TV Diary
a) "Mrs. Davis"
"Mrs. Davis" was co-created by Tara Hernandez, whose filmography consists primarily of writing a combined 170 episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" and "Young Sheldon," and the more established Damon Lindelof. On "Lost," "The Leftovers," and "Watchmen," Lindelof has often gotten away with big complex plots with a lot of characters, overlapping stories in different timelines, and surreal mysteries. And compared to those shows, "Mrs. Davis" is much more focused on one character, a nun named Sister Simone played by Betty Gilpin. But it still manages to be kind of hard to follow, mainly because Simone is preparing to take down a powerful artificial intelligence program called Mrs. Davis that has changed how everybody lives, but you don't see Mrs. Davis in the first four episodes or much evidence of how it's changed the world. You mostly see a nun getting into strange adventures with an underground resistance led by her ex-boyfriend (Jake McDorman, getting to be weird after a lot of generic handsome guy roles). I like the show, but I hope the 'shock and awe' approach settles into a narrative I actually understand at some point.
b) "Slip"
I have enjoyed the features that Zoe Lister-Jones co-directed and co-wrote with her husband Daryl Wein, and the Roku series "Slip" is her first project since they divorced. And it definitely feels like a high concept "Russian Doll" sort of metaphysical comedy about marriage and divorce, with Lister-Jones as an unhappy married woman who has a one night stand, then wakes up in an alternative universe where she's married to the guy she slept with. Eventually, she realizes that she jumps into a different reality every time she has an orgasm, and kind of sleeps her way through the multiverse (declaring, eventually, "I think my pussy is a wormhole"). It's not as wacky as it may sound, though, it feels like a pretty emotionally grounded story that just happens to have an absurd premise.
c) "Jury Duty"
For a few years IMDb had a streaming service called IMDb TV, but last year Amazon rebranded it as Freevee, and it's a basically a free streaming service with ads within the Amazon Prime interface that's full of old shows and movies. So the little original programming on Freevee so far has been pretty B-list (a new show from Judge Judy, "Bosch" spinoffs), but "Jury Duty" is honestly one of my favorite shows of 2023 so far. It's in many respects a standard mockumentary sitcom, but with one little twist: one juror is just a regular guy, Ronald, who thinks he's in a documentary about jury duty and doesn't realize everyone else is an actor (except James Marsden, playing himself, but constantly behaving like an hilariously entitled Hollywood diva who thinks he shouldn't have to serve on jury duty). Considering that most of the cast needed to be unknowns for the concept to work, and they basically had to do everything in one take the actors are really fantastic, particularly Edy Modica and Todd Brown. And while I spent the first few episodes kinda wondering if the show needed Ronald or worrying that the whole thing was a little cruel to him, it wound up being really wonderful when the case ended and they revealed the truth to him, like genuinely heartwarming.
"The Big Door Prize" is a gently whimsical Apple TV+ dramedy about a small town where everybody shops at the same general store, and one day a mysterious arcade machine shows up in the store that gives users a card predicting their "life potential" in a single phrase. Chris O'Dowd's character is a teacher who's good at whistling, and his card says "teacher/whistler," but then his wife gets a card that says "royalty" -- so basically the results are all over the map and send everyone in the town into their own existential crises. It's a little silly but well written and I like the cast, particularly O'Dowd's wife, Gabrielle Dennis, who I also enjoyed on the otherwise forgettable "Rosewood" a few years ago.
"Animal Control" feels like a very standard FOX sitcom, like a lower stakes "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" about animal control workers instead of cops. But it's pretty charming, Joel McHale plays a cranky Jeff Winger type, and I'm glad Vella Lovell has rebounded to another solid show after the cancellation of "Mr. Mayor." Unfortunately, the scenes where they actually have to capture or help animals are usually really dumb and broad with bad puppetry or cheap CGI and often culminate in something corny like a character getting kicked in the nuts by a kangaroo.
Another show starring a "Community" alum, and sometimes Gillian Jacobs can't help but remind me of Britta, but "Transatlantic" is a pretty different kind of show, a WWII period piece about a committee that helped rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied parts of Europe. Considering the subject matter, it's actually not that dark a show though, doesn't feel like it's going for really thorough historical accuracy but it's engaging and well written.
A guy who's a career criminal hooking up with a woman who's a federal agent, without either of them knowing what the other does for a living, is a decent storyline for the first episode of a series. But "Tulsa King" did it much better a few months before "The Company You Keep." And while Milo Ventimiglia is probably the biggest network TV sex symbol you could ask for right now to star in a show like this, "The Company You Keep" just kind of falls flat and feels too contrived a lot of the time. And much of the show ostensibly takes place in Baltimore but it feels really obvious they shot it somewhere else.
I mentioned recently when writing about Rob Lowe's new show with his son that "Schitt's Creek" actually being good has probably had a harmful effect on TV in general because now every aging star thinks they can make one of their kids a co-star on their show. And this sitcom about George Lopez and his daughter, played by his real life daughter, is just awful.
"The Crossover" is a decent Disney+ drama set in the world of youth basketball, but I can't help but compare it unfavorably to Apple TV+'s similarly themed "Swagger," which had a better cast and a more compelling story.
I thought the first season of "Schmigadoon!" was pretty good but I kind of forgot about it once it ended and didn't really think about whether it could ever come back for a second season. So I'm pleasantly surprised that the show returned and really revealed its full potential -- in season 1, Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key played a couple who stumbled into Schmigadoon, a real life Rogers & Hammerstein-style small town musical. And in season 2, they try to find Schmigadoon again and instead stumble into Schmicago, a city that lampoons Chicago and Cabaret and Sweeney Todd. So they've built a format where they can just parody a whole bunch of different kinds of musicals, with some hilarious original songs and an insanely great cast including Kristen Chenoweth, Tituss Burgess, and Ariana DeBose.
k) "Dave"
Lil Dicky's sitcom continues to be way better than it has a right to be, especially considering that it's all about Lil Dicky's actual life and music. The really remarkable thing, though, is that his real life hypeman Gata plays himself and is by far the most likable and compelling character in the whole show. The recent episodes with Jane Levy and Chloe Bennet were excellent, but the episode about touring in Texas felt really dumb and condescending. And the Rick Ross episode really felt like it played into every negative criticism of "Dave" as a broader, more obvious version of "Atlanta."
"American Auto" has really hit its stride in its second season and has allowed itself to be a little meaner, I think, it's more like "Veep" in a car company's corporate headquarters than Justin Spitzer's previous series "Superstore."
m) "Ghosts"
This show was silly from the beginning and I feel like it just gets sillier as it goes on, but Rose McIver really is fantastic and I think makes the show work better than it otherwise would, as the only character sort of living in both the spirit world and the material world.
n) "Sex/Life"
The first season "Sex/Life" depicted Sarah Shahi as a married woman who had an affair with an ex played by Adam Demos, and in real life Shahi filed for divorce shortly before the show started filming and began dating Demos. Considering that the entire appeal of the show was steamy scenes between the two hot stars, it feels like they oddly backed away from that in the shorter 6-episode second season, breaking up those characters and introducing subplots about other couples, and it didn't work at all, because the show got quickly canceled after that.
I keep trying to get my kids into "Bob's Burgers" because I feel like it's not that different from some of the animated sitcoms they watch like "Big City Greens," and I think it'll be a good gateway to them someday enjoying stuff like "The Simpsons." I haven't hooked them yet, but I feel it slowly happening. And of course, the show still makes me laugh, at this point it feels like very animated 'adult sitcom' stays on the air way too long but they are shockingly consistent in season 13.
I watched "Beavis & Butt-Head" faithfully back when I was a little teenage headbanger myself, and I still crack up remembering some of their video commentary from the '90s episodes. But I found the 2011 revival kind of depressing, especially when they'd watch reality shows and YouTube videos instead of music videos, and the latest revival is also at its worst when they watch YouTube. The music video segments are still pretty good, though, it's fun to see them comment on contemporary hits like "Industry Baby."
This Apple TV+ series is based on a Manga, and is about a woman who has to wine a wine tasting test to inherit her father's fortune and the world's most valuable wine collection -- but she's estranged from her father, sober, and has some kind of violent allergic reaction to wine. It's played as a very serious cable drama but the story feels very broad and simple and soap opera-ish, maybe would've worked better if it was animated.
Another show based on a Manga, but it feels like a live action adaptation was a better idea here, it's a more grounded story about friendship and food.
An Italian series on Hulu about three women in a crime family who decide to bring down the mafia from the inside, I've only watched one episode but it seems pretty promising.
Lidia Poet was a real person, the first female lawyer in Italy in the late 1800s. This Netflix series feels like it's trying to make the story as sexy as possible, like the lead actress looks like Dua Lipa, she's insanely hot. Decent show though.
Netflix's "The Exchange" is based on a true story of two Kuwaiti women who became successful on the stock market in the '80s, another one I've only watched a little so far but it's a fascinating story.
Outside of the early boom years of "American Idol," it feels like country is the one genre where reality TV has launched a good number of viable music careers. And this Apple TV+ series created by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon is pretty cool because they set out to celebrate the diversity of country music. The three judged include two of the most prominent Black country stars (Jimmie Allen and Mickey Guyton) and one of the most prominent queer country stars (Orville Peck), bringing country musicians from all over the place, including India and South Africa, to Nashville to play showcases and work on their craft. I kind of dislike how much of the show is just asking the musicians to do country covers of non-country songs, but there are a lot of talented and likable people on here, it's a cool show.
Another genre-focused music reality competition, Netflix's "The Signing" is about urbano/Latin trap music, which isn't really a world I know well, but it's cool to think that they're looking to discover the next Bad Bunny or something. And I'm glad I watched this with subtitles so I could hear the music as it's being performed but also understand the lyrics, the language barrier definitely holds me back from listening to more music with Spanish lyrics but it's pretty interesting to see what the lyrics are about, it feels topically distinct from American rap lyrics. I did roll my eyes pretty hard, though, when one woman said "I do something that I call 'sad reggaeton,' I make music to twerk to while crying."
A reality show where Eugene Levy is sent to different countries and is forced out of his shell to meet people and experience new things, it's a cute little show, sometimes he complains more than he should but you can see him opening his mind and trying to have a good attitude, which I relate to, I don't love traveling that much eiter.
y) "Cheat"
A British game show on Netflix with a confusing concept where contestants are given the opportunity to cheat, and win by manipulating other contestants, or knowing when other contestants cheated. Kind of fun to watch, but there's one stoic host and one really annoying co-host who mostly just says "was it a cheat? it wasn't a cheat!" every 30 seconds.
Season 48 has been pretty good, although I guess it may be over already if the WGA strike starts before the next episode. Mikey Day and Ego Nwodim kind of feel like the workhorse cast members in almost every sketch now and it's been cool to see them get their shine as cast members have left, but James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang and the Please Don't Destroy guys are definitely the people that have brought a new sensibility into "SNL" and I hope they all stick around for a while. I hate when athletes host but Travis Kelce was decent.
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