Spring 2023 TV
Apr. 13th, 2023 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroUp Here (Hulu, Season 1) – A musical romantic comedy where the anxiety voices in the main characters’ heads become the Greek chorus of the musical. Starring Carlos Valdes (Cisco from The Flash), Mae Whitman (Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender, among many other things), and Katie Finneran, who I’ve loved the comedic genius of since Wonderfalls. Apparently based on a stage musical, but based on what I can find it’s been rewritten within an inch of its life. The portrayal of i-banker bros is such that you can tell that while none of the writers have ever done investment banking, they have100% been forced to spend time with investment bankers. While the story was a limited series and “ends”, they clearly hope for a second season; ending just after midnight on January 1, 2000 with the realization that there’s a baby on the way. I think this was a little too drawn out—it actually might have been stronger in six episodes rather than eight with one fewer will they/won’t they back-and-forth—but it was entertaining and the Broadway power is there.
Side note: It was during this that I realized that Hulu’s ads were not being targeted specifically to me, just to the expected demographic for this show. Because otherwise Hulu would somehow have to have concluded I was a sexually-active Latino gay man who wore a lot of makeup.
Ted Lasso (Apple TV, Season 2) – I’ll admit, the second season loses a bunch of the charm from the first, and I think a lot of that is the need to continue spinning plotlines out of the same set of characters. (I think the best new character dynamics all spun out of “Doc” Sharon, the only new recurring character.) There are definitely some really funny moments, but they aren’t quite as common. (There’s also a few scenes of Ted breaking down that don’t carry the power of his first panic attack; and an emotional revelation about his father’s death that I didn’t want in a show of this type.) The precariousness of Roy and Keeley’s relationship gets too much attention for no actual payoff. They kept Jaime but couldn’t quite decide how to use him for a full redemption plotline—it felt like he had setpiece scenes but he disappeared in between them. Sam’s storyline is lovely but it’s clear they got a third season order and they decided to spin out the romance. And I’m not sure how much I believe Nate’s fall into “angry guy”. I’m guessing somebody involved felt the show really needed a villain and the writers had to manufacture one. I’m not sure I’m going to bother with season 3 unless I hear it’s really a return to form.
Masters of the Universe: Revelation (Netflix, Season 2) - I had lost track of watching the second half of this (and despite Hordak in the stinger, they’ve clearly lost interest in making more of it), but taking the entire series as a whole…it was just an excuse to pull out the box of He-Man toys and have fun with them with a big animation budget and a bunch of movie stars. Mark Hammill is just loving his time as Skeletor. We once again go four out of five episodes without actually having He-Man show up in them. The side characters—particularly Teela and Evil-Lynn, but also Man-At-Arms and Andra—get the character beats that really matter. Skeletor gets beaten in the way that matters most to him: He isn’t the important villain in the end. Lots of action figure characters get a cool scene or a cool moment, but we all know that Fisto is in there to say he wants to fist someone, not because he’s actually going to grow as a person. In the end, Teela becomes the new sorceress (which we all knew would happen, even back in 1986), He-Man saves the day, and there will always be other battles between Masters of the Universe.
What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu, Season 4) – As predicted, they got back to the status quo in the space of the first episode. They time-jump a year, everybody comes home, and hijinks resume. Nandor finds a Jinn lamp, wastes a lot of wishes, and gets obsessed with getting married, gets married, and eventually wishes his wife away again. Nadja opens a vampire nightclub and it’s exactly as badly mismanaged as you’d expect. Colin Robinson’s childlike regenerated form is annoying and learns about musical theater. (And by the end of the season he’s fully grown back into his original self with no memory of the intervening year, giving us another confusing and ultimately useless clue in the life-cycle of Energy Vampires.) Guillermo comes out to his family, gets a boyfriend, and eventually gives up on expecting the main crew to change and ends the season trying to bribe another vampire into turning him. Oh, and there was a send-up of a house-flipping show that worked reasonably well as a parody of such shows and then turned out to all be a trick to get Lazlo’s bloody cursed hat. Honestly, I think this peaked back in season two and it’s running out of steam.
Side note: It was during this that I realized that Hulu’s ads were not being targeted specifically to me, just to the expected demographic for this show. Because otherwise Hulu would somehow have to have concluded I was a sexually-active Latino gay man who wore a lot of makeup.
Ted Lasso (Apple TV, Season 2) – I’ll admit, the second season loses a bunch of the charm from the first, and I think a lot of that is the need to continue spinning plotlines out of the same set of characters. (I think the best new character dynamics all spun out of “Doc” Sharon, the only new recurring character.) There are definitely some really funny moments, but they aren’t quite as common. (There’s also a few scenes of Ted breaking down that don’t carry the power of his first panic attack; and an emotional revelation about his father’s death that I didn’t want in a show of this type.) The precariousness of Roy and Keeley’s relationship gets too much attention for no actual payoff. They kept Jaime but couldn’t quite decide how to use him for a full redemption plotline—it felt like he had setpiece scenes but he disappeared in between them. Sam’s storyline is lovely but it’s clear they got a third season order and they decided to spin out the romance. And I’m not sure how much I believe Nate’s fall into “angry guy”. I’m guessing somebody involved felt the show really needed a villain and the writers had to manufacture one. I’m not sure I’m going to bother with season 3 unless I hear it’s really a return to form.
Masters of the Universe: Revelation (Netflix, Season 2) - I had lost track of watching the second half of this (and despite Hordak in the stinger, they’ve clearly lost interest in making more of it), but taking the entire series as a whole…it was just an excuse to pull out the box of He-Man toys and have fun with them with a big animation budget and a bunch of movie stars. Mark Hammill is just loving his time as Skeletor. We once again go four out of five episodes without actually having He-Man show up in them. The side characters—particularly Teela and Evil-Lynn, but also Man-At-Arms and Andra—get the character beats that really matter. Skeletor gets beaten in the way that matters most to him: He isn’t the important villain in the end. Lots of action figure characters get a cool scene or a cool moment, but we all know that Fisto is in there to say he wants to fist someone, not because he’s actually going to grow as a person. In the end, Teela becomes the new sorceress (which we all knew would happen, even back in 1986), He-Man saves the day, and there will always be other battles between Masters of the Universe.
What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu, Season 4) – As predicted, they got back to the status quo in the space of the first episode. They time-jump a year, everybody comes home, and hijinks resume. Nandor finds a Jinn lamp, wastes a lot of wishes, and gets obsessed with getting married, gets married, and eventually wishes his wife away again. Nadja opens a vampire nightclub and it’s exactly as badly mismanaged as you’d expect. Colin Robinson’s childlike regenerated form is annoying and learns about musical theater. (And by the end of the season he’s fully grown back into his original self with no memory of the intervening year, giving us another confusing and ultimately useless clue in the life-cycle of Energy Vampires.) Guillermo comes out to his family, gets a boyfriend, and eventually gives up on expecting the main crew to change and ends the season trying to bribe another vampire into turning him. Oh, and there was a send-up of a house-flipping show that worked reasonably well as a parody of such shows and then turned out to all be a trick to get Lazlo’s bloody cursed hat. Honestly, I think this peaked back in season two and it’s running out of steam.
