There are almost as many dark satirical twists on comic book superhero movies and shows now as there are MCU movies, and the premise of "Invincible" has enough in common with Amazon's biggest current hit "The Boys" that it's for the best that it's animated instead of live action. Love the voice cast (J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, and Gillian Jacobs especially) and I've been hooked since the crazy ending of the first episode. 

c) "The Falcon And The Winter Soldier" 

I don't feel superhero fatigue that often but I definitely get it with this show. I never much cared for either of these characters in the Marvel movies, and Bucky & The Bird don't really work for me as a duo with their stale buddy cop banter -- they could've at least called Shane Black to punch up the dialogue. But I don't know if I think of this show as a failure per se unless I think about how it cost an astonishing $25 million per episode (for perspective, the trades shit a brick when "The Get Down" averaged $16 million an episode). 

This Apple TV series is pretty novel -- a scripted drama with brief 15-20 minute episodes that are basically just the audio of telephone calls, with funky colorful screensaver visuals. I thought that each episode was a self-contained story, sometimes with similar unsettling sci-fi premises, until it became apparent that every episode tied together into one big narrative, which kind of gets explained and resolved at the end. Sometimes the voice acting is a little over-the-top and I wonder if it would've been better as a full-blown TV show and not a glorified podcast/radio drama, but I still really enjoyed it. 

This kind of feels like how there's now all these shows and movies about Gotham City that don't feature Batman, except it's the Sherlock Holmes universe without Sherlock (apparently he does pop up in some episodes but I haven't seen him yet). Pretty good show, though, solid cast of people I haven't seen before, aside from Clarke Peters from "The Wire." 

When I saw that there was an upcoming series with my first name in the title, naturally I hoped it would be good, but no such luck. This show has already attracted a ton of negative attention for the general politics of the show, and the fact that the Afghani title character is played by an actor of Indian descent. But to me it's just kind of frustrating in that usual Chuck Lorre CBS sitcom way where I can see a little spark of personality in the show but it mostly settles for mediocrity, and invariably features actors I really like and want to see in other things -- in this case Elizabeth Alderfer, who hopefully has not given up her role on "A.P. Bio" for this, but also Parker Young from "Enlisted" deserves better. 

 

After Aretha Franklin's death, two competing biographical projects went into production: Respect, a feature film due out this summer with Franklin's own choice of Jennifer Hudson playing her, and the third season of NatGeo's "Genius" series, starring Cynthia Erivo. It's always been clear which project had more prestige and money and probably will be of higher quality, but I still wanted to give this one a chance. The first 2 seasons of "Genius" did a pretty good job telling the stories of Einstein and Picasso and I liked that they were choosing a musical performer as one of their geniuses, and an 8-episode series had potential to cover more of her life and her art than a 2-hour film. And we're kind of fortunate to have 2 Oscar-level actresses who can really sing and are up to the task of portraying Aretha. Unfortunately, this whole thing drops the ball on a lot of levels, the dialogue is terribly clumsy and I never really buy Erivo's Aretha. Worst of all is David Cross, who's spent way more time satirizing bad drama in sketches than he has being a dramatic actor, and makes this thing feel like Walk Hard every time he's onscreen. He plays Jerry Wexler, and I thought "huh, Marc Maron usually gets these roles now" and sure enough, Maron is playing Wexler in the J-Hud movie. It's also weird when they get to the last episode and decide to suddenly start using photos and footage of the real Aretha, which just kind of highlights where Erivo's performance misses the mark. 

As someone who still has a crush on Katharine McPhee from the "American Idol" and "Smash" era, I'm glad she's still getting TV work, even if it's in an incredibly mediocre Netflix sitcom where she's a down-on-her-luck country singer that becomes a family's live-in nanny. 

This is a cute show, Nick and Koob are really entertaining characters. I actually didn't know that Emilio Estevez was in this show until he popped up halfway through the first episode, older and much more cantankerous, which was kind of enjoyable. In retrospect, it's kind of weird that an iconic kids' movie opened with the protagonist getting a DUI. 

 

Between this, "Beartown," and the "Mighty Ducks" show, three series about adolescent hockey players debuted in the space of about a month, which is kind of weird, although they're all fairly different shows. "Zero Chill" is pretty good for a teen dramedy, although TV shows are always so brazen with casting adults as high schoolers, Grace Beedie is 22 and really shouldn't be playing a 15-year-old. 

Cartoon Network really doesn't get enough credit, their daytime programming is as varied and original as Adult Swim and I'm totally glad that my kids have things to watch that are as great as "The Amazing World of Gumball" and "Craig of the Creek." "Elliott From Earth" might not prove to be quite as great from those shows, but it's off to a promising start with an entertaining story about a kid, his mom, and a dinosaur having adventures on a spaceship. 

The second season has gotten kind of intense as they've really started to play out the parallel universe implications of the U.S. and Soviet space programs becoming part of the '80s escalation of the cold war, complete with guns and missiles being sent to the moon. But I think the show has succeeded at being compelling at a character level, I've started to really feel attached to some of these folks, the Baldwin family drama is poignant and I've enjoyed the Tracy Stevens story arc, I think I just have a huge crush on Sarah Jones now. The dialogue really doesn't ring true to the period sometimes, though, I just doubt that people were saying "stay in your lane" or "alternative lifestyle" in 1982. 

This show continues to feel like lesser "Rick And Morty" in its second season, whether it's not good because Dan Harmon isn't working on it or it just has less developed character, I don't know. But it's growing on me, there's usually some insanely clever line every few minutes that makes me laugh pretty hard. I hope Thomas Middleditch gets fired from this and his other show, though, apparently he's a huge creep. 

The biggest storytelling strength of "Snowfall" is that they started the series at the beginning of the crack epidemic in L.A. so things weren't exactly dull in the beginning but everything is just escalating constantly and making the early seasons feel like the calm before the storm. It's 4th season takes place only maybe 2 years after they started, but the show is so much more violent, and they do a great job of really making it feel as horrifying as it should be, there's not too much of an action movie gloss on things. And it's just interesting to watch Franklin Saint's character evolve to where he is now, although now that I've heard Damson Idris speak in his real voice the American voice he came up with for the character sounds a little ridiculous, it's like the difference between Hugh Laurie and House. 

"Good Girls" is another show on its 4th season but, like "Snowfall," it's kind of covering so many crazy criminal operations from day to day that it's only been like a year or two in the show's timeline since the first episode. They were one of the shows that shut down production mid-season last year and didn't get to finish the storyline they were working on for season 3. So it's been nice to finally see them pick up those threads in season 4, I've been enjoying Andrew McCarthy's hitman and Lauren Lapkus's FBI agent. I feel like this show's music supervisor deserves praise, too, there's always great

This Spanish show is one of Netflix's best imports in recent memory, a really pulpy and stylized sort of action comedy about three prostitutes who get fed up with their abusive pimp, beat him nearly to death and go on the run. It's a pretty dark and fucked up show but its tone is kind of playful and light, in some ways it reminds me a lot of "Good Girls." There's a second season coming in July so I'm looking forward to more and them picking up at the last cliffhanger. 

This Mexican show on Netflix is about a girl who dies while parasailing and her brother who's determined to figure out who caused her death. It's really over-the-top and pulpy, not really my thing but I see the entertainment value. 

Apparently the novel Snabba Cash and the movie trilogy based on it are a big deal in Sweden, and this Netflix series is kind of just the first version really reaching America. I like it, though, good cast, strong first episode. 

Now that there's one or two docuseries about every major news story and most of them are mediocre, my expectations were pretty low for this 6-part HBO series about QAnon, I thought it would mostly just be rehashing stuff I already read. But the extent of the interviews with 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan and subsequent 8chan/8kun owners Jim and Ron Watkins wound up making it all compelling, just getting acquainted with these odd nerds at the center of this whole insane conspiracy theory movement, especially when the final episode made a strong case that Q was Ron Watkins all along. 

I'd never heard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist of 1990, this story is pretty crazy, I like the way they're unspooling the details in this Netflix docuseries. 

I thought comedian Jamie Lee was pretty charming on HBO's "Crashing," and on her new Netflix show she kind of helps guide couples through the process of getting married from the perspective that weddings are stressful and you should do whatever you can to stay sane and still enjoy the company of the person you're doing it with. It's a pretty cute little show. 

This Netflix docuseries just tells stories about people and their clothes, mostly regular people but also the saxophonist from The Lost Boys and his codpiece. It's kind of funny that they put the episode about nudists first, though, that kind of threw me off because it's obviously different from all the other episodes.