't heard about it in all the years since then before the HBO show, this story's really horrifying and sad.

r) "Love Goals"
A celebrity (or "celebrity") couples counseling show on OWN, I feel like they're kind of sinking down to VH1's level by having a show about the love lives of Benzino and Coolio, just terrible.

s) "The Busch Family Brewed"
MTV's latest reality show about rich white people is about the family that founded Busch beer, but they sold the business so they're just rich and doing whatever, I guess. Sometimes I watch these kinds of shows being confused that they even exist.

t) "Richard Hammond's Big"
Kind of a fun Science Channel show where this guy just shows you you some of the biggest manmade structures and objects around the world.

u) "Secrets Of The Zoo: Down Under"
My wife and I honeymooned in Australia but in the couple days we spent in Sydney we didn't have time to see the zoo, so I like seeing this Nat Geo show about it.

v) "Critter Fixers: Country Vets"
Another Nat Geo show about people working with animals, I could never do it but I enjoy watching it and it gives me another level of respect for that kind of work.

w) "Rob Riggle: Global Investigator"
Rob Riggle being this big jocular former Marine gives him sort of a unique niche in the comedy world, it wouldn't make sense for him to do topical jokes in front of a desk or green screen like other "Daily Show" alumni. And this Discovery show where he kind of goes around the world explaining history in humorous ways is a pretty good vehicle for him.

x) "StarBeam"
Netflix seems to roll out a new cutesy colorful cartoon every week, and my 4-year-old has tried all of them, particularly during the quarantine. But he watched this show about a little girl superhero once or twice and never asked to watch it again, which is fine by me, it wasn't really entertaining or funny.

y) "3Below: Tales Of Arcadia"
My kids really liked Guillermo del Toro's first kids' cartoon for Netflix, "Trollhunters." And in classic del Toro fashion, it's now part of a whole connected mythology with a trilogy of different series in the '3Below' universe. We're not as much into "Tales Of Arcadia" but I like that he's trying to do something like this, interested to see the third show when it debuts later this year.

z) "Skylanders Academy"
I vaguely remember the Spyro The Dragon video games that were popular like 20 years ago, I had no idea there was an animated series about him in the 2010s. But my son found it on Netflix and became obsessed with it. For a couple weeks he'd just go back and forth between this and "Dragons: Rescue Riders," whichever dragon cartoon he felt like watching at the moment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16, 2020 at 1:42 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.