Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 21: Finding Mr. Christmas Season 2

2025 - Hallmark Channel/W Network (8/8 episodes)

Finding Mr. Christmas is a weekly limited series that takes 10 hunky men, puts them in a house together for a week, drops them into a series of ludicrous, sometimes emasculating challenges, all of which is somehow supposed to be a fair and accurate means to judge whether they have the goods to be a Hallmark leading man. Because it worked out so well for them last time.

I can count on one hand the number of reality competitions shows I actively watch with fingers left to spare, and Finding Mr. Christmas is one of them, simply because it is so goddamn ridiculous. And it's only made more ridiculous by the fact that last year they so clearly chose perhaps the worst of their 10 candidates, resulting in one of the worst movies Hallmark has ever produced (and that's saying something, given how many inarguably bad films they churn out in a given year).

Last year's competition ran for 8 weeks, ending with the winner being announced, and days later the film starring that winner, Ezra Moreland, the dead-eyed booty-shorts bartender-turned-marine-turned-model assaulted our eyes and ears with a tone deaf, monosyllabic performance in a Hallmark holiday romance movie, Happy Howlidays. Dude seems like a nice enough guy, but there was no evidence during 8 episodes of the reality show that he had any acting competency. And this year he not only didn't lead a Hallmark film, he was scuttled into a bit part and outshone by a pre-teen performer in his scenes.

Given what a trainwreck last year's competition was, how could I not want to watch another season? To watch as the show so obviously twists its narrative in the edit to shape its decisions to drum out the people of colour or gay performers. The purpose of the show is not legitimately interested in finding the next superstar for the Network, because there's a means in which people are cast into roles in films, and a competition show just isn't it. No, instead it's just cheap and easy television filler for the network, a series that plays with beefy men's emotions, getting their hopes up that they can have a new chapter in life while pretty much embarrassing them in the process. 

I truly believe the network's purple suits had hope that with season one  the show would cultivate a dedicated following of female viewers who would be so thoroughly invested in the hunks that it would be a breeding ground for the network to put tnot just the winner but also runners up into Hallmark productions and easily have eyes on them. This was certainly not the case, and so there's a definite cynicism to season two, a definite bite of "oh, this is just absurdism for content's sake", and most of these men involved are not acutely aware of this.

This season's 10 men were:

Jake - he was a kicker in the NFL
Drake - he's a golden retriever in human form
Logan - he's a fantasy nerd, but he's buff?
Gabe - uh, he's Black Ezra... super handsome, dead eyed, no acting talent
Robbie - he's a veteran of the New York theatre scene, both acting and directing...and the gay one
Davey - he's a model, and a dad, and apparently once a Chris Hemsworth stand-in
Marcus - he's a model and...no other distinguishing characteristics
Craig - he thinks he's funny, and also thinks he can rap
Rustin - he plays music
Angel - he's an angel in human form. A beautiful, kind-hearted man with a gorgeous smile, even more gorgeous hair, a ton of charisma, and an accent so thick you can slice it off like cheese. He's also the most accomplished actor in the season, perhaps next to Robbie.

Each episode the men compete in a "Festive Face-off" which reveals next to nothing about their acting ability, but maybe, possibly, ever so slightly reveals a little of their character as a person? Hallmark can't have, like, shallow egocentric vainglorious bigots on their network, right? That's what "Great American Family" channel is for.

Following the Festive Face-off is the "Star Quality Challenge", which should hopefully show off the acting ability of these men in situations that would be probable on a Hallmark movie, often with a Hallmark celeb as scene partner. Other times, it's just about taking pictures, which is where the models obviously get a chance to shine brighter over their acting counterparts.

The "Festive Face-off" winner(s) then get an advantage over the other contestants, sometimes it's a big deal, like when it allows them to watch the other contestants perform before it's their turn, or in one case where the winner got immunity from elimination and had the choice to keep it for themselves or give it to one of the other men. But sometimes the advantage is just something stupid like choosing the order in which they perform, or which reindeer the other men get to be in a photo shoot.

I think this season really attempted to showcase acting more, but those Festive Face-offs where they were trying to run up a hill on a soaped-up slip and slide, or where they were trying to navigate a Christmas-themed obstacle course without making any noise, proved absolutely nothing, as entertaining as they were.

The most ludicrous part of the show is before and between the challenges where the men sit in various locations around the house or estate and have to engage with one another off-script, but obviously prompted by the producers about what they should be doing or saying, and it's soooo clear that none of these guys have any improv training. It should be part of the competition, how believable they can be in these prompted moments, holding empty cups and pretending to bond with these other guys.

I'm not going to break down each episode (you're welcome), but the key thing to note is that, for the most part, the show has done a decent job of ...eventually... eliminating the weakest players. There have been absurd wins and equally absurd eliminations (and absurd edits and overdubs to explain the absurd decisions being made), but the only outright error was in eliminating Robbie, who won many of the Star Quality challenges because he's an experienced actor and legitimately knows what he's doing. He got eliminated primarily because he didn't take control of a scene and got steamrolled by one of the other actors. He wasn't the worst actor of the day, but he's gay and you just know that Hallmark isn't going to choose a gay man as the winner of their "find our next Hallmark hunk" competition show. Even if Jonathan Bennett, the host of this very same competition show is a gay man.

And like last year, where one of the finalists had been a cast member of Hamilton for five years and lost to Ezra, you just know the show is looking for reasons to eliminate the persons of colour. Here it's Gabe, Marcus and Angel. Gabe was an easy one, because he kept freezing or blowing his takes. Marcus' acting was not great and getting fourth place is a bit of a shock. That Angel, beautiful Angel, with his Venezuelan accent that trips him up a little bit, made it to the final, is both shocking but also maybe a sign that this whole competition isn't completely rigged, because he's clearly the most charismatic of the men they assembled and probably the best actor in spite of the accent.

It's interesting to note that first episode announces that they have the chance to win "a lead role in a Hallmark holiday movie" to "a leading role in a Hallmark movie". The word choice is key, because it's the difference of being the male romantic lead of one of their Christmas romances, to being like a family member or best friend in an ensemble cast for a "spring themed" or "fall themed" movie, which are not nearly as high profile. The spectre of Ezra Moreland looms large. They gambled big last season and it was an embarrassing loss.

But at the same time, there was something so attractive and so dangerously alluring about the competition leading directly into a new Christmas movie that it seems such a shame not to repeat it. But, I imagine, that if you're a Hallmark leading man or leading lady, it must be pretty rough to be paired up or even compared against a "competition winner". Seriously, Hallmark is not exactly known for its quality acting, but the stars of the channel are talented performers who have had careers that predate Hallmark movies, so to put them in the same light as a competition winner sort of devalues the "Hallmark leading man" status, and so perhaps putting the winner of the competition through their paces in smaller roles in smaller vehicles is maybe the right thing to do.

The finale does away with the Festive Faceoff and instead is a three-part acting challenge where the finalists (Craig, Rustin and sweet Angel of mercy) get two take at three different connecting scenes ending with a kiss with Erin Krakow. Craig does decent in some scenes, pretty good in others, and kind of rushes another... and his kisses with Erin grossed me out (it's like he was trying to conceal her lips with his). Rustin I would say was the most uneven of the contestants, but when he was hitting, he was really, really hitting with a charm offensive. Angel was consistant the whole way but his inability to improvise naturally was evident.

In the end Craig is victorious. If it wasn't obvious, Angel was clearly my favourite. Just an absolute charm machine who would liven up any Hallmark movie in pretty much any role, but it would have to be tailored a bit to him. Craig was a ... weird choice, but the show seemed, basically by episode 5, clearly setting him up for the win with JB and cohost Melissa Peterman praising him extensively for his sense of humour and acting ability (which maybe wasn't quite as evident to the viewing audience).

At least he's... better than Ezra.

*micdrop*

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Moments of note:

- Twice, Craig, who wins this damn thing, decides he's going to rap. Once because he's prompted by the host to do so, and the other because one of the Star Quality challenges was a talent show. Craig, lets be blunt, can rap, but not well. It's like Craig's understanding of rap started, and stopped at Vanilla Ice. Also Craig's modelling idol (as his resting face is Vanilla Ice duck lips), and his dancing idol (since his on-stage movement when performing seemed to be Vanilla Ice-coded) and maybe even his acting idol (Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!). If it was a bit, he really needed to play into it more, but it seemed like he genuinely believes he can rap and that he's talented at it. Also, the show hilariously would cut to Marcus and Gabe for their reactions whenever Craig would "rap".

- In the same talent show competition, Robbie decided he would try stand-up comedy for the first time, and calling his material weak sauce would be insulting to the weak sauces out there. It wound up being a roast of Jonathan Bennett to which it would cut to Jonathan forceably cracking up off stage (he was the only one).

- In the Star Quality challenge where he gets eliminated, Davey (and the other remaining men) are acting against the luminous Ashley Williams. It's a picnic scene, and it's about flirting and connection. On the picnic table is a nice spread of food, and Davey, an stunningly handsome man with muscles for days, can not stop eating grapes in the scene...just grape after grape after grape, big bulbous green grapes which he awkwardly pop into his mouth before he starts chewing. Never a more justified send-home after a catastrophic performance. But also, all those muscles need fuel, so clearly the man's gotta be constantly eating.

- One of the Star Quality challenges had the men having to act against Alison Sweeney, but on horseback. Many of these guys had never been on horses before. At one point Craig is about to go behind the horse and it gives him a little warning. That was almost a very bad elimination for Craig.

- In the penultimate episode, the Festive Face-off finds the remaining four men facing off against... their mothers. Their challenge was to write their moms a letter and then their moms are revealed and they had to read their letters to them. Tears flowed, and you saw both genuine softness and heart. It was pretty sweet, but to what end? It literally had no bearing on the competition. 

T&K's XMas (2024) Advent Calendar - Day 24: Finding Mr. Christmas Finale + Happy Howlidays

Back on Day 3 I covered the first five episodes of Finding Mr. Christmas, Hallmark's "reality" competition show where they pit ten objectively handsome men against one another to perform embarrassing "Festive Faceoff" challenges before giving them an actual challenge that will show off the goods for what they need to bring to a Hallmark movie.

I didn't know at the time how long the series was going to be. I was expecting ten episodes. Thank the merciful Hallmark deities (we worship at the altar of commerce) it was only eight. 

When we picked up episode six, it was Blake (the sweet-talkin' cowboy), Hayden (the blue eyed Australian who lost his dog), Jonathan (the tall, dimpled track star), Ezra (the tall former marine-turned-model with dead, dead eyes) and Elijah (the guy who acted in Hamilton for five years, people!).

The "Star Quality Challenge" of episode six found the hunks acting against Rachel Boston in an emotional "break-up" scene (it's a Hallmark movie-style scene so it's the kind of scene that follows "the complication" where the woman thinks she can't see the guy anymore and tells him she can't and they have to act all emotional). Hayden brings some real emotions to the scene by having Rachel stick his (not-dead-but-taken-by-his-ex) dog's squeaker in her pocket, while Ezra thinks about his dead sister, and acts decently. Blake's is just rough stuff all around, and Jonathan stumbles for a good 20 seconds forgetting his line before getting back into it and doing a fine job. Elijah is pretty good but not great. Jonathan's stumble sends him home (as in competition there's no "retakes" apparently. Sigh) even though Blake was by far the worst.

Episode seven finds the four remaining mens having to do a dance with the dance instructor (Witney Carson) from Dancing with the Stars. They also surprise the boys with their sisters being in attendance for some reason (except Elijah, whose pregnant girlfriend shows up). The dance starts off with a waltz then leads to an uptempo choreographed dance. Blake pulls a Jonathan and messes up almost immediately, but they reset and he does just fine.  Hayden does surprisingly well. Ezra is a lumbering, awkward giant and is by far the worst dancer of the night.  Elijah, who you may have heard, SPENT 5 YEARS PERFORMING IN HAMILTON, nails that dance to the fucking floor. It's a no brainer, Elijah is our winner...except he's not. Blake's stumble sends him home, and ... Ezra wins...? Ohh nooo....

Going into episode 8, and it's down to Elijah, the most experienced actor of them all, Hayden who has acted before and was a children's entertainer, and Ezra, who looks good in a tight shirt and tighter shorts, but has no charisma on camera at all and the sloping, lifeless eyes of a serial killer. Ezra should have been eliminated at least three times by now but keeps sticking around. The conspiracy theory that this whole show is a farce, that they had already chosen their leading man, but, I guess for channel filler, built a competition show around "selecting" him only to realize that, oops, there are far more talented guys than him that they need to try and convincingly eliminate...well, it's seemingly bearing fruit. 

This final episode had no bullshit "Festive Faceoff" it was just the men competing in a three-scene challenge. Scene 1 was with Jonathan Bennett, Scene 2 with Melissa Peterman (LEGEND!) , and Scene 3 with Nikki f'n DeLoach, ending with the big climactic kiss. Bennett was hamming it up in his scene, Melissa was supposed to improv and if she did we didn't see it, and Nikki is a freaking pro and nailed her scene every time.  Elijah got caught squinting in the sunlight in scene 1, his timing was off in scene 2 and did a weird Breakfast Club end-scene fist raise while kissing Nikki, which was a bad choice. Ezra was palpably awful in each of his scenes, but did a little better with each second take, so, as "director" Ali Liebert said, he took direction well (to go from "awful" to just "really bad"). Hayden was good in all his scenes, and if we were basing the winner on this challenge alone, Hayden would have been the winner....

But they weren't basing it on the challenge alone, but the whole competition would come into play in the decision. But if that was the case, Elijah should be the shoe-in and sweet, simple Ezra being ousted. But, appallingly, Elijah is eliminated first. Is it because he's black, or short. Which prejudice got him eliminated?  Down to just Hayden and Ezra, still seemed like a no-brainer that Hayden should win (especially with the outside-the-show knowledge that the winner's movie was called Happy Howlidays, and co-starred dogs). But no, Ezra is announced the winner and suddenly Happy Howlidays went from being a thing I was very curious to see to something I dreaded watching.

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Happy Howlidays, d. Terry Ingram (Three Wise Men and a Baby) - Hallmark/W Network

The Draw: The winner of Finding Mr. Christmas + doggos.

HERstory: Mia (Jessica Lowndes, 90210) is the webmaster of Seattle's tourism board (despite clearly living in Vancouver, do they know she's remote working from another country?) and she's too busy to fly home to Florida for Christmas, she says (but really she just don't wanna). She's a "hot mess" because she wakes up next to a spilled bag of Lays in bed. Guess she got Layd, oh ho ho!  One day, walking home in the rain, sans umbrella, because she lives in Seattle without an umbrella, she finds a dog trapped in a fence. She frees the dog, he follows her home, and she lets him stay the night. She doesn't know how to care at all for a dog, she barely knows how to care for herself! She steps in dog piss first thing in the morning, and also finds her feather pillow cushions have exploded.

She takes the dog to a dog rescue center run by Max (Ezra Moreland, Finding Mr. Christmas) and the two are like fire and water... well, more like tar and toilet paper. They are the bitterest of enemies for no apparent reason, and Max refuses to take in the dog, or something. Max's dog, though, hit's it right off with Mia's stray. Mia takes the dog to a dog park, and her stray runs off (we suspected she was just going to let the dog go and leave it there, alas) and finds Max's dog and the two are just so pleased with each other. Mia takes a video, before Max interrupts with a curt "don't take pictures of my dog without permission". They bicker some more. Mia posts the supremely uninteresting video of two dogs playing at a dog park to the Tourism Board social media and it goes viral (like herpes).  Everyone loves this dog pair, so now her boss wants a campaign around it. So Mia's stuck with the dog for a while. She names it Russell, even though it's a curly haired herding dog of some type and not a Jack Russell. Whatever, movie. 

So Mia needs Max's dog to keep her job or something so they spend time together even though they really dislike each other, but it's good for the dogs I guess. I dunno, this movie is bad, and boring. Turns out Max used to have two dogs, but his ex took one of them when she left for L.A. And now Max and his dog are both sad (not that you could ever tell Max was sad with Ezra's dead eyes and the childlike smile that comes out of nowhere all the time for no reason).  Ezra "helps" Mia "dogproof" her home (she wound up stepping in piss each morning a bunch more times and Russell continues to wreck the place until Ezra spruced it up for Christmas and then Mia let Russell sleep in her bed) and I guess they start to like each other, or at least the movie wants us to believe that something is happening. They get caught in the rain, and at Mia's place she gives Max a dry shirt to wear, but not before catching a peek at his marines/model body and gets reeeeal thirsty. Then mom and dad show up.

Turns out Mia used to be a doctor but she's disillusioned with the US medical system after a woman died in the waiting room because they didn't insurance. It's a big, bold, dark topic to bring up, and do absolutely nothing with. Mom and Dad are both doctors as well and want to retire and hand their practice over to Mia, but she's not into it. Instead, she wants to use her social media spike to help save Max's failing dog rescue. Oh and Max's ex shows up, with Max's old dog, and I guess Mia gets jealous? It would be "the complication" if a) it weren't so predictable and b) either of these actors could sell it as a complication. There's no investment and no stakes in these performances. The big charity fundraiser barely raises enough momney (with a major donation from Mia's Mom and Dad), and Mia decides she wants to be a veterinarian (speaking of not being able to afford health care) and Max resolves the whole thing with his ex and they kiss in Vancouver. The End.

The Formulae: There's no freaking Christmas in this at all, and if there was I was too busy wincing to notice. The biggest formulae was the arrival/complication of The Ex returning.

Unformulae: Hallmark movies never insinuate sex. They've gotten steamy a few times, but Hallmark leading characters do not get horny. Mia quite clearly gets the horn for Max's hot bod when she sees him with his shirt off (there's more expression in his nipples than his eyes, that's for sure).

True Calling? You expect with a film with a pun title that it will be fun. This was not fun. There was no funny. This was the absence of fun and funny. There was no romance either. There was no investment in these characters, and even the dogs weren't really that cute (though clearly the best performers in the film). So yeah, there's dogs, but no, the title doesn't work at all for this heaping pile of doggie doodoo.

The Rewind: The scene where Max's sister is tallying up the money. It's not a lot of money but she's going back to the calculator for each bill she puts down. Like, not sorting the bills into piles or anything, just...lay a 20 down, add 20, lay a 5 down, add 5. Just...no wonder the rescue is going under. These kids don't know how to manage finances at all.

The Regulars: Lowndes is a Hallmark and off-Hallmark seasonal romance movie regular, but can't say I've ever seen her before.  Mom Alison Araya is a Hallmark semi-regular, and Dad Christopher Shyer was just in Three Wiser Men and a Little Boy among a few others. (At one point the three of them were sitting around a table and it was Hallmark's Meghan Fox sitting with Hallmark's Julianne Moore and Hallmark's Peter Gallagher).  Also Jonathan Bennett puts in a little cameo and brings the only bit of life into this dull-as-dog piss movie for about 85 seconds. 

Ezra we met in Finding Mr. Christmas, and while we knew already that he was a terrible actor, we weren't quite prepared for how truly godawful his performance would be. He seemed to be thinking about every movement he had to make and was plenty awkward in doing so. He barely had a scene where he had to say more than one line at a time and it was quite noticeable. I've mentioned a half dozen times how lifeless his eyes are, for as otherwise good looking as he is, this is a real vitality killer on screen.  He seems like a sweet kinda simple person in the reality show, but he's no performer.   

How does it Hallmark? Real bad. Even by bad Hallmark movie standards, this is real bad. If not the bottom of the list, then real, real close. This was about as enjoyable as waking up and stepping in dog piss with socks on.

This was an abysmal failure and shame on Hallmark for putting Ezra through this, and subjecting its audience to it. I don't know if Hayden's green card was last-minute rejected, but this film seemed tailor made for him. Max's story is his bloody backstory. His ex took off with his dog, for fucksake! (Unless Hayden's backstory on FMC was *gasp* made up!?!)

And maybe the filming of the movie would have clashed with Elijah's baby's due date, or if he got cast in something else?  There had to be some reason they didn't go with either of these handsome, charming actors and instead went with the tall, generically handsome lug.  Ezra would be the perfect Dick BF in one of these movies for the two scenes they would need him for, but he should never have been put in the lead.

How does it movie? pfft.

How Does It Snow? It rains pretty good.

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As an experiment, this felt like a huge mistake, and you would think Hallmark, after watching the dire results of Happy Howlidays (in the hands of one of their most experienced director's no less) that they would realize this was not a good idea. Alas, apparently they've renewed Finding Mr. Christmas for a second season. I will not be going through that again. It's the holiday season, one should not willfully endure this kind of pain and suffering...not twice anyway.

T&K's XMas Advent Calendar (2024) - Day 3: (1-1-1) Finding Mr. Christmas

 [It looks like Toasty's still down with the Soo Flu and a new, very not festive Star Wars show ate up my December 3rd extracurricular time so we're already a day behind in opening up the Advent. I'll try to double dose it today, and hopefully Toasty's getting some rest (and maybe some Hallmarkie watching in) in time to return.]

Finding Mr. Christmas - Hallmark Channel/W Network (5/10 episodes watched)

The What 100: A reality competition and weekly elimination show hosted by Hallmarkie favourite Jonathan Bennett and judge/legend, Melissa Peterman. 10 hunky men are brought together to live in a house and compete in challenges with the ultimate prize being the lead role in a Hallmark movie (all timed to have the winner be announced on the final episode, and his movie debut on Christmas Day).

The Men:
Parker - he's a model and dad and husband. 40. Looks like handsomer Andy Samberg.
Jonathan - competed in college level track and field. Handsome, dimples, seems young.
Isaac - firefighter. Child of 8. 28. Not a lot going on...
Gage - theatre major. Great hair. 29. Conceited as fuck.
Daxton - the gay. And a ginger. Energetic. He's never too much and always enough.
Elijah - acts sings and raps. Oh and was in the touring cast of Hamilton for 5 years. He was in Hamilton!
David - the Canadian. Aerospace Engineer. Out of his depth. Soooper awkward.
Hayden - the Australian. Children's entertainer. Lost his dog in the divorce. Cries out them pretty blue eyes.
Blake - the cowboy. Salesman. Charming as fuck.
Ezra - Was in the navy. Model. Tall, stacked, very good looking but with a child-like sense of awe and wonder.

(The Great): The best part of a show like this (and by this, I mean, a show that really has no reason to exist... I mean using a reality show to find the lead role of a movie but without really putting these men through any acting training or performing on camera boot camp, well it's nonsense) is meeting the men and making snap judgements about them.  So much of these shows are formed in the editing, and, man, if this is the best material we get with these guys, the scenes in between must have been rough stuff. As much as some of these guys are used to being in front of a camera, talking on camera and improv is none of their fortes. There's a delightful cringe in the opening couple episodes as these men are asked to make small talk with each other, and asked to do their "testimonials" and the nonsense phrases that come out of their mouths are such a delight. And then, making one's bets about who's the immediate front-runner (Parker), and then changing those opinions from challenge-to-challenge, well, that's the draw of reality competition shows, right?

(The Good) Some of these guys ... wow, they just don't have it. And some of them might have too much of it. Watching these guys try and act, or improv, or go through challenges, and fail, in some cases pretty spectacularly is such fun. Gage is a self-aggrandizing, arrogant, egocentric and never fails to exhibit those qualities, at least in the edit. So when there's a scene challenge, where the men perform a scene with a Hallmark leading lady, Gage nails the scene, but... along with the scene, the show sets us a compassion challenge with a skater falling over on the ice, and all the other guys help her up. Not Gage though... he stops short of pointing and laughing, but he makes a crack and makes it about himself, and doesn't help her up. Jesus. And then in a modelling elimination challenge, David...well... just... woof. Awkward. Hilariously, cringey and aaaawkward. 

(The Bad) The show is broken up into three parts. The show ends with the judging and one of the men taking down their stockings from the fireplace mantle. The judging is based on the "Star Quality Challenge" which is an acting or performing or "looking pretty" challenge, which at least have some grounding in helping determining if the contestant has the goods. But to start each episode there's the "Festive Faceoff", a completely stupid garbage challenge where the men are put through some inane task, like an obstacle course, or decorating a Christmas sweater, or wrapping presents, you know, things that are so very important to acting on camera.  It's filler shit, put in place primarily because it's formulae for these shows, not because it makes any sense for judging the contestants for the contest at hand. It's hard to root for any of these guys in these challenges because they're pretty fucking meaningless, and do next to nothing to help the audience decide who they would want to see in a Hallmark movie. They're kind of demeaning if anything.

META: I was originally going to write about this when it was all over but then I realized that it wasn't over until Christmas and there's no Advent Calendar on Christmas. Plus, as noted, there's gaps to fill, so talking about it now.  We're invested, somewhat (it's a ridiculous fucking show, but it makes us laugh), so we will be seeing through to the end. 

We were really rooting for Parker from the onset, but buy Episode 5 we were like... get him out of here. At the mid-way point, I'm thinking it's either going to be Hayden or Elijah. Elijah (he was in fucking Hamilton for 5 years!) is the best performer...maybe too talented, but Hayden has the Hallmark leading man vibe. 

We were introduced to the idea that this isn't an actual competition show, that Hallmark had already hired its leading man, and it's just using this as a ratings vehicle and gimmick. But that made more sense when we thought Parker was the guy. But clearly Parker was not the guy. I dunno, we'll need to see how that movie turns out. 

What I Have Been Watching: this pile

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is usually the domain of Toast admittedly spending too much time in front of the TV. Kent's stepping on toes (Toastoes? Toestys?) here mainly because he has a piles of TV shows in progress and maybe doesn't have too much to say about any of it. Maybe(?)

Best In Miniature Season 2 - CBC (8/8 episodes)

The Mrs. Kent has really gotten into miniatures over the past few years, and the first season of Best in Mini was a real kick in the pants for her start tackling doing her own minifying. I'm kind of envious of her dedication to the art form and the increasingly impressive results she's achieving.  As a competition show, Best In Mini stands out because it doesn't drown itself in contestant's personalities like far too many other shows of this ilk. It's about skills, and in the community of miniature artists, the skills are appreciated. These contestants, though all trying to win, aren't in competition with the others, they're in competition with themselves, pushing their skill sets to the limit, to try and meet or exceed the expectation of the judges. We only get the slimmest of glimpses into the personal lives of these artisans, and usually only in as much as it's relevant to the pieces that they're working on. It's a quiet, low-stakes, relaxing, and fascinating discipline, and it's amazing to see each artisan's strengths employed, but even greater to see them try something new and succeed or fail at it. 

Like the first season, it starts with building the house. Each subsequent episode is furnishing a specific room, with specific requirements, and it ends with the external setting. The level and depth of knowledge on design and multidisciplined craftsmanship required to succeed in the show is astounding, making the frontrunners evident from the get go, but also impressive to see artists find their groove, and improve and grow as the show goes on.  I felt the winner of the season came down to the one judge not understanding one of the contestant's stories and subjectively wanting something out of the story that the artist didn't feel fit, and was penalized for being true to their own sense of the story. 

Lego Masters Australia Season 3 - Discovery Canada (10/14 Episodes)

I freaking love Lego Masters Australia. After the Mrs. and I ploughed through season 1 & 2 on demand I craved more. Each episode is a freaking dopamine hit of giddy plastic joy. Each episode ends with a teaser for the next episode and I.just.want.it.now! 

Unlike the North American Lego Masters, the Australian version feels so much more connected to its builders, the community of Lego aficionados, and to the participants in the show. You get the sense that host Hamish Blake is having an absolute blast on set, as are the contestants, and they start to form kind of in jokes between them. It's very personable in a way that the spit-and-polish of the (North) American Lego Masters, as hosted by Will Arnett, is not. Likewise, the solitary judge, "Brickman" Ryan McNaught, seems to be personally invested in the brick building journey of the contestants. The level of emotion that comes out of him as he has to eliminate a duo, especially later on in the season, is so heartfelt and genuine. These aren't just contestants to him, they are proteges or pupils. He will lean into someone mid-build and offer a gentle suggestion, whether it's to help them get unstuck from a particular problem, or to try and push them past their comfort zone. The US Lego Masters judges, while definitely interested observers, do not seem to have nearly the same investment level.  There is a reason for that, and it's how the shows are structured.

The Aussie Lego Masters, unlike any other competition show, really wants to spotlight the builders skills, and gives them many, many opportunities to shine. It's a show that starts with 8 groups of contestants and this season didn't eliminate an group until episode 3, giving each team at least three or four builds before elimination. That's a lot of opportunity for them to prove themselves and something which I wish other such shows based around skill sets would take to heart and employ (Best in Miniature could do well with a structure like this at least early on, although, there's only so many rooms in a house).  Past contestants come back as special guests to great fanfare which speaks to the sense of community the show builds...it creates legends even in the losers of previous seasons (that young season 1 contestant Jordy is now a regular player on the show as a production assistant, but onscreen seen typically in a janitorial role, is a perennial delight).

It's the highlight of my week, tempered only by the fact that Discovery has started editing the shows down to an hour, which means there are dramatic jumps in the episode timelines and we miss some delightful content (in the Marvel themed episode, we missed an entire judging segment, much to our disappointment and frustration). 

Doom Patrol Season 4 - HBOMax (6/12 episodes)

[Season 1, Season 2, Season 3]

I think my problem with Doom Patrol at this point rests entirely in how disconnected the characters are from each other in this series. This season seems to be trying to reconcile past lives, as Vic (having had all his cyborg parts removed and is now just a boring normal guy) gets reacquainted with old friends in Detroit, Rouge tries to atone for her past misdeeds (which Rita cannot let go of, for obvious reasons), Larry is still wrestling with his closeted past as well as his alien offspring/parasite, and the saga of Jane and the war of her personalities continues. We meet a new character, Casey, as we return for a one-off with Dorothy, both of whom are dealing with daddy issues. Despite all the continued weirdness (which I love) and the great scoring from Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner, it feels like we're treading so much water with these characters, particularly waters we've tread before.

I am, however, torn by my fatigue with the show because, at its heart, it's a show about trauma, surviving it, coping with it, and moving past it as much as one can. It's very potent, and kind of important in this regard. It's a show that uses its weirdness expertly as metaphor, without ever bashing you over the head with what they're doing. If you want to approach it just as a show about weirdos facing weird things, it works on that level, but digging even one layer deeper reveals so much more complexity, and there's a lot to identify and/or empathize with. But it just feels like it doesn't quite know how to get to where it wants to go, or how it wants to say things. It's like when I write my long-winded reviews that circle the point I'm making but take forever to get there.  Except I know I don't need to pad for time.  Hoping the "part 2" of this season brings the series to a satisfactory conclusion.

Ted Lasso Season 3 -Apple TV+ (6/12 episodes)

[Seasons 1 & 2]

The good news is Ted Lasso is funny again. Where the second season seemed really, really weighed down, and troubled, this season has inflated the flat tires and replaced the busted rubber. Its nowhere near as tight as the pretty-much-perfect season 1 -- its massive success means the show can run episodes at whatever length it wants, and it does.  I can only imagine how tight a comedy it might be if held to a 25 minute standard...or it's quite possible it might not even work.

This season seems to have clear directions, chief of which is to conclude with Ted ultimately no longer being Coach of AFC Richmond, but also it seems like the show is setting itself up for life without Jason Sudekis. It's trying for a redemptive arc for Nate (after his flat-out villainy last season, it's a tall order), it's setting Rebecca up for a pretty big journey, and the triangle of Keely-Roy-Jamie finds a fourth participant pushing the edges out. The members of the team, so far, are treated almost exclusively as a collective unit, with individual personalities and stories dismissed in favour of the hive, but a few wrinkles such as eccentric superstar Zava joining the team or reporter Trent Crimm being ever present as documentarian shakes things up in a very enjoyable way (James Lance's Crimm is such a welcome addition as regular cast member).

The show seems less interested in driving towards a happy ending than it does settling in, and I think that could ultimately be a good thing. I mean, if people want 3 seasons in-and-out with Ted as the gravitational center, it might be less satisfying as a result, but if the show is pivoting to a Ted-less spin off, it's certainly setting a good foundation for it.  Either way, I'm much happier with this season than the last one, and feel more entertained, and maybe even more invested, as it slips a bit more into sit-com mode than "prestige TV". Excited to see where it goes.

Stargirl Season 3 - AmazonPrime (5/13 episodes)

[Seasons 1 & 2]

Superhero fatigue is definitely real. I'm a lifelong comics reader and I used to devote myself to seeing every tangentially superhero-related mass media product out there. These days my comics pile is so much smaller than ever before, my investment in big superhero universes has dwindled to almost nothing, I'm not rewatching the big tentpole movies as frequently as I used to, and even good superhero TV, like Stargirl, feels exhausting to me. 

13 episodes? Why?

I like Stargirl, it uses themes of legacy (my favourite subject matter for comic book superheroics) to build its own in-world history, so it has a setting where battles between superheroes and supervillains existed before its first episode began. Over the past two seasons its teenage characters have been thrust into the midst of all that history and it all seems to come spiralling back improbably to this quaint town of Blue Valley.  It stretched that credibility for all it could, this season, everything comes springing back, and it feels like we're treading familiar ground. Getting caught eating your own tail is something all TV shows have to face inevitably, but it seems like superhero shows do it more frequently and more often than regular programming. I'm not sure what it is. Probably budget and contractual limitations, forcing the re-use of characters and sets and effects and whatnot... it means that the superhero worlds on TV don't ever really grow, they just get more crowded.

What Stargirl really needed, at this stage, was to break out of Blue Valley, to go out into the world beyond, but the show couldn't afford it, so instead we're stuck with new angles on returning villains to a not-unwatchable but ho-hum result.  Season 3 is the series' final run, and we'll probably get around to finishing it, but it seems like it's going to be a chore, rather than a delight, despite the presence of Joel McHale as series regular.  Hoping to be proven wrong.

Grand Crew Season 2 - NBC/City (8/10 episodes) 

[Season 1]

I was so excited for Grand Crew to return, that I kept looking and looking and looking for it since the start of the year, with no trace. Then, suddenly, I was three weeks behind. They just snuck out the gate as seems to happen with big three network TV shows that aren't returning reality TV competition shows. It's seriously to the point with network TV where it feels like legit dramas or sitcoms don't even belong there anymore.  Eyes are always upon cable or streaming, it's like nobody's paying attention to what ABC/CBS/NBC is doing unless you're over 60.

Grand Crew exists in the tradition of hangout comedies of yore. It's basically contemporary Friends, but, you know...LA instead of New York. And a wine bar instead of a coffee shop. The gender balance is also off, with Nicole Beyer's Nicky and Grasie Mercedes' Fay as the two lone female leads, and Fay is kind of positioned more as a romantic foil for Aaron Jennings' Anthony and Nicky's immediate new BFF rather than as a lead all her own.

It's a really funny show, with Carl Tart (playing Sherm) the clear breakout of the cast. I knew Tart from before the show from his devastatingly hilarious character improv on Comedy Bang Bang, and he delivers just as large here. My biggest worry is that nobody's really noticing. 20 years ago he would already have a movie.

This second season doesn't quite hit as high or as funny as last season, primarily because the writers are trying to involve us too deeply and seriously in the characters lives and their romantic entanglements. Where 25 years ago two seasons of a show could spread out this kind of storytelling over 50 episodes, here they're trying to do the same amount of investment in less than half the time, and I'm just not that into it. I would rather the funny over the character beats any day.  This is a proper sitcom, it's not "prestige TV" so its attempts at serializing even light melodrama comes off as too heavy for its weight class.  Still, it's a good crew, and I would like to spend more time with them. Hoping the season 3 pickup announcement comes soon.

I Saw This!! realiTyVgames

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(me) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Florida governor bad.

One thing we haven't written much about on this blog is realityTV, specifically competition shows.  I know I'm not a huge fan, and I suspect Toasty is similarly averse to the genre.  I think in recent years I've started watching more competition shows than ever, by which I mean, a couple, versus none.  I recall dabbling in early seasons of Survivor and Trading Spaces and American Idol and Project:Runway but at a certain point I realized that these competition shows were just empty calories, and not even all that delicious calories...like eating veggie straws when you could just have had potato chips, or caramel corn, or a fruit salad. I'm feeling peckish and losing the thread here.  In recent years, we've watched all of Nailed It! on Netflix, easily the most entertaining baking competition show out there, because the whole point is bad bakers trying their best, and having fun while doing it.  We've also watched Lego Masters which, given that we're obscenely ridiculous toy people in this household (I'm watching a youtube video about action figure news as I write this), is not that suprising, but I was surprised to find how engaged I was with the show, which is not very much about the personality politics and all about building cool Lego diaramas.

So, we partook in a few other reality competitions in the past couple months... more in such a short time than ever...let's just talk about it....

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LOL Canada - AmazonPrime

I started in on Last One Laughing Canada out of sheer curiosity.  Given that I'm a comedy lover, I wanted to know who from the Canadian comedy scene would wind up on this reality competition show (and would it be funny, or just sad?).  Well, a completely godawful introduction let me know, and, I was quite surprised that I knew everyone involved, save one ( Brandon Ash-Mohammed) and liked pretty much everyone. The crux of the show is putting 10 comedians in a room for 6 hours (edited down to about 3 hours over six episodes) and telling them they can't laugh, or even smile.  The last one left wins a pile of money for charity.  There are rules, but the basics basically is no laughing, no smiling, one warning, then you're out.

The "LOL" formulae was developed from a Japanese game show but now seems to be an Amazon brand which has, currently, 9 different international versions on the streamer, including Australia, German, France, Spain, and India, with a Quebec version forthcoming (surprised there's no US or UK version yet).

With host Jay Baruchel the competing comedians were Drew Barrymore's ex-husband Tom Green, Kim's Convenience co-star Andrew Phung, Whose Line is it Anyways legend Colin Mochrie, Kids in the Hall's Dave Foley, comedian (and ex-pat living in the UK) Mae Martin, "America's Sweetheart" Caroline Rhea, one of my favourite live stand-ups Debra DiGiovanni, The League's Jon Lajoie (whom our dog Taco was named after) and Letterkenny's K. Trevor Wilson joining Ash-Mohammad.

The thing about comedians is a lot of them don't laugh at comedy, they analyze it, they deconstruct it as they see it, like a magician trying understand how another magician's trick works.  A lot of them have a severe poker face.  But the flip side is there's some of those comedians that just love to laugh, so those ones are out almost immediately.

What I wasn't expecting was Tom Green. It's been so long since I have engaged in Green's absurdist shenanigans that I forgot how good he was at that sort of thing.  He got a lot of miles out "delicious cheese sandwiches" (maybe too much mileage). And here he's kind of in his element, just able to be his weird self. Lajoie was easily my favourite competitor, as he had tactics for not laughing, which were tremendously funny on their own.  Mmm. Mmmhmm.  Ash-Mohammad's seductive sunscreen application was something absolutely special to behold, and Mochrie is such a seasoned improv pro that almost everything he does is so good.  Foley seemed to be completely disinterested in the whole thing, even after he was ejected, while Rhea came prepared to laugh, which was kind of the antithesis of the show (rolling out in her teen daughter's wardrobe was a pretty good bit though).

I laughed a lot, and enjoyed spending time with pretty much everyone, and I found the format worked quite well as a competition, really drawing the viewer through from episode to episode, but the unstructured room with hack comedy props is little too malformed for high quality comedy.  The good thing is at 6 sub-1/2 hour episodes it didn't overstay its welcome.

LOL Australia - AmazonPrime 

As I started this post writing about the Canadian version, put the Australian version of Last One Lauging - hosted by Rebel Wilson - on in the background, kind of as an experiment to see if the show would still work even if I didn't know the personalities involved.  I only know a couple of the comedians, mainly host Wilson and absurdist Sam Simmons (who I wrote about here during 2013's JFL42 festival, the one year I deigned to write about stand-up comedy on the blog) but the format proved itself to be just as attractive and entertaining, even if the personalities involved were a bit more alien. 

It's still a fairly funny show, but there's definitely some cultural differences that bubbled up to the fore.  For starters, the Aussies are much more brutal and cutting, like they were treating the room as a place to roast each other, really dig into their careers and, in some ways, let their petty jealousies bubble up to the surface in unflattering ways, that, I guess were meant to be comedy (the thing about roasting is it's only funny if everyone's laughing together, otherwise it just feels mean, and the whole point here is to not laugh, so nobody's laughing).  The Canadians all seemed genuinely respectful of one another, even if they didn't quite know each other.  The elder statesmen, the ones who had gone off to temporarily bigger careers in the States, they were still generally kind to the younger set.  Australia is roughly the same population density as Canada, but where they're situated in the world they're the big English-speaking market (with New Zealand being their Canada), so there's no where to go as an elevation unless you're willing to make the huge leap to the States or UK.  As such it's a tinier, more insular market, everyone knows each other on this show, but there's much more of a competitive spirit between them all.  And throw in $100,000 prize (not for charity, but for the winner) it's certainly a bit more cutthroat.

Another standout in comparison was the Australians' reliance upon dick and bum jokes.  So many bum jokes. I think half the gags here were about bums.  There's got to be some sort of cultural obsession with the ol' hiney Down Under (well, I guess "down under" is basically a butt euphamism as is, so perhaps it makes some sense).  There was quite a bit more lewdness in the Aussie LOL, and maybe an overreliance on cheap theatrics.

It was funny to see that there's a few archetypes that bubble up.  There's the seasoned improv vet, (Mochrie in Canada, Frank Woodley in Australia), the almost-as-seasoned absurdist (Green vs Simmons), the one who distances themselves from it all (Foley vs the almost entirely unengaged Ed Kavalee, making Foley look positively enthusiastic by comparison), the young buck going deep against the vets (Ash-Mohammad vs Nazeem Hussain) and the anti-laugh tactician (LaJoie vs  Dilruk Jayasinha).

Even comparing the hosts, Wilson was much more passive than Baruchel, who seemed to want to insert himself into the happenings as much as possible. The Canadian version also had some games and special guests inserted into the proceedings which made for a bit more entertainment and sense of structure, where there was little else but chaos in Australia.  

But then Sam Simmons was on the attack from moment one in the show, and didn't let up for anything.  My recollection of him as a live performer was that he would do anything, shamelessly, and his sense of comedy crossed the entire spectrum, but here he was mostly focussed on shock-and-awe.  By the end of the show the room looked like a bodega had exploded, like a rock star's hotel room after a coke-fuelled bender, and most of that chaos could be attributed to Simmons.  His go-for-broke, no shame comedy started minutes into the show as he stepped out from behind the change room curtain, music blaring, to perform a wild dance wearing a leather jacked with over a dozen stretchy rubber dick-and-balls stitched on it, which he then proceeded to tug and stretch and fillate in a manic fit along with the hyper music.  And that's where he started his onslaught.

Just past the halfway point, there fell a spastic sense of desperation among the remaining competitors which only seemed to heighten as more were eliminated.  It was less funny and more interesting from a sociological standpoint, as these people who feed off laughs started going absolutely mental, seemingly for hours going "is this funny?" over and over.  That sort of desperation was only flirted with in the Canadian one, but the same sense of "this is a form of torture" seemed to overcome them as well.

I didn't come out of it with a healthier appreciation for the Aussie comedy scene...there was a lot of weaksauce efforts in that room of unfamiliar personalities, but the few standouts really stood out.  Woodley, Simmons, Becky Lucas, and Dilruk Jayasinha I think were tops for me. 

I don't think I'll give any of the other foreign language versions a try.  Comedy is so much in the delivery and the delivery is shot when you're trying to do it through subtitles.

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Best In Miniature - CBC Gem

Another Canadian competition show, though a lot less calmer and gentler than LOL Canada, and much more in the vein of Lego Masters (and I'm sure all those damn baking shows that other people seem to love), where the production cares much less about personalities and backstories, and instead is much more focused on skills.  In this case it's people who create miniatures, dollhouses and accessories.

There is an amazing amount of skill, experience and creativity involved in miniaturing, and the competitors, ranging from only a couple years to decades of experience, each show their own personality in their art.  The competitors hail from the US, Canada, and the U.K., and they seemed to have some form of on-line presence and be largely familiar with one another through social media, some having even bought pieces off the others.

The first episode's challenge is building a dollhouse and it immediately shows the strengths and styles of each of the artists, but also very, very quickly exposes their weaknesses.  Subsequent episodes feature a mini-challenge, where they have to create a small piece in less than an hour, which they are then judged on by the show's experts (one a miniatures expert, the other a design expert), and then they have a specific challenge working in one of their rooms for up to 10 hours.  Each room has to meet some specific design challenges that are foisted upon them, as well as feel a part of the overall aesthetic of the house.

I was impressed, constantly, every episode by everyone, some more than others, but just agog with how cool and amazing and talented these people are at making such a broad spectrum of items.  While some had specialties, most were still able to adapt and create what was needed even if they weren't intimately familiar with the how to.  Plus as the competitors were winnowed down, the more fine and precise the work got, the more impressive it all was.

I enjoyed this show tremendously, very little of which had to do with personalities, except in how they came out in their art.  It was such a low-stakes, low-drama, competition that it was a soothing, relaxing and utterly transfixing watch.  I would like more, but I may also just watch again.

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Is it Cake? - Netflix

Shows based of memes are maybe not the best idea, and Is It Cake? is a fudging mess of a game show.  The format of the show is so bizarre and kind of so antithetical to the way almost any other competition show is done that I have to wonder if it's just ahead of its time, or if it's really just a train wreck.

Hosted by Saturday Night Live's Mikey Day, the premise of the show is three bakers compete in creating a cake that looks like something else, then each cake is put up on a podium against 5 other non-cakes of the same item, and a panel of three "celebrity" (some are minorly famous, some are like specific famous, and some are just internet famous) guests have to come to consensus in 20 seconds on which one is cake.  

But that's just the high level structure...it gets really, really weird the more you dig into it.

The show starts with 9 competitors.  After a round of "Is it cake?", where a variety of random items on podiums - one of them cake - is displayed, and eveyone gets a chance to choose.  If there's a tie, the fastest answer wins.  Kind of a weird system there.  But then, the winner gets to choose two others from the stable.  They each then choose one of the non-cake items for them to replicate in cake form.  The other 6 competitors just go to a bench on the side and...sit there, for 8 hours, while the three competitors bake and make their fake cake.  So bizarre.

AFTER the judging, if the judges were fooled by more than one cake, the judges then have to pick the winner based on how real the cake looks up close and how good the cake tastes.  Then the winner gets a chance to win some prize money by playing "Cake or Cash" where two items looking almost exactly the same are presented, only one is cake, the other is cash.  If they guess which is cake, they win cash.

The following episode, the winner of the previous episode picks two more contestants (from the pool who haven't already been chosen), they play a round of "Is it cake?" with the random items, pick their item to cake fake replicate and go through it all over again.  It's clunky as clunky can be as far as a competition show goes, and yet, it's kinda stupidly entertaining.  It's absurd they have people sitting around for 8 hours while people bake cakes, but that's what happens.  

The contestants, however, are all rather supportive of each other, and all very into discussing techniques, and approaches, and flavours and whatnot.  It's always nice these competition shows where the competitors really are just happy to trade knowledge and appreciate each others' skills.

Likewise, it's fun watching Day's hacking into things that are - and are not - cake.  And the brief moments of deciding whether something is or isn't cake is still a challenge even though you've just watched 20 minutes of the cake being made, the show edits it enough that when it comes time to guess it's still fun for the audience (but it comes at the expense of getting into finer detail on how the cake was made).

Every episode I couldn't believe I was still watching it, and yet, I wanted to watch more after each episode was over.  It's incredibly stupid (and a HUGE waste of food...where does all that cake Day mangles wind up?) and it's such a silly premise, but I enjoyed it despite myself.

10 for 10: Something Something TV Something Something

  [10 for 10... that's 10 movies  TV shows which we give ourselves 10(ish) minutes a piece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie  TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?]

In this edition:

1. Never Have I Ever s2 - netflix
2. The Bad Batch s1 - D+
3. MODOK s1 - D+
4. Black Monday S3 - Showtime/Crave
5. Clickbait - netflix
6. Brooklyn Nine-Nine S8 - NBC
7. Locke & Key S2 - netflix
8. Wellington  Paranormal S1 - 3 - crave
9. Lego Masters Season 1&2 - fox/ctv scifi
10. Doom Patrol S3 - space

GO!

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 Oh boy do I ever love Never Have I Ever.  It hits all the teen rom com sweet spots for me and teen rom coms are kind of my least favourite of the rom com genre (because teens are kind of awful). 

I indeed loved season 1, so much so that I happily did a binge re-watch of it just as season 2 was hitting Netflix, after which I was SO excited for season 2...which I was already SO excited for.

The problem now is, I'm writing about it and I can't remember much of what happened...oh, except Devi tried to date both Paxton and Ben at the same time, which wound up in her losing both of them rather quickly, returning Ben to nemesis status. Then her mom starts thinking about moving them to India to be closer to family, and also Devi having a crisis of identity when the new cool girl in school, Aneesa, is also Indian like her but kind of better in every way (or so she thinks).  She accidentally starts a nasty rumour about her which she has to atone for.  It all leads to Devi being forced to reconcile her behavior towards Paxton, Ben, her mom and all her friends, as well as finally addressing the trauma of losing her father last year. (Mississauga native Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is a powerhouse this season as Devi).

Meanwhile Nalini (Devi's mom) discovers that maybe India isn't going to be the supportive return home she's looking for.  So back in LA, she starts getting closer to a super-handsome competitive dermatologist (played by Common) much to Devi's disgust.

Devi's BFF Fabiola starts dating, but hides that she's queer from her mom.  Devi's cousin Kamala, now in a seemingly happy relationship with the man her family arranged to marry, starts having issues at work and he seems less than supportive (traditional roles get examined, and feminism within tradition prodded).  Paxton gets a spotlight episode (with Gigi Hadad doing the narration), and Ben and Aneesa start dating, which sets off alarms in Devi's head?

It's all complex drama, and watching Devi handle these twists poorly over and over, yet still learning from them is both frustrating and rewarding.  She's a fascinating central character, but a complicated one for sure (which is what makes for interesting, entertaining television).  John McEnroe providing her inner monologue is still the most entertaining thing, and he's such a bang-on suitable choice because of his own hot-headed temperment, and his asides into his own personal tennis accomplishments - sometimes related, sometimes not - is just good comedy.

I love this show.  Repeat viewings needed. More episodes needed.  I kind of want to go rewatch it all right now.

[16:14]

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Time was I could spend hours upon hours thinking and writing and talking about Star Wars, any Star Wars.  I have thoughts and feelings about all of it, and a lot invested into that crazy universe.  But, I don't have a lot to say about Star Wars: The Bad Batch.  I don't have complex feelings.  I like it.  It entertains me.  But it doesn't rock the boat, and maybe that makes it just a little... bland.

Picking up from the recent Disney+ release of The Clone Wars Season 7, The Bad Batch follows a quintet of, let's say, aberrant clone troopers at the dawn of the Galactic Empire.  The clones are Hunter (an expert tracker with a strange face tattoo), Tech (he's got super smarts and is good with gadgets), Wrecker (who is big, abnormally strong, and kind of dim), Crosshair (a sniper with a chip on his shoulder), and Echo (a "regular" clone who was experimented upon and decided to join with the Bad Batch).  

In the pilot, the Batch meet their sister, Omega, who was not rapidly aged as they were so is still a pre-teen girl.  Together they escape the dismantling of the cloning facility by the Empire, as well as manage to avoid the effects of Order 66.  Except that Crosshair swears loyalty to the Empire, and becomes their number one enemy/pursuer.  They take on mercenary work-for-hire roles, including rescuing a rancor and facing down bounty hunters (Cad Bane returns).

There's a lot of emphasis on found family, and they meet new friends along the way (Rhea Perlman plays their handler, and she's great).  The show operates within the era of the building of the Empire, so it's intriguing to see that in its nascent form, an element I wish they would hit even harder.

I was iffy about Omega at first (as I always am when Star Wars introduces a youthful character) but she fast becomes utterly endearing and is never grating (the New Zealand accent is one of my favourite things).  This show is almost entirely devoid of The Force which makes it stick out from most other Star Wars.  

I like what happens in this show, but I'm not as enamored with it as I was with Rebels.  It's very much a continuation of Clone Wars, if only more focussed.  The animation picks up much of the Clone Wars aesthetic with a bit of a paintbrush feel.  It often looks outstanding, there's some great set and environment designs.

[30:44]

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The animated series MODOK is, of course, an anomaly in the current Marvel catalog.  Since Disney+ launched, basically all Marvel programming has fallen under Marvel studios careful watch.  All other programs that were running had stopped and any in-flight productions were cancelled (RIP New Warriors...they robbed me of a live action Squirrel Girl).  

MODOK (as well as a handful of other projects, including the upcoming Hit Monkey) were announced around the same time as all these other things were winding down, and the new slate of Marvel programming at Disney+ was ramping up.  These shows would not be Disney+ shows, but airing on rival streaming service Hulu (in the US at least), and all would be adult animation.  It was a weird decision, but not an unwelcome one.

Behind MODOK is comedian(/actor/writer) and nerd extraordinaire Patton Oswalt along with Jordan Blum and produced with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios who also make the long-running animated action figure sketch comedy Robot Chicken.  The series uses the stop-motion puppets that Soopid Buddy has perfected, and employs a lot of the physical comedy language that series has used for over a decade and a half.

The story of MODOK, the "Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing", is surprisingly a dual family/workplace comedy.  It follows MODOK as the leader of AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) where he has no shortage of rivals looking to usurp him, and no shortage of minions who he feels are completely undermining him.  At home, his marriage is falling apart, and his children have no respect for him.

What could have been a bog standard animated show, which resets its norm after each episode is instead an ongoing character study of this very, very unusual man, as his life crumbles before him and he needs to build it back up.  He gets his greatest enemy in himself (thanks to some wonky time travel) and manages to team up with his former greatest enemy, Iron Man (Jon Hamm).  He also has a rivalry with Hollywood superstar superhero Wonder Man (Nathan Fillion) who starts dating MODOK's wife.

It's a funny show, featuring occasionally extreme puppet violence that somehow is surprisingly endearing in painting a portrait of a sad-sack killing machine, but it's one for the nerds...like me.

[42:39]

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I just recently wrote about Black Monday Season 2, which was a wild, sometimes very bloody mess of a run set in the fast-times world of a Wall Street stock brokerage firm in 1990 (and rapidly expanding outside of that).  Season 3 we watched hot on the heels of Season 2, and it presented a story of even greater scope and ambition, with more extremes, that managed to somehow still feel overly contained.

Dawn (Regina Hall) is fresh out of jail.  Mo (Don Cheadle) is running his own record label now, and ready to settle down with Dawn.  But the nature of their relationship makes progressing it a very painful experience and Mo winds up engaged to one of his new musical prodigies instead.

Blair (Andrew Rannells) meanwhile, is now a politician (sacrificing all dignity and integrity posing as a Republican gay) but gets shot at a rally. Following the attempt on his life is more attempts on his life as well as a few more successful attempts on the lives of others in the orbit of the "Jammer Group".  Oh, yes, there's a serial killer on the loose.

So the gang, having all fractured by late in the season (as they do every year) must come together and devise an absurd plot to out the killer.

Stepping away from the Wall Street satire, Black Monday does lose a sense of purpose, but it doubles down on its characters and the arcs in presents them.  Thinning out the peripheral cast by killing them off just further emphasizes the show's commitment to this likeable if nothing-but-flawed group of not-friends.

I like Black Monday a lot.  I want to love it but it's characters maybe a little too cruel, and too lacking in self awareness, and the outlook a little too bleak to be something I want to celebrate and view over and over.  That said, it is pretty damn outlandish, and there's not a lot of that type of comedy going around (at least in live action).

[56:58]

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Clickbait  was HUGE for Netflix a few months back, one of those limited series that people binged in one or two sittings, just pulled through its tawdry story, and ironically a viral sensation.

But it's also one of those shows that's all empty calories, a tasty meal you don't even remember having a couple days later.

So what the hell is Clickbait?

Ah, right.  This guy (Adrien Grenier - Entourage) is kidnapped, and his kidnappers put him up on a video on a youtube analog, with him holding signs saying "I hurt women" and that at 5,000,000 views, he dies.

His family, and the police and others start digging into his past, into his web history, into his accounts that start to reveal a history of joining dating sites and carrying on relationships with women who are not his wife.  There's also insinuation that may something inappropriate happened between him and one of the college-age volleyball players whom he is a sports massage therapist for.

This is a critique on the nature for people to pile-on to a situation with only the thinnest of information, to form judgements without facts, and to treat clickbait headlines as "all the information I need to make a decision".  It's actually pretty sharp in that regards, though the series needs to work some serious gymnastics to get to the ultimate reveal and then pile on some stakes that, seriously, just don't feel right, or earned.

That said, it is a compelling view, one that deliberately pulls you through it. Each episode shifts point-of-view to a different character, hitting harder that idea that even with multiple perspectives you may still not be getting the whole truth, the whole story.  There is a savvy statement underneath this pulpy, trashy show.

It's not a must watch, but it certainly fits the bill if you want something propulsive and bingeable...it's the TV equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

[1:06:24]

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I can't believe that Brooklyn Nine-Nine has run for 8 years, and that it's over.  I still remember putting it down as a show to watch in a Fall TV Preview back in 2013.  Looking at the other shows that I listed along with it, only a few lasted more than a season or two, and none of them lasted as long as B99...and none of them I really enjoyed except B99.

About 2 or 3 years ago, I let my daughter start watching it, and she immediately became obsessed with it.  She's watched every episode at least three or four times over, some of her favourite episodes I'm sure she's seen dozens of times.  It was really hard for her to let go of the show.  She put off watching the final 2-part episode, until I convinced her of its greatness and sat down and watched it with her.  There were tears.  Michael Shur has given us three of the greatest series enders with B99, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place.  He's figured out how to close out a long running/beloved show with satisfaction and sentimentality, without being treacly.  He knows how to deliver series enders that feel important, grander than just another episode, yet still fit as part of the whole.  

Here he does that with one of the show's famous "heist" episodes (where the key players of the department participate in a friendly competition that means more to all of them than it logically should).  I might even say that it's perhaps the best of the heist episodes, and they're all highlights of the show.

Even before the two-part finale, the show had a lot to deal with coming back: Black Lives Matter, defund the police, COVID-19... they all are brought into the series opener, and then put down a thread underneath the show that is not just story beats, but actual resonance with the characters.  The stress of BLM and systemic racism in police structures took a toll on Holt and broke up his marriage to Kevin (poor Cheddar lives in two homes now).  Of course Jake makes it his mission to reconcile them but it's not as simple or easy as he thinks.  Rosa quits the police force and becomes an advocate for marginalized individuals who experience police harassment.  They face off against a police officers union representative (John C. McGinley in a most disgustingly earnest repeat role), which hits its climax when Jake makes a wrongful arrest, and has to decide whether he wants to fight via the union or accept a semi-just punishment... does he take advantage of a broken system or set an example no one will notice or follow?

B99 still stayed funny and absurd in spite of the weight of the changing world on its back, and not a lot of sitcoms have ever managed serious issues without sacrificing the comedy for the "very special episode".  I'll miss you B99, it was a good run, but it was your time to go.

[1:23:12]

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I wrote my history with the comics of Locke and Key in my season 1 10-for-10 write up, my general sentiment being that the show did some things the comic did well and did its own things well but had a general problem with tone.  Was I excited for season 2 of Locke and Key? Not so much, and the first episode was a big soggy noodle of an episode that threatened to stop me watching altogether.

Season 2 returns with an all-teen-drama all-the-time episode that just drove me bonkers.  I turned to my wife and said "I'm here for the magic keys and demon fightings, not teen drama".  The show used the first episode as a cleanser as well as a refresher for the second season, a way to establish that Tyler's girlfriend Jackie is aging out of her understanding of magic, that Kinsey is still painfully unaware that Gabe is Dodge (and some other love triangle crap), that Bodie is lonely, that Uncle Dunc is having trouble adjusting to life in Keyhouse, that Nina, having put her alcoholism into remission, needs something else in her life, and that Gabe is escalating his plans... he wants to make his own key.

These threads then play out over the subsequent 9 episodes, and there's a lot of fun magic key action.  What's frustrating is the sheer ineptitude of the Locke family to use the keys effectively.  I mean, it's believable enough that these kids aren't warriors, they're not really experienced in fighting demons or crafting elaborate plans, but geez.  They're the new "Keepers of the Keys" and they manage to lose SO MANY of them to demons who can't forcefully take the keys from them.

The actor playing Gabe/Dodge, Griffin Gluck, I've liked in other projects, and last season he was fine as Gabe (before we knew he was also Dodge), but here when he has to go into menacing he only sometimes pulls it off.  He looks like a young Joseph Gordon Levitt, and there's not a lot of sinister happening in that face.  That all said, you really do just want to give him a smack all.the.time.

There's some absolutely great moments of intensity this season, some real pulse pounding sequences of the Lockes putting themselves into jeopardy, not because they're being stupid, but because they're being daring.  There's also some good creepiness here, but the show's production design doesn't really lean into it.  It was part of the complaint about season 1, that horror should be a definite element of the show and it's by and large side stepped.

The first episode not-withstanding, as well as a late in season 2 flashback episode that really doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, this was really quite fun.  Not perfect, but fun.  It deviates wildly from the comics while still utilizing much of what the comics established, so it's not feeling like a retread. I've come out feeling more positive about season 2 than I did season 1.

[1:38:12]

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It's always hard to write about comedy in a way that actually sells the comedy and does it justice.  I have in the past described whole scenes or tried to detail jokes which I know don't really serve the actual comedy well.  Comedy is not meant to be explained.  Explaining why something's funny only dulls the potency.  

So, that said, for the three seasons, 18 episodes (so far), of Wellington Paranormal, I'm just going to hit upon some touch points that will either give you the reader an "I'm in" or "Pass" result.

Wellington Paranormal was created by Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement and super-director Taika Waititi.  Clement acts as showrunner, I believe, and has a more active hand in the series, while Waititi is just an executive producer.  It is actually an offshoot of What We Do In The Shadows, the 2015 movie (which itself spun off into the ongoing FX series of the same name).

Wellington Paranormal is set in Wellington, New Zealand and follows O'Leary and Minogue, two police officers who have been tasked by Maaka, their Sergeant, to head the "Paranormal Crimes" division.

Wellington isn't a super metropolis so the type of crime that Minogue and O'Leary are used to facing is mostly domestic disturbances, street crime, break-ins that sort of thing.  They have a very particular demeanor when handling people they encounter in these situations (it's asking a lot of rhetorical questions) and they approach the paranormal with the same casualness, until situations escalate and Minogue typically freaks out.

The same conceit of What We Do In The Shadows is employed here, which is that the officers are being followed by a documentary crew.  Toasty mentioned in a recent review how he prefers found footage to this documentary style, but for comedy (not necessarily horror) it works well enough (see also The Office, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family etc).  The thing that Wellington Paranormal does with its documentary footage that is unique, however, is it acknowledges that documentary footage is/has been captured (in one episode in season two and another in season three, the cops reference the fact that they've seen the documentary What We Do In The Shadows, which I love).

I found the series to be hilarious from the get go, right in my wheelhouse humour-wise.  I giggle incessantly during the show.  The storytelling and the types of paranormal encounters they experience get ever more creative as the series progresses, to the point that season three has many of the series highs (though I did like the pod people of season 1 and the follow-up episode even more...there's actually some continuity).

The show is goofy, silly comedy, relying a lot upon the officious mannerisms of O'Leary and the denseness of Minogue, but it also is very often exceptionally clever with its use of paranormal activity and later episodes toy with horror convention much more than the earlier ones do.

This will go on the "rewatch often" pile.  I think it's funnier than What We Do In The Shadows.

[ok, one joke... one of my favourite lines in the show.  Sergeant Maaka asking his assembly of officers if anyone has seen his missing box of jam donuts his grandma made. "My name was clearly written on the side of the box! 'Maaka' written in marker."  The New Zealand accent truly is one of my favourite things.]

[1:53:57]

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 I'm long past my point of enthusiasm or interest in "reality TV".  There are some people who subsist almost solely on them for their entertainment diet, and I pity them. In recent years the only "reality TV" I have watched/binged is Nailed It, a baking show where the contestants are knowingly set up to fail in trying to bake elaborate cakes and things beyond their capacity, yet try their best anyway (in a time too short to *actually* accomplish it) with hilarious results.  But I'm not here to talk about Nailed It.

Lego Masters I started PVRing for my stepson, who is a Lego buff and seemingly more so as he ages.  I thought the show would be something he would really be keen on, programming directed directly at him.

Alas, he mostly plays video games, and occasionally watches murder procedurals.

I just put an episode on while killing time, just to see, and while all the usual manipulative bullshit editing of reality TV is still there (just show me the people building!) by the half hour mark of this hour long show the projects are built and the judging commences.

And wow, what some of these people build is outstanding, and like any specialty form of art, whether it's cakes or blown glass or metal forging or home renovating, you have to have at least a passing interest to really care, but it's probably possible for anyone to appreciate the skill and craft put into these Lego diaramas or constructs.

Lego Masters is a rare show where it's relatively clear who are the strong and who are the weak each episode.  There's no upset-for-sake-of-drama, and the contestants are all very, very supportive of one another.  The challenges they face are frequently very challenging and even though they may sometimes cater to a strong skill of one designer or another, it doesn't guarantee anything.

Some of the challenges, my favourites actually, involve stress testing the designs, whether holding up in strong winds, or to a shaking foundation, or to weight put atop them.  It's impressive what those little plastic bricks can do.

We watched about half of season two before catching a marathon of Season 1 (only catching the latter half of Season 1) and then finishing season two.  They're immensely interesting to watch, to see what they're asked to do and to see what each team comes up with.  Will Arnett hosts and is amiable enough to not be annoying, and smart enough to know when his dumb jokes are dumb, and play into them.

I kind of got hooked.

[2:06:06]

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Doom Patrol, season 3 baby!  It's still airing as I write this, but I'm just so enthused that I have to say that the best special effect on the show is Brendan Frasier's swearing.  

As the series progresses, the showrunners seem to be on a mission to have the most swears per minute of any form of entertainment ever (they've got to have beaten Deadwood by this point).  Frasier is the king of swearing in the show (and now in real life), but he's obviously been training the rest of the cast because all of them have gotten very, very good at hitting those swears for maximum comedic punctuation.

But Frasier's voice coming out of Robotman/Cliff Steele is just one of the absolute best things on Earth.  The way Cliff swears makes me laugh every.time.  It's like when a child swears not knowing that what they're saying is inappropriate...that's how Cliff swears.  And he does it so, so much, and with such gusto. [Edit.  Just watched episode 8, and there is, what may be, the best scene on TV this year, with Robotman (the guy in the suit) meeting a physical subconscious entity of Cliff Steele (actual Fraser) and the "What.the.fuuuck?" exchange is fucking goddamn deliriously fucking glorious.]

This season has been an interesting affair, with a lot of plot lines that don't seem to really go anywhere and a main plot line that has unseen purpose.  The arrival of Michelle Gomez to the cast has been a fucking delight.  She's just an absolutely compelling presence with the driest of dry British humour.

The show has sent Rita, in search of purpose, time traveling.  It's sent Larry off into space and back again with a little lump inside him.  It's solidified Cliff's reunion with his daughter and welcomed in a grandson he loves to bits, but also given him something more serious to avoid (or deal with irrationally).  As for Jane, she's trying to liberate her host, Kay, to help her be well and take control, but the other personalities are ready to go to war in a fight for self-preservation. Cyborg struggles with his identity, and identifying the trauma of what his father has done to him.  Oh, and Chief's dead, and the Sisterhood of Dada are brought in as their main ...not antagonists, but, rather...thing... for this season (with the Brotherhood of Evil, led by a petty, petty Brain [he's a brain in a big, immobile, metal skull] and Monseur Mallah [a French-speaking gorilla wearing a beret] rearing their heads).  

[Edit: episode 8, even ignoring the great Robotman/Cliff "what the fuck?"-off, is maybe the best episode of the series yet as each character has to face off with their subconscious self, and it gets, real, real deep.  It's a potent, but still very very wild episode].

Doom Patrol is not a superhero show.  It's a comic book show, yes, and it features people with super powers, yes, but they're quick to point out they're not superheroes.  Early in the season one of them points out that they won't bother to intervene in something bad happening because they seem to just make things worse whenever they do... so they're just going to sit it out and veg, loaf, whatever.

It's a bizarre entity but always unexpected, and even if a particular plot doesn't resonate, man all that swearing will elicit more than a few hearty chuckles.

[2:18:29] (only 60 minutes over..sigh)

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