TV Diary
I mostly like that Disney+'s Marvel series have run towards trippy parallel universe things like "WandaVision" and "Loki," but I'm not trying too hard to keep track of what's going on in "Moon Knight," I'm just along for the ride. Oscar Isaac is a great actor but despite the sort-of duel roles of him playing two guys who share the same body, one meek and British and the other brave and American, it doesn't feel like it's a very challenging project for him. The last couple episodes with May Calamawy from "Ramy" have been great, much better than the first episode in my opinion, but it also makes me really impatient for a new season of "Ramy."
b) "Julia"
I don't know a whole lot about Julia Child, but I enjoyed 2009's Julie & Julia, with Meryl Streep as Child, charting her course to publishing her first cookbook. And I think "Julia," which sort of picks up the story from there, with Sarah Lancashire as Child as she was becoming a TV star, is even better. The cast is just fantastic, with David Hyde Pierce and Bebe Neuwirth giving the whole thing a bit of a 'Frasier without Frasier' vibe at times. And it's just very entertaining and at times touching to see Julia and her husband Paul slowly figure out her career and take this big leap. Fran Kranz doesn't feel especially convincing as the stodgy snobbish public television intellectual, though.
"The Outlaws" is kind of a silly British dark comedy created by Stephen Merchant, with Christopher Walken as the token American, in a group of convicted criminals in a work release program who find a bunch of stolen money. It's kind of overly broad comedy with one-dimensional characters, but the cast is great and makes it work, especially Darren Boyd, Eleanor Tomlinson, and Rhianne Barreto.
The case of 18-year-old Conrad Roy's suicide, and his girlfriend Michelle Carter's manslaughter conviction for encouraging him to kill himself, is one of the more horrifying and fascinating news stories of the past decade. But after 3 episodes of this series, which stars Elle Fanning as Carter, I don't know if I feel any closer to understanding who Carter is or why she did what she did, and I don't even know if I want to understand, it's just such an awfully sad story.
Long before "Winning Time" debuted, we learned a few months ago that Adam McKay and Will Ferrell's longtime professional partnership had ended when Ferrell wanted the lead role and McKay gave it to John C. Reilly. However poorly McKay may have handled the situation, his instincts were correct in that Reilly is perfect as Jerry Buss and it's hard to picture Ferrell pulling it off as well. The first episode is exhausting with all of McKay's directorial tics, and the second episode directed by Jonah Hill is even more annoyingly directed (at one point he cuts a split second of a dog humping another dog into a scene of one guy dominating over another guy in a basketball game). But I feel like the show has found a groove over the last few episodes, Quincy Isaiah is fantastic as Magic Johnson, as are Solomon Hughes, Jason Segel, and Gaby Hoffman, just a ton of great performances elevating the show.
"The Dropout" is so far the gem of this recent spate of shows about the rise and fall of various startups. "Super Pumped," like "Winning Time," is being set up as an anthology series where the second season will be about Facebook, which should be interesting because it feels like The Social Network is one of the main reasons all of these shows exist in the first place. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives a pretty good performance but it feels, to his credit maybe, like he seems like too good a guy to be totally believable as someone who's as big an asshole as Travis Kalanick. I kind of wish "Super Pumped" stuck more to the creators' established style on "Billions," the Quentin Tarantino narration (???) and other flashy fourth wall-breaking bits feel a little too flashy. I already wrote about this show's frequent usage of Pearl Jam's music, which is a little hit and miss, sometimes the songs suit the scene and sometimes they don't.
g) "WeCrashed"
I was very amused when I finished the "Super Pumped" finale and then put on the latest episode of "WeCrashed," which basically takes place at the same time and touches on Kalanick resigning from Uber. It feels like it's all connected in the Bad CEOS cinematic universe. I like and respect Anne Hathaway and neither like nor respect Jared Leto, but I have to say they're both kind of equally well equipped to play a pair of people with fragile egos who start to believe their own hype with disastrous results. I love how O.T. Fagbenie's character finally shows up and sort of says what the viewer is thinking in the last couple episodes.
h) "Tokyo Vice"
It's funny that Michael Mann is exec producing a show called "Tokyo Vice" but it's not a "Miami Vice" spinoff. There's definitely a big drop off in quality from the Mann-directed first episode to the second episode, though, and I wish major directors would stop working with Ansel Elgort, I'm tired of looking at his weird giant toddler face. It seems mildly promising but I dunno, do we still need these kinds of '(seemingly) the only white man in an Asian country' stories. Also, here's another show with some Pearl Jam on the soundtrack, nice use of "Release" in the first episode.
It's exciting to see Samuel L. Jackson star in a series, but I feel like it hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention since "The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey" is kind of a slow moving character study of an old man with dementia. Jackson is great in it, and the murder mystery aspect keeps it moving forward, but I have to admit it's kind of fallen short of my expectations.
This French scripted series on Netflix is about comedians trying to get their careers off the ground in Paris. And it's interesting to see how the style of standup comedy developed in America is now a global thing and even the jokes in this show feel very contemporary to what a comedian would be doing in the U.S. in 2022. And it's a charming little show, some very likable characters.
k) "Transplant"
We liked this Canadian medical drama when it debuted on NBC in 2020 when they were short on fall programming right after Covid hit, less into it now that it's returned for a second season.
l) "Starstruck"
I like that romcoms are flourishing on TV right now, although there's a reason it's a genre is more traditionally suited to movies: if you tried to draw out the will-they-or-won't-they break-up-and-make-up cycle over multiple episodes or seasons, it can feel kind of repetitive and exhausting. Despite those pitfalls, the second season of "Starstruck" is as good as the first, if not better, really glad this show returned, I just adore Rose Matafeo and her delightful New Zealand accent.
m) "Woke"
Rose McIver has left "Woke" for a better show where she doesn't use her delightful New Zealand accent, but it's still a moderately entertaining show, although it's kind of hit and miss with its glib attempts at finding humor in progressive politics.
"Killing Eve" continued to be a pretty excellent show for a while after season 1 head writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge moved on to her many other projects. But as the show wrapped up its 4th and final season this week, it feels undeniable that the show had a steady decline as they cycled through a different head writer each season, and it's hard not to wonder what could've been if Waller-Bridge stayed on, or if they simply ended the series earlier. Anjana Vasan from "We Are Lady Parts" was a good addition to the cast this season, but I really just did not care about how the story ended. It was okay, I guess, it's pretty funny that anybody expected a happy ending enough to be upset about it.
o) "Snowfall"
"Snowfall" is still pretty good, but it definitely feels this season that it's officially past its peak, I think everyone breathed a little sigh of relief at the recent announcement that the next season will be the last.
At least "Better Things" seems to be going out at the top of its game with this final season,the episodes just breeze by as these little slice of life stories that end up sticking with me for a while. Mikey Madison's arc this season was handled really well, great performance by her, felt like the show's typically delicate way of approaching something other shows would turn into a big overblown 'abortion storyline.' Casey Wilson was great in this week's episode, and I've always loved Kevin Pollak, I'm glad to see so much of him lately on both "Better Things" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."
q) "Upload"
So many shows are coming back for 7-episode second seasons after there were more episodes in the first season ("Upload," "Space Force," "Russian Doll"), what's up with that? Anyhow, "Upload" was a moderately entertaining show the first time around, I'm glad it's back. The second season wasn't quite as good, but I feel like Allegra Edwards has grown into a really interesting sorta-villain, and Andy Allo is so super fine she was literally a Prince protege.
r) "Bridgerton"
The idea of "Bridgerton" was always that each season would follow a different set of main characters, just like the novel series it's based on. But the massive popularity of the first season inevitably set people up for a little disappointment if they didn't realize that, and it seems like there's already some consensus that season 2 is just not as good as the first. As a casual viewer, though, I dunno, it's fine, I'm happy to keep watching.
Given the durable popularity of both dating shows like "The Bachelor" and Regency era romances like "Bridgerton," it seems like a potential slam dunk to just do a dating reality show where everyone wears fancy clothes in a castle. But "The Courtship" is a very silly show, and it doesn't seem to have resonated -- NBC aired two episodes that got such poor ratings that they moved the rest of the series to the USA Network.
Meanwhile the dating show everyone is buzzing about is this goofy Netflix 'social experiment' show where 6 unmarried couples kind of swap partners for 8 weeks before deciding if they want to go back to their relationship and get married. I saw a tweet that made the excellent point that "The Ultimatum" is full of super attractive people in their mid-20s but the show would make a lot more sense if they had couples in their 30s who've been together a decade or more but never married.
I've never really followed Eurovision but can understand the fascination with it, and was skeptical about an attempt at an American version. But I'm impressed with the effort NBC has put behind this -- they're putting on 50-something performances representing every state and territory, and just about everyone has the production values of a major awards show performance. In fact sometimes the creative staging and visual effects outshine the singers and their songs, the production team really went all-out. And I appreciate that because there are so many performances to get through, there's no judges' panel bits or other filler moments that a lot of these kinds of shows have, you just get these quick host segments where Kelly Clarkson and Snoop Dogg keep the energy up. I still need to listen to the studio recordings of most of the songs on Spotify, but based on the performances, I think my favorite song so far is probably West Virginia's and my wife is rooting for Tennessee, and I really rolled my eyes at Oregon and Texas's songs. My wife doesn't like that a few states are represented by established stars (Jewel, Michael Bolton, etc.) but I think it's fine and so far they don't seem to have any particular advantage in the competition. I just hope Sisqo does a good job representing Maryland next week.
This competition reality show on MTV where musicians who have a following on TikTok compete to become pop stars is the kind of thing that would be easy to make fun of. But honestly, TikTok has been a huge driver of pop music in the last few years and it's just a smart idea to pick some people from that platform and let them work with professional producers and choreographers and music video directors and try to make that leap to something bigger and more polished. I don't like everybody on the show and some of my favorites have already been eliminated, but I like the overall concept of the show.
This isn't quite as entertaining as its predecessor "Lego Masters," but it is pretty exciting once they start toppling the incredibly complex domino arrangements and you get to watch the whole thing come alive.
I've never followed sports at all but I feel like I absorb a lot more information about sports than I used to now because of Twitter. And Bomani Jones is one of the sports commentators who I don't even follow but he always seems really smart and reasonable on Twitter so I checked out his new weekly HBO show and it's excellent, kind of feels more like a counterpart to "Last Week Tonight" that simply has a sports emphasis.
Netflix's interactive programs are still enough of a novelty that I like to try them out, this is apparently based on a popular mobile app called 'Trivia Crack' that they wisely renamed for the Netflix version. I found it really boringly easy at first, and then I tried the 'hard mode' and it was moderately more challenging but still pretty boring, just not the timekiller for me.
A really cute animated show on Apple TV+, I was surprised my 6-year-old didn't take to it when I put it on because it definitely reminds me of stuff he enjoys like "Centaurworld."
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on Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 12:00 PM.
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