Kent's Erratic TV Critiquing Has Unveiled a Problem.
He just can't catch up.
This time:
Big Mouth Season 7 - Netflix [10 Episodes]
What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 - FX [10 Episodes]
How To With John Wilson Season 3 - HBO [6 Episodes]
Only Murders in the Building Season 3 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]
The Bear Season 2 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]
The Afterparty Season 2 - Apple [10 Episodes]
Loki Season 2 - Disney+ [6 Episodes]
Our Flag Means Death Season 2 - HBO [8 Episodes]
Shoresy Season2 - Crave [6 Episodes]
Light & Magic - Disney+ [6 Episodes]
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Big Mouth Season 7 - Netflix [10 Episodes]
The What 100: The Big Mouth kids are about to graduate from grade 8 and go to high school... except maybe Jay, who's too preoccupied with Lola dating his brother. Coach Steve suffers separation anxiety and teaches summer school. Andrew hurts his nuts and can't do his favourite thing, much to Maury's dismay, but his personality turns around, and he finally receives his father's love. Nick does drugs in New York and is sent to private school. Jesse gets a bully, and becomes part of the in crowd. Matthew has to up his gay-A-game.
1 Great: The hormone monsters never fail to yield big laughs, but it's absolutely Thandiwe Newton's season as Mona, Missy's hormone mistress that leaves the biggest impression...even in a season when Megan Thee Stallion makes a multi-episode appearance. Newton's commitment and enthusiasm is just next level and delivers every time.
1 Good: I love the show's commitment to diversity, in every form. Sexuality, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, neurodiversity, it doesn't pick any lane, it keeps crossing over. Putting a spotlight episode on on-the-spectrum Caleb, is done with thoughtfulness, sensitivity and humour. You can tell they go to great depths to both get things right and still find humour that is inclusive. The stab at an international episode finds 3-5 minute vignettes of horny pre-teens around the world and seems pretty authentic, but the very short stories run the risk of painting whole cultures with a single brush.
1 Bad: If the show is starting to lag anywhere, it's actually in its two lead characters. Nicky, Nick Krolls primary character, is, at this point, the most drab character on the show, running through the usual heteronormative dating scenarios and emotions. With everything else going on around him, his escapades just seem so route one. John Mulaney's Andrew, meanwhile, is probably the most prominent character on the show, but he's also the most difficult to watch. He is the show's bottom rung, the one place where, in a show that accepts and celebrates peoples sexual desires, and seems to go to great lengths to not kink shame anyone, it can just point and say "not that, though". After 7 seasons of "not that though" one would hope for some growth, but with Andrew, every step forward is a stumble that winds up five steps sideways.
To be clear, Nick and Andrew aren't really bad, but if I'm to point at my least favourite thing in a show that has, season after season, made me laugh so freaking hard and challenged me with my own hang-ups with limits pushing, it's really these two that don't enthuse me as much anymore.
To be clear, Nick and Andrew aren't really bad, but if I'm to point at my least favourite thing in a show that has, season after season, made me laugh so freaking hard and challenged me with my own hang-ups with limits pushing, it's really these two that don't enthuse me as much anymore.
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What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 - FX [10 Episodes]
The What 100: Much of the season revolves around Guillermo hiding the fact that he got turned from Nandor, for the embarrassment of a familiar being turned by someone other than his vampire master would be so great that the vampire would have to kill both the familiar and himself. But the vampirism isn't taking like it normally should, so Laszlo conducts experiments to try and science it out. Nadja connects with the local Antipaxos society on Long Island. Colin Robinson runs for local office, and reconnects with Evie.
1 Great: I thought putting Harvey Guillen as the center of the season was a brilliant move, as Guillermo was often the straight man in the prior seasons, but he's the most suited to be audience surrogate. Everyone else is just too weird. Guillen more than steps up, he crushes it, bringing his performance to another level without materially changing his character's nature.
1 Good: The visceral shock of Laszlo's experiments gone awry: the Guillermo clones.
1 Bad: Kristen Schaal is promoted to cast member in the opening credits this season and is barely used at all. Likewise, it seemed like Matt Berry was taking a back seat most of the season.
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How To With John Wilson Season 3 - HBO [6 Episodes]
The What 100: John learns us how to: find a public restroom, clean our ears, work out, watch "the game", watch birds, and track our packages. It's another brilliant 6 episodes of video collage, surreal visual poetry, and thematic ideas juxtaposed with the serious oddness of reality.
1 Great: John's exploration of how things get from one destination to another takes him from the doorsteps of New York, exposing the massive problem of package theft, to learning how a piano is packed up and shipped, to learning how people are packed up and shipped to the future via cryogenics. It's a wild, upsetting ride.
1 Good: (but also great) John looks to take up the art of birdwatching, which leads him to explore the idea of surveillance, which sends him down a rabbit hole of what is "truth" in video, exposing his own role in deceiving the audience. This leads him down a couple of conspiracy wells, to spending time with a Titanic conspiracy theorist/ex-cop, and ultimately...attempted murder?
1 Bad: This is the last season of How To... and it makes me very, very sad. This is one of the most unique shows ever made, looking at and venturing out into the world from such a different perspective. It's a show (and a guy) that's both awkward and curious about what's just outside our peripheral vision...what aren't we looking at? It's not trying to provide answers (it's just a comedy show) but in just raising the questions, exploring it in the way that he does, it's pretty illuminating. I'm going to miss it, but Wilson is on the radar.
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Only Murders in the Building Season 3 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]
The What 100: Oliver finally is directing a play again only for his lead, a huge superhero franchise star (played by Paul Rudd) to be murdered, dying on stage. The stress of trying to solve another murder while save his dream is too much and Oliver suffers a heart attack. Charles, meanwhile, has to sing on stage and gets engaged, the stress of either sends him to the white room. Mabel is about to be evicted from the titular building, and finds with her septuagenarian besties so preoccupied with their lives she's left to running the podcast on her own...only she finds a new partner.
1 Great: Despite not believing that Oliver is capable of writing a musical on his own, Death Rattle The Musical seems at once utterly inane and absolutely something I would enjoy seeing. The patter song that Charles has to sing, which features prominently in the season, is pretty damn catchy and earwormy. As well the whole stage/backstage setting is a great place for a murder mystery (and the show connects it back to "the building" in pretty shocking and hilarious fashion. The mystery this season really worked well.
1 Good: I find myself transfixed by Selena Gomez every time she's on screen. I sometimes can't tell if she's acting badly or beautifully, but regardless, whatever it is she does, it's captivating. She's such a specific performer, and acts and moves in such a specific manner that any role she does she has to make her own, but I think it may be hard for writers to play into her persona, because it's so hard to pin down. She's dry and reserved, but bright and charismatic. She's very internalized, but also open. Gomez sells us on a millennial who is best friends with a couple of boomers.
1 Bad: This season was very bad at exploring the impact of the show's events on the character. Mabel, particularly seemed unmoored, without a true storyline to call her own. She was the primary investigator in the murder, sure, but with the talk of moving out, with the podcast shenanigans, with the new boyfriend, none of it seemed to have focus for her. For Charles, he gets engaged and then something happens and it's over and it seems to have almost no impact on him. Similarly, the show seemed to forget that Oliver's heart attack had any meaningful impact on him. The story of the season was really intriguing but it kind of let the characters down. Bringing in big name distractions (Meryl Streep was good, but she can't NOT be good, but she's also distracting; Matthew Broderick was only distracting; Paul Rudd was maybe TOO Paul Rudd for the role that perhaps needed a bit more of a straight man).
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The Bear Season 2 - Disney+ [10 Episodes]
The What 100: This is one of the most incredible seasons of television ever. As the crew toil on renovating the restaurant, the stakes escalating for each of them, they must also develop new skills and new attitudes if they're going to make it work.
1 Great: "Forks". Cousin Richie goes off to train at another restaurant for a month where he has to start at the bottom polishing forks. Richie has been the most difficult and antagonistic character of the series. He's an obstacle that every character in the show has to navigate because it seems he's always trying to stop things from changing. This episode is the Richie spotlight, where we get insight into who he is as a person (with little hints at his life dropped earlier in the season). This is the episode where Richie finds himself, and finds purpose, and decides to no longer be the obstacle, but the conveyor, the path that helps keep things moving, and it's freaking beautiful to see such transformation happen. Gorgeous work from Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and a magnificent surprise Olivia Coleman appearance.
1 Great: "Fishes". Heading back a half dozen years or so to Christmas dinner at the Berzatto family home, where Carmy makes an appearance after having effectively disappeared from their lives for some time. It's a frantic 66 minutes of too many cooks, family tension, and some deep, deep insight into why the siblings (Carmy, Natalie and Michael) are the way they are, and by extension, why the kitchen of Chicago Original Beef that Michael established was so unruly when Carmy came along.
It all comes back to mom.
And holy shit, if people didn't think Jamie Lee Curtis deserved that Oscar before (I don't know who those people are, but if they exist...), well, she smashes scalding hot yam in their face with this one. It's one of the best performances ever. I don't know Curtis' exposure to bipolar disorder but she seems to have a keen understanding of what it looks like and how to convey it. She's an absolute juggernaut, but it's not a selfish performance at all... it's the performance of selfishness, sure, but she's is fuelling every scene, giving the other performers everything they need, creating an energy that fills the whole household, and it's as toxic as carbon monoxide. It's beautiful chaos. It's like within minutes of being with Curtis' Donna, suddenly the whole world of The Bear comes in to clear focus. I get it now.
1 Great: Good gravy, this cast is awesome, and much credit to the showrunner Christopher Storer for recognizing that each of these characters deserves a spotlight. Of course Jeremy Allen White's Carmy and Ayo Edibiri's Sydney are the duelling forces of the show, fighting one another yet seemingly needlessly as they're trying to reach the same objective. But it's giving Richie, or Liza Colón-Zayas's Tina or Lionel Boyce's Marcus their own side journey in culinary education that provides both insight into that world but also fantastic character growth. So many shows want to keep their characters contained in a box, because the reality is that if characters grow, then they grow apart, and that's death for a situational tv programme. This show dares to grow their characters, and to show the dangers of what not growing can mean, (talking to you Carm).
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The Afterparty Season 2 - Apple [10 Episodes]
The What 100: Aniq accompanies Zoe to her sister's wedding at the groom's family estate, meeting her parents for the first time, looking to gain their blessing in asking her to marry him. But Aniq's plans are interrupted when the groom winds up dead in bed the morning after the ceremony. The groom's mother locks down the estate but refuses to call the police, so Aniq calls ex-detective Danner in to help solve the case.
1 Great: The pastiches were so on point, from the rom com sequel, to the Austin-esque period romantic drama, to hard-boiled noir, to the series high point of a mock Wes Anderson production. Nobody does Wes Anderson like Wes Anderson. And people who try to do Wes Anderson generally fail at doing Wes Anderson. It's hard to do. That's what having a singular specific vision gets you. But the episode "Hannah" gets the closest to Anderson in style that I've seen, and it's because they balance the framing and colour palette so beautifully with Anderson's sense of humour but also pathos. After this, the heist movie, the erotic thriller, the epic romantic drama just can't quite hold up to the same heights of ambition, but they still fare pretty excellently. Episode 9's Hitchcock-esque neo-noir thriller with Christopher Miller in the director seat does come close to being as inspired.
1 Good: This second season actually improved upon the first season, still adhering to the conceit of each episode being a pastiche of a specific genre or style, but in having a cast of characters that are so intimately bonded (as opposed to last season's high school reunion of characters who don't really know each other at all) it creates an intimacy and familiarity that's far more engaging to explore, and makes secrets that much more shocking when they come to light. We binged this season voraciously.
1 Bad: As the season goes on, there becomes a burden of storytelling that -- as with the first series -- starts interrupting the pastiche and breaks the sort of visual narrative. It's not awful, but I'm always kind of sad when we cut away from the homage and into what the rest of the cast is doing. I don't think they've perfected the conceit of the show by any means but you can see the growth.
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Loki Season 2 - Disney+ [6 Episodes]
The What 100: With the death of He Who Remains last season, the timelines are branching out of control, and if the TVA can't contain the branching, everything...literally everything... could be destroyed. Loki, who has manifested "timeslipping" powers that he can't control, is doing everything he can to save the one place and the people who gave him a chance to be something other than what was expected of him.
1 Great: The first four episodes of this six-episode season kind of put the titular character to the side. Loki was there, but he was part of the gang. The show seemed to be focussed on the situation that Loki season one created, and not the character of Loki so much. Sure, Sylvie and Mobius and Renslayer were getting some new dimension to them, but it seemed at the expense of developing Loki, beyond turning him into a Doctor Who-esque rallyer of doing the right thing in timey-wimey adventures.
Episodes 5 & 6, though... it was ALL Loki. Everything that came before, not just this season, but the prior season as well, was building to these two episodes of exploring this Loki variant: who he was, who he is, and what he wants to become. Head writer Eric Martin has his name on every script, and this singular driving voice creates a consistency and focus in this season that other 6-episode Marvel series are missing. All of what happens isn't to build to some future Marvel event (at least not obviously) but instead to a rather monumental change in the character of Loki from when we first met him in Thor over a decade ago. Martin drops little nuggets hinting as to where he's going with it all throughout the season and then goes there. It's so satisfying to see a Marvel thing build to something and finally stick the landing again. It feels like most of the Disney+ series have failed in this regard.
[Also great: Natalie Holt's compositions for this series have been phenomenal. She's produced, I think, the best soundtrack to an MCU production besides Black Panther. Just outstanding, memorable work.]
1 Good: Loki season 2 seems to have been granted permission to disconnect itself from the MCU at large and just do its own thing. It's not setting anything (obvious) up, and it's not taking detours and sidetracks into spaces just for fan service. This season establishes a tone and it persists for 6 episodes in a row. It knows the kind of story it wants to tell, it know the journey it wants to take its characters, and it delivers. With a consistent voice on the script and Benson and Moorehead directing 4 of the 6 episodes, there's a stability to this season that makes it feel pretty grand in scope. And also, as a fan of Benson and Moorehead's films, this series seems so utterly in their wheelhouse, a true part of their filmography that carries their signature and not just work-for-hire like their Moon Knight episodes.
1 Bad: Sigh. Jonathan Majors. He's a great actor. He's acting great here. Why can't he act great in his real life. Such a bummer.
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Our Flag Means Death Season 2 - HBO [8 Episodes]
The What 100: When last we left Steed (the Gentleman Pirate) and Ed (Blackbeard), Steed had realized he made a mistake trying to return to his old life, while Ed could think of no other option but to return to his savage ways. In fact, heartbroken, he's gotten even more violent and ruthless than before. After Ed almost kills him, Izzy joins Steeds crew. A truce is formed with Spanish Jackie. The crew face off against Zhang Yi Sao, the Pirate Queen, who takes a shining to Oluwande. Lucius and Black Pete reunite.
1 Great: From the Thor: Ragnarok/Jojo Rabbit era, Taika Waititi got really, really overexposed. He was asked to do a lot, and he did a lot, and he became a very public figure for a time. Then he made Thor: Love and Thunder, the only Marvel movie I kind of despise, and I wondered if a 10+ year affinity for the creator had disappeared altogether. Recently, I realized I hadn't seen much of Waititi, he'd certainly scaled back how much of himself he was putting out there. I realized I loved, and respected that Waititi has had his hands in two very different, very remarkable series, but that his influence (despite what I've said previously) has been primarily in using his notoriety to get the shows made and hand them over to their true visionaries. For Reservation Dogs it was Sterlin Harjo's baby that Waititi was just in the delivery room for. For Our Flag Means Death, it's definitely David Jenkins' queer pirate child, to which Waititi just plays funcle to.
Playing Blackbeard/Ed in Our Flag, Waititi delivers a remarkable performance that wavers from maniacally bloodthirsty, to scarily unpredictable, to genuine paramour of Rhys Darby's Steed Bonnett. I'm not sure I always buy Darby's romantic connection to Ed, but Waititi sells the highs and lows of romantic tumult, while the show also examines Blackbeard's psyche and why he is so broken emotionally. It's a surprising, remarkable performance that evolves each episode.
1 Good: The show juggles its cast this season, dispensing with some crew members (thank god Nat Faxon's The Swede has limited screen time this season) and putting a spotlight on others. It's a pretty large cast for a series with such short seasons and it cannot do them all justice. But the addition of Rubio Qian and Anapela Polataivao as Zhang Yi Sao and Auntie were two glorious additions this season. Qian is an effortlessly charming performer and eminently likeable, even when she's being vicious and cunning. She has swagger, intelligence, and a vulnerability that she seems in complete control of. Auntie as her number one shows a very different parental relationship of a notorious pirate and their mentor than what Blackbeard and Izzy had and it's really quite sweet.
1 Bad: The show's episode order for season 2 was two less than season 1. It felt like the Ricky Banes storyline, of minor noble who becomes a pirate inspired by Blackbeard, only to be shamed and shunned by the pirate community. He unites with the British navy to utterly dismantle piracy altogether, but if there were supposed to be any lasting parallels between he and Steed, or if there was supposed to be a building of his threat leading to a big climax, it's more of a sizzle in the end.
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Shoresy Season2 - Crave [6 Episodes]
The What 100: Shoresy has promised the Sudbury Bulldog's owner to "never lose again", and so he's on a mission to keep that promise. The team, however, has problems threatening to get in the way of that mission. Like all the sex they're having is tiring them out too quick on the ice. Or scoring champ JJ Frankie JJ has lost his focus because his true love caught him cheating. And the Jim's are distracted because their Reach for the Top team has been losing. And Michaels is down about some bullshit nobody cares about. And the boys do a calendar.
1 Great: Shoresy was one of, if not the most annoying side character on Letterkenny. He was an off-screen antagonistic foil to Reilley and Jonesy on that show, and not really even a fleshed out character. To me it was a dicey proposition spinning him out into his own series, but to Jared Keeso's credit, he has really managed to create a surprisingly likeable and watchable if challenging and often out-of-line lead that I enjoy watching. The final episode of the season gives a rather sharply written, insightful moment into Shoresy as a character, and why he plays so hard, and works so hard to support the team. The basic point being that his mindset is one that only works on the ice, and makes the real world one that's difficult for him to live in.
1 Good: It's easy to pander to Canadians, it's hard to do it subtly. As with Letterkenny, Shoresy wears its Canadian pride on its ugly poop brown and baby blue jersey sleeve. The best extended joke was the incremental rage on Shoresy's face as the team is hosted by the American Sault Ste. Marie team and to perform the national anthem is a 10-year-old learning to play the recorder. There's two jokes there, the first being the obvious Americans goading the Canadians, but also butchering the national anthem on a recorder is a right of passage for every Canadian in grade school.
1 Bad: I was never a jock and certainly not a hockey player, and the behind-the-scenes on masculine sports teams has never been a realm I'm comfortable with, eager to experience, nor particularly enjoy. Toxic seems like a gentle word for what goes on back there. So it shouldn't be surprising to me that I bristle, often, at the language and tone that comes out of this comedy. Like Keeso's other show, Shoresy's gender and sexual politics are kind of progressive but in a rudimentary way. In dealing with hicks and hockey players, it is surprising when they are portrayed as open-minded, accepting even, but when shades of conservative thinking crop up, is it a result of honestly portraying the field the show is playing in, or is it the creators exposing that they're still not as far along as they'd like us to believe. When the show regresses into leering shots of lingerie clad women, I have to wonder what relevance it has on the story at hand, or if it's just some Sudbury woman Keeso met at a bar and has convinced to take her clothes off on camera.
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Light & Magic - Disney+ [6 Episodes]
The What 100: A look behind the curtain of 40+ years of Industrial Light and Magic.
1 Great: The first two episodes focus on the people behind the scenes who made the stunning visuals of Star Wars happen, and how they did it. The sheer volume of creativity on display is outstanding. As a lifelong Star Wars nerd, I thought I had seen and read all of the behind-the-scenes making-of Star Wars had to offer, and it turns out I hadn't even scratched the surface. Even this documentary seems to be constrained by the episodic structure into how much we actually get to see, but all of it is awesome. John Dykstra, Phil Tippet, Joe Johnson, Dennis Muren and more are given celebrity documentary treatment here, glorifying their contributions to not just Star Wars, not even just cinema, but culture in general.
1 Good: The second two episodes focus on creating sequels to Star Wars, but also the start of the dissolution of the original gang. As ILM is formalized, and moves out of LA, not everyone is asked to join them. In these two episodes, which span the about a half decade from Star Wars's debut, the leaps in technology that George Lucas pushes on the team are pretty incredible. I didn't know almost anything about what ILM had innovated over the years, and it turns out it was a lot, including what eventually becomes Photoshop and Pixar, among other things.
1 Bad: The final two episodes, step away from Star Wars, and then right back into it, as the entire culture of ILM shifts underneath the feet of the men and women who started it. Rapidly the drive is digital, and the genius creative forces behind physical props and visual effects are more and more diminished in terms of importance and contribution. What made ILM so captivating in the first two episodes -- a massive warehouse of individuals experimenting with scale, cameras, technology, and hand craftsmanship -- gives way to largely people sitting at computers clicking buttons. The show pretends to maintain the same enthusiasm for what ILM is today, as a primarily digital company, as it had for what was done back in the 1970s, but there's just no denying that the physical stuff was far more interesting, the creative problem solving much more enriching, and the people so much livelier.
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