TV Diary
a) "Generation"
On the surface it feels a little redundant for HBO to have another edgy show about the drugged out gender fluid misadventures of Gen Z teenagers. But "Generation" is a half hour show that takes itself a lot less seriously than "Euphoria" does, and I like it a lot more. The chopped up chronology they use to introduce the characters in the first episode is a little exhausting, but the next two episodes are a little more straightforward and it's really growing on me. There is a little of the vibe that behind the camera are some aging millennials behind the camera desperately trying to keep a grip on the zeitgeist (Lena Dunham exec producer credit and all) but again it doesn't feel like it's trying as hard as "Euphoria" on that front.
b) "Debris"
Sci-fi shows on the major networks have been dullsville for so long that I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much about NBC's "Debris," but it's pretty good so far. The premise, where debris from an alien spaceship start crashing on Earth and causing weird phenomena, is interesting, the visual effects are great, and there's a little of an "X-Files" vibe to having two government agents tracking down the debris and investigating what's been happening. Also Scroobius Pip, a British spoken word artist who had a horrible novelty hit circa 2007, is in this show for some reason.
c) "The One"
"The One" is about a near future where a super sophisticated and effective matchmaking service totally upends dating and relationships around the world, and it has the bad fortune to premiere a few months after a show with a similar premise, "Soulmates." But where that was an anthology show looking at different people who use the service, "The One" is more of a suspense/mystery revolving around the person who created the service, so it's not too similar. Didn't love the first episode but I found the story suitably intriguing to watch more.
d) "Young Rock"
"Wonder Years" has become a pretty durable sitcom format, particularly the "Everybody Hates Chris" variant where it's a celebrity narrating the dramatized anecdotes from their youth. So now it's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's turn, and the weird framing device of his version is that he's recounting these stories as a presidential candidate in 2032. Even weirder is he's telling these stories to Randall Park, who starred in another "Wonder Years"-style show, "Fresh Off The Boat," and in this show plays himself having transitioned from acting to being a TV news anchor. The fact that Johnson makes a joke of running for POTUS gives me some hope that he won't ever actually run, but at this point who fucking knows. It's a cute show, though, they did a good job with the casting of the young Rock and his dad and some other old pro wrestling icons.
"The New Adventures of Old Christine" was right on the line of being too hokey and broad, but I think the cast really helped redeem the show and make it watchable. Creator Kari Lizer's new show starring Kyra Sedgwick, however, doesn't get over that line, it's just a little too old-fashioned and cheesy. Emma Caymares has good comic timing, though, she has some career potential.
I'm glad FOX got a new show created by "Bob's Burgers" writers in the Sunday night animation block instead of giving yet another timeslot to Seth MacFarlane or something, and "The Great North" has a pretty strong voice cast including Nick Offerman, Jenny Slate, and Will Forte. I have to admit, though, the show hasn't really made me laugh a whole lot yet, at most Will Forte's line readings give me a chuckle. I don't necessarily want it to be more like "Bob's Burgers" because we've already got one of those, but I'm hoping they find their own comic rhythm.
I don't watch a lot of The CW's D.C. Comics shows, so I didn't realize that the stars of this show have been playing Superman and Lois Lane on various other series for a few years now. And that surprised me because I think casting is this show's biggest weakness, besides the title being so clunky compared to the very cleverly named "Lois & Clark" series from the '90s. It just feels like they grabbed the first two dark-haired actors they found, why does Superman look like Ty Burrell from "Modern Family"? Some of the dialogue is really lame, too, this is an actual line from the show: "Y'know what, babe? You do your Superman stuff and I will do my Lois Lane stuff." It's a moderately charming show, though, and Sofia Hasmik is really cute.
h) "Batwoman"
When "Batwoman" debuted in 2019 starring Ruby Rose, it very quickly became apparent to everybody who saw it that she could act just enough to get through small roles in Pitch Perfect and John Wick sequels but not enough to actually carry a series in the title role. I figured that meant that the show would get canceled quickly (or just run for years in relatively invisible mediocrity like many other CW shows), but instead Ruby Rose left the show after the first season, her character went missing, and a new character played by Javicia Leslie finds her batsuit and decides to put it on and become the new Batwoman. Leslie's definitely a more capable lead, but since I didn't watch most of the first season and tried to pick it up again, I'm a little lost since they've otherwise kept the rest of the same cast and ongoing storylines. So I don't know if I'll keep watching, but I've definitely seen enough to know it's an improvement.
Right after SyFy premiered a live action show starring Alan Tudyk, "Resident Alien," they also added another show with Tudyk to their animation block. But like a lot of SyFy's other cartoons, it's perfectly enjoyable while also a little obvious, like something Adult Swim would've ran 10 years ago but would pass on now because they've moved on to other kinds of shows.
I've never seen the original '80s "The Equalizer" series, but it was pretty entertaining to watch a 60-something Denzel Washington kick ass in the recent movie version. So it was smart to cast a woman in the new series and avoid having some guy pale in comparison to Denzel in the role, and Queen Latifah is an inspired choice. The action doesn't feel very exciting in this show, though, like you can only get so violent on CBS so it's a little toothless.
k) "Walker"
After a staggering 15 sesasons, you'd think maybe the stars of "Supernatural" would both be eager to do something besides a CW series, but Jared Padalecki went right back to work in a "Walker, Texas Ranger" reboot of all things. It feels like they're trying to take the show seriously and not be campy at all, which is fine I guess but it's pretty bland. His partner Lindsey Morgan is really pretty, though. One episode features a whole car of people born after 1980 singing along to Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk," which was odd and not that plausible.
l) "Beartown"
I'm a little surprised that HBO is airing this Swedish miniseries instead of making an Americanized version, simply because the story is so familiar and easy to extrapolate to a U.S. setting: a star high school athlete rapes his coach's daughter and it sets off a whole course of events that tears a small town apart. But the cast and the direction is excellent, I am kind of glad that I got to see this version instead of a remake.
This Danish miniseries is about journalist Kim Wall's death after boarding Peter Madsen's homemade submarine. "The Investigation" is a very dry, no-nonsense depiction of the police investigation, just gathering evidence, talking to the victim's parents, not a lot about the suspect or the victim or the submarine, which I think is what most people would focus on in a series like this. I sort of respect that decision but I also find it kind of pretentious to tell the story of a very unusual case that made headlines all over the world and then shy away from the details that interested people.
This Netflix miniseries is about a pretty fascinating story about a collector of Mormon religious documents who got in too deep selling forgeries and started planting bombs and murdering people in Salt Lake City in 1985. I was a little kid back then so I wouldn't have heard about it at the time, but I'm still surprised that I'd never heard of this story before watching the series, what an insane sequence of events.
This Netflix series feels very much like a History Channel thing, it's mostly a documentary with talking heads but it's also got some actors dramatizing the stories. That's a format that always frustrates me a little and makes me wish I could just watch either a full-on documentary or a full-on scripted series, and I don't think they did this as well as those History Channel shows, the dialogue in the dramatized parts is really dumb.
This 6-part series on ABC is sort of like a "20/20" offshoot where it's just a traditional newsmagazine about current events in black America, plus musical guests. But it kinda has the vibe that they decided to make this last summer and a lot of the stories now are things that happened a few months ago, to say nothing of vague, sort of dated trendpieces about things like TikTok dances and black Twitter, feels a little like they missed the mark for what they were going for.
Talk show-style discussion panel shows like "Talking Dead" airing after popular shows are a format that comes really naturally to cable that don't necessarily translate to a streaming platform like Netflix where there's no timeslots. But they've decided to try it anyway, with an 'afterparty' for a different Netflix series in each episode, and instead of an excitable fanboy-type host like Chris Hardwick, they went in the opposite direction and got David Spade, who never seems like a fan of anything. But I will give Spade credit, he seems to actually watch the shows and think of things to talk to the cast about, like he talked to Anya Taylor-Joy about playing chess growing up and seemed to genuinely like "The Queen's Gambit."
It feels like "The Masked Singer" opened the floodgates for FOX to just try the most bizarre game show concepts they could put on the air. A few months ago there was "I Can See Your Voice," where people lip sync and contestants try to accurately guess who can actually sing well and who can't, and now there's the similar "Game Of Talents," where the contestants have to guess if someone is a dancer or a gymnast or a magician or whatever. "I Can See Your Voice" has a surreal fever dream quality that this show doesn't, though.
This show was kind of a letdown when it debuted last year and I wanted to give it a chance to grow on me the second season because the cast is pretty good. But it's still really underwhelming and retains less and less of what I loved about the movie.
By its 3rd season "American Gods" had already shed a lot of the people that made it an exciting show in the first place (Bryan Fuller, Gillian Anderson, Orlando Jones, Pablo Schreiber), many of them under a cloud of controversy and conflict, so it's tempting to just discard the show and forget about it. But I'm still really enjoying it, there's not much else on TV like it. Shadow Moon started a new life under a new identity this season, and his new hairstyle looks absolutely ridiculous, but otherwise it's been an interesting storyline, and when he finally reunited with his dead wife Deadwife this season it felt like a really poignant, emotional culmination of their whole story arc.
u) "Grown-ish"
The show has been good this season, I feel like they're starting to really appreciate having Chloe and Halle in the cast and have been giving them juicier storylines of their own and not just little comic relief moments.
v) "Superstore"
I'm sad that this show is ending its run this month, but it's also kind of alarming to realize it's been on for 6 seasons -- Mark McKinney and "Superstore" will have squeaked ahead of "NewsRadio" by 16 episodes to become the longest-running NBC sitcom with a cast member from "Kids In The Hall," and these things are important to me. The show has continued to be great since America Ferrera left at the beginning of the season, but she's apparently going to be in the finale and it feels a little pointless that she just stepped out for 12 episodes towards the end of the show's run.
This new Netflix show is really interesting and unusual, with animated characters over live action backgrounds, in kind of a dry mockumentary style, with a group of kids who go around Los Angeles visiting buildings that have ghosts and learning about them. It's very droll and artsy and it kind of feels like it's more for adults than for kids, but my 5-year-old loves it.
My kids have never seen Pacific Rim but they really enjoyed this anime spinoff series on Netflix, they devoured every episode in about a day, definitely recommended for kids who love Transformers.
My son who's in kindergarten is absolutely obsessed with this show on Netflix and I'm actually kind of shocked by how much he's learned about math from it. In class they're doing simple addition and subtraction but he can answer multiplication questions pretty well just off of how much "Numberblocks" has helped him understand and visualize these things. If you have young kids, definitely try to get them hooked on "Numberblocks."
z) "Simon"
A really cute little French cartoon about bunnies named Simon and Gaspard that my kid has enjoyed lately, I enjoy that Netflix has brought in so many cartoons from other countries, it's cool to see what kids are watching in Europe.
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on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 10:42 AM.
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