TV Diary
a) "Demascus"
AMC developed and produced "Demascus" with one of the producers from "Breaking Bad" and then decided to cancel it two and a half years ago before it even aired to make it a tax writeoff. Tubi recently picked up the six episodes that were made, and it's a pretty creative and offbeat sci-fi comedy created by playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm. I'm glad it finally got out there, even if it doesn't feel like it would've reached a huge audience even if it had come out as originally intended. The title character, played by Okieriete Onaodowan, is in a form of immersion therapy where he gets to briefly live in alternate timelines, it's kind of all over the place in terms of tone but in an interesting, deliberate way. Martin Lawrence, the only really big name involved, has a pretty funny recurring role in some episodes but I don't really mind that the episodes without him tend to be a little more emotional or cerebral. Also nice to see Tyrel Jackson Williams from "Brockmire" in this. The episode titles are all playfully meta and the last episode is called "Second Season Prequel," but who knows if they'll get to do more.
b) "Butterfly"
This Amazon Prime thriller series gets off to a great start with the first episode, where a young spy (Reina Hardesty) is chasing down a mysterious figure who turns out to be her father, a spy who faked his own death 9 years earlier when she was a teenager. I'd seen Hardesty in a couple things before (including "Brockmire"!) but this is the first time I'm seeing her in a lead role and suddenly going wow, she's got a real star quality , equally great in the action scenes and the more dramatic moments, and extremely beautiful.
I've been kind of a vocal Noah Hawley skeptic over the years, but if he's going to play around in an existing fictional universe, I feel like Alien is a good choice. My wife recently proposed that we go through all the Alien movies in the order of the story chronology, but so far we've only gotten through Prometheus and Alien: Covenant because those are a couple of deeply flawed and frustrating movies that can really sap your interest in the entire franchise. So Hawley almost can't make a prequel worse than Ridley Scott himself already did, so fuck it, man, go nuts. The first two episodes are moderately promising, although I thought it was kind of rude to me personally that they killed off Richa Moorjani after a few scenes. I liked that the episodes ended with Dio-era Ozzy and Tool, respectively. Metal in action/sci-fi can be kind of corny when there's a lot of it, but it can hit pretty hard when used judiciously.
Jason Momoa's passion project about 18th century Hawaii is alright. I saw some sad idiot ranting and raving that they made the show less accessible by having most of the dialogue in Hawaiian, but I really like hearing their language, it makes the whole thing feel more immersed in its own world, and it feels kinda necessary for the contrast when British people do show up and speak in English.
It's funny to watch a TV show based on a video game that's a transparent Mad Max knockoff, it's a smart move that they lean into the comedy so it doesn't feel like just an imitation. I think the show's better when Anthony Mackie has Stephanie Beatriz as a scene partner so hopefully there's more of them together on the way after they've been separated for a bit.
f) "Platonic"
Seth Rogen currently stars in two Apple TV+ series. The first season of "The Studio" recently received 23 Emmy nominations, while "Platonic," which just returned for a second seasons, has received zero nominations for any awards whatsoever. But I think these shows are in the same ballpark of enjoyability, even if "Platonic" is a bit less ambitious or distinctive. It feels almost regressive to premise an entire show on it being weird or inherently troublesome for a straight man and woman in relationships to have a close platonic friendship, and Rogen/Stoller productions have a history of plots where
I really like Rachel Rosenbloom in this show, it's a shame they have her in this very one-note role and made it very obvious that she's not going to last very long as Rogen's character's fiancee.
g) "Wednesday"
I like "The Addams Family" and Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton (or at least Burton back in the day), and putting those things all together in a series looks great on paper and I understand why it's a big hit, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Giving Wednesday psychic powers and putting her in a school with other ghouls and monsters is so corny. At least a little fun seeing Steve Buscemi in these episodes though.
The animated MCU shows all feel like ephemeral little optional side quests, but this one was decent.
i) "Wylde Pak"
A recent Nickelodeon cartoon that my youngest has gotten into, similar to some other contemporary cartoon sitcoms (with the divisive "bean mouth" visual style) but pretty cute and charming.
This may be a somewhat controversial statement, but I've never really loved "King of the Hill." Like I'm generally pro-Mike Judge, and Office Space and "Beavis and Butt-Head" make me laugh (the latter more when I was 12 than now, but still), but "King of the Hill" is the show that I always kind of quietly sat and tolerated while other people watched it or I was waiting for "The Simpsons" or something to start. There are a few characters that I often found pretty funny, but many of them or absent or changed in the new Hulu revival of the show. Brittany Murphy is gone, so Luanne isn't around. Johnny Hardwick is gone, so Dale is now voiced by Toby Huss, who does a decent job but there's kind of an 'uncanny valley' quality to the slightly detectable difference in voices. Huss also no longer plays Khan, who's now voiced by an actual Asian actor, Ronny Chieng, which is a bit more understandable. And Bobby is now 21 years old, but basically looks the same with stubble and Pamela Adlon's same weird little child voice, which just feels bizarre. There's even a Chuck Mangione gag in the episode that feels a little bittersweet since he also just died. And on top of that, a lot of the humor in these episodes is derived from putting terms like 'nepo baby' or 'canceled' or 'female-presenting' in Hank or Peggy's mouth, it all just has a dreadful vibe to me.
This Netflix anime series is a very intriguingly creepy story about someone realizing that their best friend has been replaced with some kind of bizarre inhuman imposter.
This Japanese series on Netflix is about a young woman who's kicked out of her band in the middle of a music festival, so she sets up her drums backstage and starts jamming, and a mysterious pianist starts playing along with her, and then she gets invited to join his band. It feels like a weird fable with a tenuous relationship to how the music industry works anywhere, including Japan, but some of the music is pretty cool and I like the whole sweeping emotion of the thing, the direction is very stylish and the actors are compelling.
This Netflix show is about a disgraced Korean rugby player making a comeback, and I didn't even know they had rugby over there, charming little show.
Those letters students are asked to write to themselves or people in the future? This Turkish show on Netflix is about a teacher's daughter finding those letters 20 years later and uncovering a dark secret in them, which feels like just too contrived and goofy a premise for me to really get into the story.
Another sort of 'a dark secret unravels everything' sort of story, this one a very slow moving Japanese show about a lawyer and an art teacher's marriage, couldn't get into it.
I enjoy a good love story centered around cooking, and this Korean romcom about a chef and a food executive is charming.
This show has such a cool concept, guests make kind of an open-ended order at this restaurant and the chef sort of interprets it to create a custom dish on the spot while they have a conversation.
I'm forever complaining about the trend of actors hosting reality shows, and this is another one, although I don't care as much if Simu Liu is taking time away from doing movies. And this is another derivative show where a bunch of annoying people from other reality shows try to outsmart each other in a generic mansion.
The whole 'theme' of this show is that 10 Japanese singles are secluded together without any access to phones or internet devices, which seems kind of a dumb 'hook' because I think there are already a good number of dating shows like "Love Island" where the participants are offline while they're taping.
I interviewed some New Orleans musicians the other day who had been displaced by Katrina, it's still such a shameful chapter in American history and it feels like we're doomed to repeat it in some fashion with the current administration's FEMA cuts. This recent Nat Geo docuseries, directed by Traci A. Curry ane exec produced by Ryan Coogler,
It feels like very week there's a new true crime doc about some infamous murder I'd never heard of, which really just goes to show how much violence is constantly happening in this country. Apparently four teen girls were killed in a yogurt shop in Austin in 1991 and it's never been solved, pretty grisly stuff.
Another doc about a mystery I hadn't heard of, a woman who disappeared on a cruise ship in 1998 and her family still doesn't know if she fell overboard or was sex trafficked.
I do think I might have heard about this when it was in the news, a dentist murdered his wife on safari in Zambia and tried to make it look like an accident. Man, people are stupid and evil.
These things are so often American stories that it's kind of novel to hear about a pair of British serial killers, again a pretty crazy story I can't believe I'd never heard about.
This show has a good concept, each episode looks at one murder or missing person story that drew a ton of media interest, like Laci Peterson or Chandra Levy, and examines a similar story that got less attention for whatever reason, so it's delving into these stories with a side of media criticism.
This is an inconsequential little reality show where a few minor celebrities vacation together in Vietnam. I barely know who any of them are besides Tammy Rivera, Waka Flocka Flame's ex-wife from Baltimore who used to be on "Love & Hip Hop" with him, I like her.
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