TV Diary
a) "Furious"
After giving us one of the best sitcoms of the 2010s, "New Girl," Liz Meriwether made a few more comedies, and then made an interesting pivot into progressively darker dramas: "The Dropout," "Dying For Sex," and now "Furious," loosely based on a movie about a semi-forgotten '80s movie about a female serial killer, Black Widow. And in a modern context, a victim of sex trafficking going on a revenge campaign against abusive men probably plays a little differently than it did 40 years ago. But the whole thing, parallel stories of the killer and the FBI agent looking for her, with some of the most disturbing stuff happening in the law enforcement narrative, is pretty compelling. Emmy Rossum doing some of the best work of her career, Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Rob Yang and Steve Way stealing scenes, Jake Lacy playing a totally detestable motherfucker really well, great work all around. Ariel Marx's score also sounds really fucking cool and has elevated some of the show's most intense scenes, and this week's episode ended with a great song I recently wrote about.
b) "The Shards"
"The Shards" is also a serial killer show, but a much flimsier one. It's a Ryan Murphy adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis book, which is just a cursed combination of two people who've done some good stuff and a lot of terrible stuff. The Shards was I guess one of those trendy 'autofiction' things, based on Ellis's own early '80s youth aside from the fabricated serial killer stuff, and Ellis is the main character. It's remarkable sometimes how boring Ryan Murphy can make ostensibly exciting things like sex and murder and a car chase set to one of my favorite Pretenders deep cuts.
I've pointed out many times that Amazon Prime's bread-and-butter is adaptations of Young Adult novels, but the other day someone called them "the new CW," which is so spot-on that I wish I'd thought of it. "Sterling Point" isn't based on a YA book, and I also enjoyed creator Megan Park's debut feature The Fallout, I think she really has a knack for writing teen characters with interiority, this feels more The Breakfast Club than "Gossip Girl." That being said, it is about a bunch of cute teenagers on a little island in Canada falling in love with each other and uncovering family secrets, but the dialogue is sharp and I found it very engrossing and got through the whole season in under a week.
This famous airline bombing over Scotland happened in 1988 when I was 6 years old, a little too young to have been aware of it at the time. But somehow I just had zero awareness for decades until there's suddenly been a ton of TV projects about it, and I'm not sure why now, because there hasn't been a major anniversary or anything. In the space of two years we've gotten the Peacock/Sky Atlantic miniseries "Lockerbie: A Search for Truth," a CNN docuseries, and now this Netflix/BBC miniseries. This new one is I think a little more compelling than the Peacock one, and Mogwai did the soundtrack.
Listen, "The Big Bang Theory" was a cash cow, and CBS doing a spinoff about Sheldon makes sense, that's smart business. But a high concept HBO Max spinoff about a supporting character who was in like a third of the episodes and was never particularly funny or popular? One that feels more like a live action "Rick & Morty" knockoff than anything like "The Big Bang Theory"? This is very strange, I felt a lot of secondhand embarrassment watching the first episode.
Speaking of spinoffs and speaking of "Rick & Morty," I do understand the impulse to do a spinoff centered on a very funny supporting character voiced by Keith David. For one thing, you can play around in this universe without any of the characters that used to be voiced by Justin Roiland (although Rick and Morty, with their awkward new voices, do briefly show up, naturally). I watched an episode and enjoyed it, but I don't know, the whole business of spinoffs, I find it a little depressing.
g) "Alley Cats"
I increasingly hate most 'adult cartoons,' and this is an anti-woke one created by Ricky Gervais, so I don't even have to tell you it's garbage.
Not too into animated Star Wars stuff but this seemed decent, I like the animation style.
I enjoyed the first season of this, and I don't know if the second season is any different or I just wasn't in the mood for it, but it just felt slower, clunkier, less engaging voice acting performances.
My wife has gotten really heavy into anime this summer, watching a few entire series and then reading the manga source material to get more of the story, getting a Crunchy Roll account, the whole nine yards. A lot of that stuff she's been watching on her tablet and I haven't seen at all, but I watched a bit of this one with her on TV, it's pretty cute.
Another Netflix anime that I watched recently, and it has some very abrupt tonal shifts between being this very horny show about a busty feline woman and being kind of a harrowing look at addiction. This stuff is a little too weird for me.
I'm amused that my son's been watching reruns of this 2000s/2010s parody of "Johnny Quest" while having no idea what "Johnny Quest" is, because I kind of did the same thing, I've seen every episode of "The Venture Bros." and zero episodes of "Johnny Quest."
Another cute show my kid found on Netflix that has teenagers doing sketches about historical figures, but has comedy people I know and love like Andy Daly hosting and H. Jon Benjamin narrating.
n) "Ted Lasso"
Bill Lawrence used to do 26-episode-a-year network sitcoms, but apparently he's now very precious about his cable/streaming shows having 3-season arcs. "Shrinking" just completed its 3-season arc and they're going to start a new arc with its next season, while "Ted Lasso" ended entirely after its third season three years ago and is just now coming back to restart a new one. I thought maybe Jason Sudeikis was going to go off and do a Marvel movie or some other big franchise after "Lasso" made him way more famous, but he seemed to just hem and haw and then come back to this. Season 4 of "Ted Lasso" is a situation where they probably should've released the first two episodes of the season simultaneously, because the first one was really underwhelming, didn't feel like the same show until they got back to England in the next one. And even then, I can't help but miss a lot of the original ensemble that's not in the show anymore. But Tanya Reynolds, who was recently great on "The Other Bennet Sister" and "The Decameron," is already a really good foil for Lasso.
I like this silly Netflix cowboy soap opera, there are even more attractive brunettes in the second season than there were in the first.
As someone who loves "SCTV" and "Kids in the Hall" and "Letterkenny," I'm always down to check out another Canadian cult comedy. And after the success of Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, the two seasons of the web series from a decade ago are now on Hulu, so I thought I'd check out the show before seeing the movie. I'm not really sold after four episodes, I don't know if I actually laughed once, but it might grow on me, I'm gonna keep watching. Matt Johnson on this show is basically Patrick on "Spongebob" or Heifer on "Rocko's Modern Life," like I've just never enjoyed shows that are just one wacky character who's dumber than dirt creating problems for the straight man character, it's annoying and exhausting.
I only had a 9-to-5 office job once for about three years of my life, but when I did, one of my duties was compiling expense reports for people who went on work trips out of town. So I went into this Japanese series on Netflix hoping to find it at least relatable, but it's just visually one of the worst-looking scripted shows I've ever seen and I could not sit through more than one episode of it, didn't find anything humorous or interesting about the story or the dialogue, maybe there's just too much of a cultural barrier there, I don't know.
I guess The Human Vapor was a Japanese sci-fi movie in the '60s and this is a newer reboot, very weird and creepy with cool visual effects, I love the premise.
The first two minutes of this Spanish series on Netflix were like the first ten minutes of Up on steroids, just an immediately heartbreaking little backstory that got tears welling up in my eyes. The show that follows is also pretty good, best little teen drama I've seen lately besides "Sterling Point."
A Korean show about an ancient dynasty haunted by ghosts, kind of reminded me of some other Netflix imports I've seen and didn't feel very distinctive, but decent.
A Korean comedy about a gangster who has to run for residents' association president of an apartment building in a scheme to find some hidden money, pretty entertaining premise, I love this kind of thing.
This Netflix period piece takes place in Mexico in the '80s during the World Cup, kind of an intense story, impressive performances from the child actors.
w) "Mourinho"
I mostly know Portuguese football manager Jose Mourinho from "If I speak, I am in big trouble" and other memorable interview moments that have been memed to death. And it's interesting to learn about how impressive his career has been in this Netflix docuseries, but mostly I really do just enjoy hearing him talk, he's a very entertaining, charismatic guy.
A pretty fascinating HBO docuseries about the exotic reptile black market, as you can imagine that's a world full of colorful characters and absurd stories.
Leslie Jones is always hilarious and her talent could probably be put to better use than an HGTV renovation show, but this works pretty good as a vehicle for her to just be funny off the cuff.
Netflix has a bunch of America's Test Kitchen content now, I don't know if this was just a YouTube thing already, but I like watching these quick little episodes and getting some ideas for mixed drinks. I'm pretty lazy about making cocktails but it's fun to decide you really want a particular one and get the ingredients now and then.
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