‘21 tv journal, spring and summer
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- CreatorAlex GansaHoward GordonStarsClaire DanesMandy PatinkinDamian LewisA bipolar CIA operative becomes convinced a prisoner of war has been turned by al-Qaeda and is planning to carry out a terrorist attack on American soil.Season 3. Just starting. Saul Berenson is the character I’m getting the most from this go-around. Saul is a devoted, loving husband and a wise, caring mentor, but he is married to his job at the CIA just as much as he is married to his wife, maybe more. And now we see cracks in the persona of the wise, caring mentor as well. In the first season finale, there was a startling betrayal, as Saul, worried that Carrie had indeed lost it, sent security to apprehend her as she raced to capture Brody. But afterwards he sees her in the hospital and begs her not to do the electroshock therapy; Saul did what he had to do here, and only the audience knows that Carrie was right all along.
In the second season, the two reconcile. On a rooftop in Beirut, Carrie confides to Saul that she worries if she can trust herself. Later, when Saul finds Brody’s video confession, he comes straight to her, even before he goes to anyone at Langley. Here is her vindication: she was right all along.
But season 3 has put Saul in an unaccustomed role, thrusting him into the director’s seat, and not at a great time: the CIA’s failures have brought great scrutiny from the public and from Congress, and Saul must answer for the mistakes of his predecessors. It is one thing to be the loving mentor of a young protege; one cannot play the loving mentor to a whole agency. And so Saul betrays Carrie again, confirming leaked reports about an affair between Brody and a CIA agent to Congress at a public hearing, and then, when Carrie goes to the press, allowing her to be confined under an emergency detention order.
Worse, in the second episode, we get a look at how that mentoring process works, and it’s not as nurturing as we might have imagined. We have a new agent, a young Muslim lady named Fara, and she’s trying to follow the money to determine who financed the attack on the CIA. She confides in Saul that she is unsure that they have the proof that they need, and his response is a textbook case of harassment, shaming her for wearing a head scarf and suggesting that her faith mocks the deaths of their coworkers. Saul is headed for a fall, y’all.
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And now season 4. Feels like a different show. And without Damian Lewis, for all intents and purposes it is. The overlong, discordant title sequence feels at odds with the slick geopolitical thriller the show aspires to be in its new incarnation. - CreatorSteven DoddStarsJohn KassirRoy BrocksmithMiguel Ferrer"Tales from the Crypt" was a 1989 horror story anthology series based on the gruesome E.C. comic books of the 1950s presented by the legendary "Crypt Keeper", a sinister ghoul obsessed with gallows humor and horrific puns.Finished up season 1. Love the ghoulish finale “Collection Completed”, a wryly amusing domestic drama that spirals into... something much darker. Jonas is a tradesman who’s just been forced into retirement after working at the same job his whole adult life. He and his wife Anita seemingly have no children, and over the years she has amassed a great menagerie of animal companions: stray cats and dogs, birds and fish, even feeding and befriending wild squirrels and crows. To say much more would be telling. But it is a very thematically rich episode which builds up years of marital tension into a chilling act of depravity, followed of course by an equally disquieting comeuppance . Great episode, and one especially representative of this creepy, wickedly funny show.
The plight of the retiree is not a subject that we see a lot, I don’t think. Nor that of the unfulfilled housewife, the empty nester. Maybe it’s the stuff of the occasional Big Important Oscar-Bait movie, but “Collection Completed” holds every insight such staid stuff could offer and so much more, all in just under 30 minutes. The leads are quite good. M Emmet Walsh is a great character actor, and his bitter retiree Jonas is a petulant whiner who we can nonetheless see a bit of ourselves in: angry about his thankless termination, stuck at home all the time with a wife he barely knows anymore, since he’s spent most of his waking hours at work for the past forty-odd years, looking for something to fill his days with, or something that will re-kindle his connection with his estranged wife. We get an equally strong sense of who Anita is: where Jonas has invested so much emotional energy in the company that just unceremoniously let him go, she has developed a rich emotional life as a nurturer, taking in and caring for a zoo’s worth of animals. She has room in her life and love to spare for her husband, but he wants all of her love, and that she cannot abide.
By the time you read this, I’ll likely be well into season 2 or beyond.
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More lukewarm on season 2. Definitely a step down, with some okay episodes like “Cutting Cards” and “Three’s a Crowd”, but a lot of overly familiar scenarios. Far from a perfect half-hour, my favorite thus far from this crop is easily Richard Donner’s “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy”, which is messy but charged with an inspired lunacy.
Easier to enumerate season 2’s missteps: the dull “Mute Witness to Murder”, the terminally silly “Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today”, the woefully miscast camp of “Four-Sided Triangle”. There’s a lot of half-baked noir like “The Sacrifice” and precious little full-throated horror this season.
“Television Terror” is pretty good; with its live tv concept and Morton Downey Jr performance, it does not feel like a typical episode. I think this episode would fit more comfortably in a show like “Tales from the Darkside”, something contemporaneous; “Tales from the Crypt” feels older, a relic of a pulpier age. Still, it’s a chilling episode, and Downey is one of the show’s most memorable rogues. My only carp is that all the invective his crew heaps on him when he’s out of earshot lays it on too thick; we know that he’s a scummy bastard because he’s Morton Downey Jr, essential playing himself. And he plays the role to the hilt.
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Season 3 highlights: Split Second, Loved to Death, Top Billing, The Reluctant Vampire, Easel Kill Ya - CreatorTina FeyStarsTina FeyAlec BaldwinTracy MorganLiz Lemon, head writer of the sketch-comedy show "TGS with Tracy Jordan", must deal with an arrogant new boss and a crazy new star while trying to run a successful television show without losing her mind.Just about the only thing me and the missus are watching together nowadays. And we’re about halfway through the first season.
- StarsCarey JonesHannah FiermanKara KimmerThe fictional Creepshow comic books come to life in this anthology series of terrifying tales hosted by the silent Creepshow ghoul.Season 2. Last season was hit and miss, this go-around falls mostly on the miss side of the spectrum. It’s no “Tales from the Crypt” even at its best, and at its worse it’s pandering nerd bait. The premiere has a kid obsessed with the old Universal monsters take revenge on an abusive uncle; this is a silly tale, and we’ve all seen it a thousand times, but it’s far better than the second story, which pits a handful of public broadcasting personalities against the Evil Dead in a lazy game of spot-the-reference. If you ever wanted to see Bob Ross slay the undead, well, don’t wish on that monkey’s paw just yet.
Hope it picks up, because both episodes thus far have been pretty bad.
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It did not, in fact, pick up. - CreatorDennis KellyStarsAdeel AkhtarPaul HigginsNeil MaskellAfter a group of people, who meet online, discover a bizarre graphic novel which seems to hold mysterious answers, they find themselves being tracked down by a merciless organization known merely as 'The Network'.Season the second. Not as good as the first. Hard to put my finger on why exactly, but it feels as though the writers are more focused on keeping things grim and shocking than on telling a story. Season 1 had shocking deaths and reversals, but they served the story that was being told. Season 2 has waddling assassin Arby, now insisting on being called Pietro, off the grid after parting ways with his masters, even going so far as to aid our gang of bickersome heroes, but he’s still killing people all willy-nilly, and it just reads like a cruel joke with no real point. Why bring Donaldson of all people back, recast with a much different looking actor, for nothing? Oh, and now Grant is convinced that he has the stuff to be a cold blooded killer, and it is just the lamest character arc.
Should have been a limited series, I think. This is all the more dispiriting because the finale, which I’ve still not seen, is apparently a cliffhanger.
Also, not enough Wilson this time around. Splitting him off from the group had that deleterious effect.
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The finale does steer things a bit right. You’ve got more Wilson, and more of a group dynamic. You’ve even, finally, got good reason for them bringing back Donaldson. Grant’s dumb bad seed arc gets a proper resolution, too: by re-framing it as a childish phase of rebellion rather than taking it seriously, as the show did all season long. And so “Utopia” manages to justify its existence again, just in time for its cancellation. But all the wheel spinning we’ve seen here would probably be back in force if there’d been a third season. Que sera sera, I guess. - CreatorJohn BloomAustin JenningsMatt ManjouridesStarsJohn BloomDiana PrinceJohn Patrick BrennanJoe Bob is back! Watching B-Movies and giving background and behind the scenes information. He watches Tourist Trap, Re-Animator and much much more.Season 3 has premiered, and just in time. Got 2 from season 2, 1 from the premiere marathon and season 1, the recent marathons, and one from Dinners of Death. And of course, all the episodes that got pulled before I got to see them, if they ever see the light of day on streaming again.
The “Just Joe Bob” segments are available now which may expedite the task of completing that backlog, give or take some of the rarities. - DirectorMatt CottinghamStarsSamantha BondA profile of Agatha Christie with access to the author's personal notebooks, letters and diaries as well as never-before-seen documents.
- StarsJohn OliverDavid KayeRyan BargerFormer Daily Show host and correspondent John Oliver brings his persona to this weekly news satire program.
- StarsDavid AttenboroughJoerg WiedenmannExploring the many ways animals use colour throughout their lives.David Attenborough is a cool dude. Besides all the ecological knowledge he can drop on you without breaking a sweat, his tenure as BBC 2 controller brought us Monty Python and (if you’re ‘cross the pond) color tv. And now, he harnesses color tv for its ultimate purpose: to show us how the use is of color across the animal kingdom, be it for mating, or warding off predators, is cool as shit.
- CreatorTim HillStephen HillenburgNick JenningsStarsTom KennyRodger BumpassBill FagerbakkeThe misadventures of a talking sea sponge who works at a fast food restaurant, attends a boating school, and lives in an underwater pineapple.Bewildering undersea nightmare, chock full of weird body horror and flippant nihilism
- DirectorRichard DonnerTom HollandRobert ZemeckisStarsWilliam SadlerDavid MorseNeil GiuntoliStories of an Old West gunfighter's last stand, a drag racer whose past comes back to haunt him, and WWI soldier's cowardice are introduced by the foul-mouthed, wheelchair-bound Mr. Rush. All segments were also in "Tales from the Crypt."Comin’ up on the end of season 3 of Tales from the Crypt, and you know what that means: among the next dozen or so episodes will be the three episodes of Two-Fisted Tales, a spin-off based on adventure tales from pulp comics. Two-Fisted Tales was rejected by the Fox network, and the episodes were re-edited and made into installments of Tales from the Crypt: “Yellow”, the season 3 finale, “King of the Road” from season 4, and... another one. “Showdown”, that’s it. This ol’ tv diary’s lookin’ a mite sparse nowadays, so I figured I’d add this entry to pad things out. Boom. Done.
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The original intro with William Sadler as Mr Rush are… pretty bad. Mr Rush is an old coot in a wheelchair who threatens to shoot you and calls you a pansy. This dude’s got nothing on the Cryptkeeper.
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The episodes themselves are ok, but a bad fit for Tales. Even “Yellow”, by far the best of the bunch, is a stretch to call horror, though Zemeckis does depict the horrors of war with a certain ghoulishness. - CreatorCharles PiccoCraig WallaceAnthony LeoStarsAlex HouseMaggie CastleBill TurnbullA stoner metalhead named Todd Smith, his crushee Jenny, his best friend Curtis, and the geeky Hannah, search their high school for a mayhem-causing Satanic spell book, while being opposed by Atticus, the evil guidance councillor.Re-watched an episode. If you had a little context, you could probably guess which one. Who knows.
This show... I dunno, it’s okay. It’s not bloody “Holliston” or anything. Might give it a go, why the hell not.
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I’m giving it a go. It’s pretty funny. Imagine if on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” the Scoobies tried only half heartedly to help the week’s special guest star, who would then die horribly at the hands of the supernatural menace plaguing them. That’s essentially the pitch for “Todd and the Book of Pure Evil”. Funny concept, but at times it teeters perilously close to being a one-joke premise.
Favorite character? Easily the evil guidance counselor Atticus Murphy Jr., who ineptly disguises his wickedness with a gentle Canuck accent and a wholesome clean cut facade.
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And now, season 2… and done. - CreatorTim MillerStarsFred TatascioreScott WhyteNolan NorthA collection of animated short stories that span various genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy.
- CreatorDavid E. KelleyStarsBrendan GleesonHolland TaylorJharrel JeromeA demented killer taunts a retired police detective with a series of lurid letters and emails, forcing the ex-cop to undertake a private, and potentially felonious, crusade to bring the killer to justice before he can strike again.Season 2. Three episodes in, and it’s well revved up. Which is surprising, with the villain confined to a hospital bed for the foreseeable future.
- CreatorCaroline HawkinsStarsBill NighyFlower the MeerkatMozart the MeerkatThis is a documentary drama series which follows a meerkat family in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, called the Whiskers.The dog likes this show
- CreatorPat BishopMatt IngebretsonJake WeismanStarsMatt IngebretsonJake WeismanAdam LustickA dark, edgy look at life as a Junior-Executive-in-Training at your average, soulless multi-national corporation.Season 3 is about the last thing on the DVR that I care about watching. Still recording enough stuff, like shows we can’t convince the thing to stop recording and edifying programming on PBS that I will probably never watch, that it bumped off half the latest season of Killing Eve, which is only other thing I care about on there. Likely gonna cut the cord soon, so I better wrap this up.
- StarsCullen HobackFredrick BrennanCraig JamesWhen documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback sets out to uncover the forces behind QAnon, his attention turns to 8chan, the site where "Q" posts.
- CreatorDavid SchicklerJonathan TropperStarsAntony StarrIvana MilicevicUlrich ThomsenAn ex-con assumes the identity of a murdered sheriff in the small town of Banshee, Pennsylvania, where he has some unfinished business.Revisiting the pilot. Fuck that sounds pretentious. I rewatched the pilot. There. Less pretentious.
“Banshee” is a Skinamax series through and through, with gratuitous sex and grisly violence in generous helpings each episode. It’s sustains action movie intensity over the course of 4 seasons of television (well, there’s a bit of a dip in intensity in the final season, as Anthony Starr requested fewer action scenes due to the physical toll all the stunt work of prior seasons had put in his body). It’s fun. Might rewatch someday, but no hurry; it’s not like there are nuances I didn’t catch last time around. - CreatorAidy BryantAlexandra RushfieldLindy WestStarsAidy BryantLolly AdefopeJohn Cameron MitchellA woman seeks out ways to change her life without changing her body.Season 1
- CreatorValerie ArmstrongStarsAnnie MurphyRaymond LeeEric PetersenA look at the secret life of a sitcom wife.Ok, I now have a rule not to add things I only anticipate, just things that I have watched. It’s a new rule, yes, meant to keep junk like Amazon’s “Utopia” reboot from cluttering up ol’ tv diary. But rule of course are meant to be….
… broken. Right?
Still haven’t watched, though. - CreatorDan HarmonJustin RoilandStarsChris ParnellSpencer GrammerSarah ChalkeThe fractured domestic lives of a nihilistic mad scientist and his anxious grandson are further complicated by their inter-dimensional misadventures.Season 5. Couple weak installments this year. Worst offender is “Rickdependence Spray”, where Morty’s excessive masturbation and Rick’s sci-fi shenanigans ends up causing the Earth to be overrun with giant man-eating spermatozoa. There are some good gags here, such as the Borg-like Sperm Queen, Jerry’s subservient glee in filling water glasses in the war room, and Keith David as the President is always great. But the episode is well-worn territory, the sort of thing we’ve seen a bunch of times, and none of it works. The Cannibal Horse Underground Dwellers are a lazy conceit that somehow feels even lazier when the CHUDs actually appear and take part in the shaggy dog plot. Zack Handlen observed of one of the episodes this season that increasingly “Ricky and Morty” feels like just another Adult Swim show, and this one is good evidence of that claim.
The Voltron episode is also a misfire, with an extended Goodfellas parody that falls flat, some lazy anime parodies, and an abrupt character shift from Summer that comes out of nowhere. It doesn’t feel as puerile and stupid as the other one, but it’s definitely not firing on all cylinders. Or half of its cylinders, even. Maybe like, just one cylinder firing in there, doing the work of all the other cylinders, which are too lazy to pitch in and help. Stupid cylinders, letting just one of your brethren do all the work. Whatever happened to, like, solidarity among cylinders? Ok, took it too far there.
Season 5 isn’t over, but I may continue with season 1. Rewatched the pilot, most I’ve laughed at the show in a while. Curious line from Beth regarding Morty: “It’s not like he’s a hot girl who can just bail on her own life and set up shop in somebody else’s.” Foreshadowing!
Roiland’s “Doc and Mharty” shorts come to mind here. Those weren’t great, but feel like a (very) rough draft of the pilot. In the shorts, Doc coerces Mharty into licking his balls, which for no good reason prevents Mharty, say, from vanishing into the ether after accidentally killing an ancestor while traveling back in the 1950’s. Rick is abusive and manipulative, but here the abuse and manipulation isn’t just a gross, flippant joke, it’s a character choice which has a real impact.
Early Summer is pretty blah, just a typical “omigod”-spouting teen girl. Look forward to her growing as a character. Although… well, maybe OG Summer is just a bit more of a ditz.
“Rick Potion #9” is a great episode, the show at its funniest and most achingly tragic. I thought it was at least a mid season finale, but it looks like there was a break of a bit more than a month before the second half of the the first season premiered. Sometimes the comedy on this show is lazily, willfully dumb —the inter dimensional cable episodes are a prime example— and for some reason the fans seem to love that shit. I think it can be funny in certain contexts; here Jerry becomes a cuckold action hero, and his dumb one-liners are absolutely in character: “nobody’s killing me until I find my wife with another man”. “I’m Mr Crowbar, and this is my friend, who is also a crowbar,” Jerry announces when he confronts his rival Devin, and though Devin has just morphed into a preying mantis hybrid with a serious Morty fixation he has the presence of mind to recognize that “That’s just stupid” right before Jerry brains him. “Look where being smart got you.” - CreatorSteve PembertonReece ShearsmithStarsReece ShearsmithSteve PembertonDerek JacobiGenre-mixing anthology series, inviting viewers into some very different and enigmatic No. 9s.
- CreatorLisa HanawaltStarsTiffany HaddishAli WongSteven YeunThe story of two 30-year old bird women who live in the same apartment building.Season 2
- CreatorTim HeideckerEric WareheimStarsTim HeideckerEric WareheimZach GalifianakisTim and Eric's parody of horror anthology TV shows.Watch the pilot “Hole”. Anthology horror spoof from Adult Swim’s resident wiseacres. If I recall, this and “Toes” were pretty much the show at its best, finding nightmarish absurdity in seemingly ordinary situations. Then there were some segments like “Bathroom Boys” that pretty much abandon the horror conceit for their usual brand of smirking cringe comedy.
- CreatorSteve ConradStarsJulian BarrattKristen BellChris ConradFollows the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of fictional metropolis Ultra City's most famous magnate by two intrepid detectives.Pilot.
So, that was a pilot of a tv show. With a surprisingly loaded cast. But not a lot else going for it. Stop motion, with all the characters portrayed by baby dolls, but no good jokes or subversive use of these elements, no especially intriguing characters or stories, just a grim wallow in well-trod territory. Don’t think I’ll be returning to Ultra City for these Smiths.
Well we’ve got trouble/
(Oh, we’ve got trouble)/
Right here in Ultra City/
(Right here in Ultra City)/
With a capital… uh, S and that rhymes with… shit it doesn’t rhyme with anything… rhymes with “less” and that stands for “less than…” oh dammit I fucked it up
A-with a capital T (duh) and that rhymes with P and that stands for Poo/
(That stands for Poo!)/
‘Cause that’s what this show is/
(That’s what this show is)/
And I’ll accept an episode writing credit if you guys want to you want the song/
(Episode credit)/ - CreatorJustin HalpernDean LoreyPatrick SchumackerStarsKaley CuocoLake BellAlan TudykThe series focuses on a single Harley Quinn, who sets off to make it on her own in Gotham City.Season 2. This is a fun show, and it can turn deftly from silly mayhem to very emotional moments. Sometime it’s maybe a bit too silly. Matter of taste, maybe.
- CreatorJemaine ClementStarsKayvan NovakMatt BerryNatasia DemetriouA look into the nightly lives of four vampires who have lived together on Staten Island for over a century.Imma be watchin season 3 when it gets here, no doubt, no doubt.
- CreatorOwen DennisStarsAshley JohnsonOwen DennisJeremy CrutchleyVarious people get trapped on a mysterious train with an endless number of cars, each one being its own universe, and they must resolve their psychological trauma and emotional issues in order to get home in this animated anthology series.Season 3
- CreatorDan GoorMichael SchurStarsAndy SambergStephanie BeatrizTerry CrewsComedy series following the exploits of Det. Jake Peralta and his diverse, lovable colleagues as they police the NYPD's 99th Precinct.Final season
- CreatorGregory Thomas GarciaStarsCarly JibsonEddie SteeplesCharles RobinsonFor a tiny cottage in a tiny town, this place sure will see lots of baggage. Each episode, new guests will bring their own special brand of crazy to this new TBS comedy from "My Name Is Earl (2005)" creator Gregory Thomas Garcia.Pilot again.
I looked upon this less unfavorably this time, but not really interested all the same. Pudi and Lapkus are pretty funny here, but they’re the guest stars; nothing about the setting or the core cast of characters, essentially all bit players in the story and all blue collar caricatures in Greg Garcia’s typically mean-spirited style, makes me want to stick around and watch more.
Carly Jibson, though…