"What I Have Been Watching" is usually the domain of Toast admittedly spending too much time in front of the TV. Kent's equally spending too much time in front of the teevee and is now stepping on Toast's toes (Toastoes? Toestys?) here as a whole bunch of series/seasons have ended and they need to be covered, quickly.
Schmigadoon Season 2: Schmicago - AppleTV+ (6/6 episodes)
I was really excited for the return of Schmigadoon if only because the sequel's subtitle, Schmicago, really makes me giggle. In a sort of unfortunate irony, the subtitle is pretty much the biggest laugh of the season though. Late-60's and 70's era musicals (obviously Chicago, but also hippie musicals like Hair and even a dash of Sweeney Todd) are smushed together (technical term) into a melange of different aesthetics and tones, with the 30's throwback aesthetic blending inharmoniously with the 60's peace and love vibe backed up by a grody pre-20th-century street urchin twist. Our protagonists, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan Michael-Key) are feeling the drudgery of daily life, especially after unsuccessful attempts at conceiving. They long for an escape from reality and go seeking Schmigadoon, only to find the magical realm has become something else. The players all look familiar, but they're different people, and the world they enter is far dingier, danker and dangerous than where they thought they were going.
With the first season, there was a pretty easy through-line to follow, and even as our protagonists went on side quests by started inserting themselves into the affairs of the residents it all felt organic somehow. Here in Schmicago, every side plot seems to exist to cue up a number. The songs are really good, but they're played pretty straight, not a lot of comedy in most of them. They're showcase pieces for the performers, less about comedy (see the outstanding Ariana DeBose number at the top of episode 6 that's completely disconnected from the show, since DeBose couldn't return to the series beyond this one number).
The lesson Melissa and Josh need to learn is that in order to make others happy, they need to be happy themselves. Or something. It's not entirely clear, even though the Martin Short leprichauns spell it out pretty bluntly. It's all lip service and not really shown. I don't feel like this season was a cohesive journey, and it certainly wasn't as funny as the first season (the best comedic bits belonged to Titus Burgess' narrator as he played with the metatext of the show).
That all said, it's still an incredibly well produced show (though not nearly as visually assured as when Barry Sonnenfeld directed every episode last season), and not something any other show is doing now. I dig the cast (Strong and Key are a great team, but Kristin Chenowith, Alan Cummings, Dove Cameron and the recurring gang are all wonderful stage pros), so if another season is to come -- say a Schmantom of the Schmopera, or Schmats (it's certainly going to be diving deep into Andrew Lloyd Weber territory, or maybe Les Schmiberables), I'll be there each week to welcome it.
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Mrs. Davis - Peacock/CityTV (8/8 episodes)
Jesus, was this the best TV show of the year? Even if not (and I could see a lot of people challenging that statement) it's certainly the frontrunner for my favourite viewing experience this year.
Holy shit, I could not believe what a bugnuts freaking show this was. It's a grand, globetrotting adventure, full of spirituality and sexuality, and parental issues and relationship issues around trust and respect. It's also an analogy for how we engage with technology in our reality, whether the screens we're absorbed with (and absorbing) are telling us the truth or just what we want to hear, if they're making us happy or just feeding us dopamine hits, if they're truly connecting us or just driving us further apart.
Mary, mother of Christ, did I love it. Maybe every episode wasn't perfect (episode 3's "Excalibattle" seemed to impede the frenetic momentum the series had established, and episode 5's history lesson was necessary exposition but the framing sequence around it was pretty wobbly) but I was always on board. At the helm is Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen, The Leftovers), with co-creator Tara Hernandez (formerly of The Big Bang Theory, for reals), and they've crafted a supremely goofy quest series about a reluctant nun who is sent on a quest to find the Holy Grail in order to destroy the near-omnipotent machine that effectively rules the world. But amidst the plot is an immensely human story that touches upon so many different little, grounded, real topics that resonate so much stronger as a result of being juxtaposed against, say, exploding heads, a British Knights shoe revival, and going for a dive inside a whale. Enough good things cannot be said about series lead, GLOW's Betty Gilpin, and how incredibly confident she is in holding the tonal balance in her hands.
Goddammit, if it wasn't a constant surprise at every turn as well. Lindelof, Hernandez and crew really, really defied every storytelling norm out there. They played with conventions so fully, that as a viewer, you seemed always so certain of where it could be headed, and it never went there. There was no way to predict it, that's how far outside the box they are. It's a series that lets its imagination run wild, but guided completely by emotion. You can't predict these turns because they're so illogical, and yet they become the only thing that makes sense in the context of the story, because there can be no other explanation. One can't help but always bring up Lindelof's puzzle boxing in Lost and wonder if there's a plan when stepping into any of his later series. But he's learned to have a plan, and three incredible series later, you can pretty much trust that he does.
Praise be, this is not going to be a series for everyone. The severely atheistic may bristle at the levels of affirmative faith the show embraces. Likewise the religious might find it too salacious or blasphemous to cater to their puritanical interests. But if you like to be challenged whilst being highly entertained, this will dazzle and confound and maybe even soothe just a little. I found it deeply satisfying.
Amen.
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Yellowjackets Season 2 - Showtime/Crave (9/9 episodes)
It was a delicious premise, and a uniquely female-driven one that played within genres of horror, fantastic realism, suspense, and psychodrama while dealing heavily with both psychological trauma and mental health issues and how they impact one long term. Season 1, at its heart, wanted you to be both sympathetic to why they do what they do and scared of what these girls and women are capable of.
The second season introduces us to two more modern day survivors, Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), one who runs a not-a-cult commune, and the other still making a go at a video rental store. Everything converges upon the commune by mid-way through the season, which means the increasingly shaky murder/cover-up story from last season, and Taissa's dissociative identity disorder, Misty's missed love connection with a rich citizen detective (Elija Wood), and Nat's survivor's guilt all need to coexist in this one space. What happens as a result is the drive of the show becomes completely plot focussed and the characters take a back seat. It's to the point that it raises so many unintended questions (not fun puzzle box questions, but just logical questions about the characters and the world they live in) that they threaten to sink the entire show.
The first season wound up the puzzle box, and creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson said they had a 5 year plan for answering it all, but if season 2 is any indication they're not really sure how to execute said plan. Even as they set out providing answers in the past, it's lumpy storytelling that's seemingly forgotten what it wanted it wanted to say about its characters, what it wanted to accomplish outside of just telling a story, and one that's seemingly forgotten its stylistic tendencies.
By the end of the season, in the 90's story we've been given more insight into where we already know it winds up. There doesn't seem to be any twisting of the perspective of what we've seen before. The show doesn't effectively convey the psychological impact of starvation on the team, even though that's really the undercurrent of it all, that they're slowly going crazy from undernourishment. In the present day, the show tries to wrap a few of its bigger dangling plot threads up into a neat and tidy bow, which feels completely underbaked. If it turns out to just make for bigger problems next season, great, because how could it not. But if it is supposed to be an actual resolution, it's pretty awful.
This season was increasingly disappointing as it went on, and the finale at episode 9, instead of 10, smacks of network interference. Something's certainly happening behind the scenes that the season was scaled back. I hope they have a more character-focused plan for next season, or I don't think I'll be able to continue through its 5 year journey.
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Barry Season 4 - HBO (8/8 episodes)
I think Season 4 is about as invested as I've been in the series this whole time. I've expressed in the prior reviews how uncomfortable the show makes me, but also, prior seasons were just too invested in the "L.A. actors" world that, honestly, I find boring. Of course, that was all spiced up with Barry's killer-for-hire other life, and all the complications that brought, so it led to a very uneven experience for me. This season of Barry starts with Barry in prison, and the fallout of that is far more interesting. Barry's got his time to think about what he's done and who is to blame, while we see Fuchs, Cousineau, Sally and NoHo Hank trying to move on with their lives, which seem just a little emptier without Barry in them. What should be liberating for them seems quite the opposite.
It's quite a ride for the first four episodes, but the fifth takes us through a time jump that raises a lot of questions, and heads up a two episode arc that it maybe didn't need or earn. I wonder if the season had started with the time jump and worked its way backward if it would have been better, or just more distracting. The final two episodes of the series work really, really hard to bring every major character into view, and the finale works, but isn't completely satisfying. I don't really know what it's trying to say in its final moments (presented as excerpts of the movie of Barry's life and misdeeds, starring Jim Cummings as Barry). I won't contemplate them here, for spoilery reasons, but I wonder the sentiment its actually trying to convey as a series.
Complex.
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Taskmaster Seasons 1-5 - BBC/Youtube (32/32 episodes)
I've had more than a few panel shows lobbed my way, and of those I've tried, I have enjoyed, but not enough to plough through the entire back catalog. Taskmaster isn't different from many of those panel shows in that it doubles as a competition/game show of sorts, because there are a great many others that also award points and winners and whatnot. What sets Taskmaster apart from the rest is humility, the humbling nature of bringing a panel of guests on and showing them failing over and over again, sometimes in ways that should be direly embarassing ("that one will haunt me the rest of my life" has been uttered by more than one guest). But in that failure comes both sympathy and admiration for the efforts made, and, occasionally, a flat-out triumph. It's a warm-hearted show that isn't there to (fully) poke fun at the guests, but to have fun with them.
Hosted by comedic giant Greg Davies, with co-host/creator "Little" Alex Horne, each season has a panel of five guests, who were, months prior to the live-studio-audience panel, subjected to a battery of inane tasks that they must attempt to achieve. Each of the guests does the same tasks as the others, and Greg, as the "Taskmaster", judges them on their accomplishments. Tasks can range from who can put as much stuff in a balloon in one minute as possible, or who can take a giant styrofoam boulder the farthest away in an hour, or who can make a Swedish man blush.
The tasks can range from very basic, to patently absurd, to utterly difficult brain teaser, to a flex of creative muscles. We watch, along with the crowd and the panel, as the expertly edited clips are presented in astonishingly well-produced order. The dramatic (and comedic) tension that is raised from how the clips are put together and show is as much of the show's fun as what the comedians do themselves. And after it's all done Davies gives ranks them 1-5 (or disqualifies them) and gives them the equivalent points. The winner each episode takes home an absurd collection of prizes (that the guests themselves brought in as a task at the start of the episode and were judged on, like "hairiest object" or "greatest liquid" or "oddest clock").
The first three seasons are only 5 or 6 episodes, seasons 4 and 5 jump to 8 episodes (while looking ahead, every subsequent season is 10 episodes). Each episode is deliciously entertaining, with heavy belly laughs throughout, while at the same time tweaking your creative brain as you yourself think of how you would approach the task. There is not a dud episode in all 5 seasons, though it does become funnier and funnier the more you settle in with Davies' personality and the dynamic between him and Horne (the kayfabe of their master/apprentice relationship grows over the seasons).
Season 5 is a real standout so far, with an almost perfect panel. Irish absurdist Aisling Bea has the most creative impulses, Scottish oddball Bob Mortimer dips in between utter bizarreness and scatalogical humour (he tells a story about his anus that will haunt me the rest of my life), Mark Watson may be one of the most enjoyably neurotic people on Earth, Nish Kumar seems to be missing the filter between his brain and his mouth, and Sally Phillips is completely horned up yet somehow retains both a sense of modesty and elegance. Four of the top 5 standout moments from the show for me so far come from this fifth season, with Nish and Mark's "I'm always seeing you (do cool stuff)" song, Sally's "birth of Alex" video, Nish's "oh you bubbly fuck" moment, Nish's most spectacular fail (just one of many) in the coconut challenge, with the "foot in the crease" moment in season 2 rounding out the top 5.
I genuinely love this show, and can't recommend it highly enough. It's deliriously entertaining and addictive, and there's 15 seasons ALL legally available on youtube. There's also at least a half dozen international versions of the show which I may tackle once I get through all of these.
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