Brand New Cherry Flavor

Discuss TV shows old and new.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Brand New Cherry Flavor

#1 Post by Persona » Sun Aug 15, 2021 8:14 pm

A somewhat trashy dark comedy/LA satire from the Channel Zero people that grafts in some elements from Lynch's Mulholland Drive as well as a scene in episode 4 that I'm pretty sure David Cronenberg should be getting paid for somehow.

I made a thread, though, because halfway through I am having a lot of fun with it. The humor mostly works, the atmosphere is sufficient, the direction is stronger than your average Netflix fare, and the main performances courtesy of Rosa Salazar and Catherine Keener are pretty dang great.

Curious to see others' thoughts here.

ianungstad
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:20 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#2 Post by ianungstad » Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:11 am

I found this a pretty mixed bag. I really didn't buy into the whole jaguar mythology and felt the ending was unsatisfying. The first four episodes are pretty intriguing and I loved a lot of the nutty ideas introduced. Tonally it felt like a good mash-up of Mulholland Drive/Neon Demon/Cronenberg but the back 4 episodes kind of goes off the rails.

User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#3 Post by Persona » Mon Aug 16, 2021 6:35 am

Interesting. I am definitely seeing a mixture of opinions on whether the show starts stronger vs. ends stronger (Brian Tallerico, for instance, seemed to like the last couple episodes the best).

User avatar
barryconvex
billy..biff..scooter....tommy
Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2012 10:08 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#4 Post by barryconvex » Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:32 am

I'll watch Keener in anything. This is definitely on my "to watch" shortlist..

User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#5 Post by Persona » Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:19 am

Just finished this, and definitely liked it overall. It actually did a much better job of weaving its story threads and various elements together all the way through to the end than I was expecting it to. The humor and tone and even the mythology and involved plotting of it all ended up working for me.

My biggest criticism of the ending is that it absolutely feels a lot more like a S1 ending than a limited series ending. Not sure if the creatives fell too in love with their project and just felt like they had to leave a window open for more or if this is actually the complete ending that they wanted for the story. I like open-ended resolutions sometimes but this is a whole other level of open-ended for something that is supposed to be the final conclusion. And maybe if it had been set up or executed a little differently it would feel more satisfying, but as it is it feels more like, "Okay, so where's the next episode?"

User avatar
brundlefly
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:55 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#6 Post by brundlefly » Thu Aug 19, 2021 9:22 am

Sloppy, thin, and largely unsatisfying, but had enough hiccups to make it bingeable.

I’d find it hard to say I preferred the start of the series as there’s little there. So dispiriting when something desperately wants to be profoundly weird and genuinely strange but can’t manage much beyond secondhand surrealism and body horror, keeps apologizing for its inability to conjure by having its characters say, “Huh. That’s weird. That’s strange.”

And you could say it’s busy with introductions, there are plenty of characters to bring in, but most of the supporting players here are just very game pieces. (Good to see Manny Jacinto get work. Bortles!) You have to feel for Salazar, forced to spend her first five-plus episodes inhabiting a lead whose only discernable traits are that she’s terrible at understanding contracts, has a self-destructive focus on revenge, and has never met her mother. It’s okay that we don’t get to experience much of her art, because of what we find out later, and it’s not inappropriate that she almost seems to be sleepwalking, because of what we find out later, but Lisa Nova is not engaging.

It’s weird they let Eric Lange carry most of the first half of the series; as lousy as Lou Burke can be, he’s congenial, often more than reasonably helpful, and seems to be the only person in this version of Los Angeles who’s willing to tell a story. (Lange also weirdly resembles Chris Connelly, late of MTV News and Premiere magazine, which I found both distracting and kind of endearing.) It might be appropriate that this Los Angeles feels like some film student’s version of Los Angeles, but that doesn’t bring cutting satire or wicked insight or any kind of depth to the table.

And though it’s an adaptation of a book (haven’t read, no plans to do so), it’s built like a show in that we’re stuck in a handful of main locations, but moves altogether terribly: A lot of hokey-pokey, characters going from place A to B to A. It’s very much a television adaptation of a novel in that things don’t develop so much as you get used to them.

But there are some electric moments where it flashes surprising confidence. The director’s introduction at the screening and subsequent campfire by the pool. The sex scene, after its lead-in Videodrome/Rabid/Crash mash-up.

I can see people getting frustrated with the very end, because all the balls get dropped. There’s zero satisfaction there, almost feels like they’re begging for a second season. The continuing story of Catherine Keener (but not) vs. a piece of furniture. Just terrible.

But the sweetmeat comes in eps six and seven. Unlike ianungstad, I totally bought into the jaguar story, because it finally gave the show a soul, a conflict, a path. You feel so good for Salazar that her character finally knows who she is, and I wish they’d leaned a little harder into the idea that her talent is simply making people do what she wants them to do.

By this point in the show we also realize more about what Keener’s been struggling with in her performance. Boro comes on like the thing behind the Winkie’s dumpster, but then disappointingly melts into a more amiable earth mother. She’s got the toughest tow to haul and the show somehow doesn’t find enough time to spend with her. The “Jennifer” episode works great as a plot reveal, but not as a stage for her. It at least never resorts to a mess of internal voices. Keener does wonders with the sad, quiet line about how the voices mostly go away.

Episode Seven’s also the funniest. 90% of the chuckles in the first half of the run are kitten-oriented, and you trudge through a lot of lame zombie gags, but here everything lands. Cherry never gets successfully, convincingly, artfully weird like the many films it admires. But at least down the stretch, when all its characters at last know who they are, it finally felt like it found a place to be comfortable with its own silly gross self.

User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#7 Post by Persona » Thu Aug 19, 2021 12:55 pm

I liked the show a fair bit but I actually agree with most of your criticisms, brundlefly. I think I just got enough surface level enjoyment out of what the show was trying to do, plus Salazar and Keener and to a lesser extent Lange elevating their roles. I also agree with you about the jaguar mythology and think that's where a faint hint of something rich to the show's themes and subtext finally appears, even if I don't think it was elucidated or, conversely, abstracted quite enough in the end sum.

User avatar
brundlefly
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:55 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#8 Post by brundlefly » Fri Aug 20, 2021 8:34 am

Yeah, part of the problem with it going abstract is that it wasn't creative enough to successfully get internal. All Boro's talk about interconnectedness boiled down to little more than occasional flashframes, and the whole idea of "walking around in someone else's mind and breaking something" didn't get any play. But given the foundation story and how surface-level everything was, you'd think
SpoilerShow
a centuries-old supernatural interspecies story of love and betrayal would demand going big on the climax. And while I'd understand if they wanted to avoid another "chosen one" narrative or a pile-on of CGI wizardry, that's kind of where you have to go if you can't access real weirdness. Maybe the show thought it had accomplished more than it did, or maybe it thought its actors were better at shrugging than ferocious confrontation. But clearly that impressed neither of us.


Forgot to say that I genuinely enjoyed the Roy Hardaway character, and somehow never got tired of all the people shocked he'd be mucking about on their level. Jeff Ward was also in one of the better episodes of Hacks, and for someone with such an anonymously good-looking face he's got a casually winning presence.

User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#9 Post by Persona » Sat Aug 21, 2021 11:08 pm

Yeah, I really liked him, too.

RIP Film
Joined: Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:53 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#10 Post by RIP Film » Sun Aug 22, 2021 11:51 pm

Didn’t know Nick Antosca was attached to this, Channel Zero was one of my favorite things on TV last decade so I’ll have to check it out.

Btw, why is Netflix’s curation so bad? I had to do a search for this despite it being a ‘96% Match’. They’re more interested in advertising content I’ve already seen.

User avatar
Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#11 Post by Persona » Mon Aug 23, 2021 5:03 pm

You think Netflix's is bad, Hulu's is worse and Prime's an atrocity.

RIP Film
Joined: Tue Oct 10, 2017 3:53 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#12 Post by RIP Film » Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:18 pm

Just finished it, and I'll echo what I've been reading online that this is basically Channel Zero season 5, albeit with a bigger budget. I really enjoyed it for what it was, and am starting to see Nick Antosca as a sort of Val Lewton figure, who has an auteur-like hand in shaping whatever he produces.

I was fine with the ending.
SpoilerShow
While it would have been more satisfying for Lisa to RPG Boro's house, I do appreciate the commitment to its themes, which I think it chooses over narrative satisfaction. The series does a good job of painting this image of LA as a dumpster fire, a sort of cauldron of competing wills, where things are made and broke and disappear. We really don't see or know what the cost is for the apparatus of the film industry and its adjacent machinery. Certainly there's more than a whiff of Harvey Weinstein here, with Lisa's question "What changed?" being the central axis to everything. I'm not sure I see any asterisk at the end or a need for a second season, since Lisa effectively wins by getting the fuck out of there.
Rosa Salazar was a bit of revelation for me since I don't recall seeing her in anything, was also glad to see Jeff Ward, who played an even better role in Channel Zero: No End House. Worth a look.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Brand New Cherry Flavor

#13 Post by domino harvey » Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:32 pm

She was the titular Alita: Battle Angel in Robert Rodriguez’ adaptation, and she’s also in an animated show with Bob Odenkirk on Amazon, Undone, which I haven’t seen but it’s in my queue

Post Reply