TV of 2022

[domino harvey]

Night Court of all things is getting the revival treatment

[Black Hat]

Why, "of all things"? It was, along with Cheers and the late, great It's Gary Shandling's Show, the funniest thing going in the 80s (on American TV). I actually think Night Court's the one tv show, if done right, which is unlikely, that has the highest ceiling for brilliance in 2022. I didn't know Markie Post passed until just now, that sucks.

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid that I only know of Night Court through Mr Plinkett's desperate need to watch his VHS copies of the show.

[therewillbeblus]

Pam & Tommy, depicting Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's relationship, will air as a limited series on Hulu starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, and

SpoilerShow

Jason Mantzoukas will voice-act as Tommy Lee's animatronic penis

[Murdoch]

The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window is certainly predictable in its targeting of Lifetime thriller of the week plotting but I honestly thought parts of this landed pretty well. The problem is for every scene that actually drew a laugh from me, there were ten or more that were just copy-pasted cliches from what's being parodied. The parts where the show veered into the bizarre were too few and I wish it had embraced its weirdness more.

SpoilerShow

Scenes like the take-your-daughter-to-work day with the father criminal psychologist and Bell's husband explaining he hired a reformed killer to fix their mailbox because somebody had to fix it drew bigger laughs than I expected from this show.

[therewillbeblus]

Orphan Black sequel greenlit by AMC

[RIP Film]

Painting with John is fuckin’ weird, but refreshingly so. It’s a descent into one man’s psyche that I haven’t seen since probably The Eric Andre Show. Coincidentally, I find both of those great mental palate cleansers before going to bed. I still need to finish the first season, but with the second season it seems as if he’s leaning even more into a David Lynch styled visual language and pacing. The show reminds me of those meandering discussions with classmates probably everyone has had in art class, where there’s no real topic and that’s okay.

[Dr Amicus]

The new ITV adaptation of The Ipcress File seems promising after the first episode, combining the (hinted at) background of Harry Palmer from the book (but keeping the name from the Caine films) with the opening plot machinations. It looks as though it will be closer to the book than the film, but with some substantial differences - it looks like they've combined the two spy boss characaters (Dalby and Ross) into one, gloriously played by Tom Hollander. Joe Cole looks too young for the role (but isn't in real life) but makes a good stab at it. Apart from the character name, the other holdovers from the Caine film are his glasses and the camera angles (which are actually more Third Man than Furie). So far it's classy and fun, hope it continues for the next 5 episodes.

[cantinflas]

Tokyo Vice

[Shanzam]

I'm on episode 2 of coming-of-age fantasy drama series Fate: The Winx Saga. I was looking for a Wheel of time vibe and found this. Fantasy genre in general seems intuitive to me in terms of explaining the world (as opposed to maybe SF). It's fun so far, probably due to magical boarding school topic. Not sure what to make of LotR series yet, but I'll probably watch that too because - nostalgia.

[domino harvey]

Not sure what to make of LotR series yet, but I'll probably watch that too because - nostalgia.

Didn't even realize this was out already!

[mfunk9786]

Not sure what to make of LotR series yet, but I'll probably watch that too because - nostalgia.

Didn't even realize this was out already!

September 2, 2022 is the date you will be able to not even realize it's out already all over again

[domino harvey]

Not marking my calendar now!

[therewillbeblus]

Johnny Carson biopic series King Of Late Night, written by David Milch, directed by Jay Roach, and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Carson

[Never Cursed]

I'm glad to hear that Milch is still writing, even if he's obviously become a bit more private

[Shanzam]

Not sure what to make of LotR series yet, but I'll probably watch that too because - nostalgia.

Didn't even realize this was out already!

It's not, I meant I am not sure what to make of the information (trailer etc) I read/watched so far.

OT:
I am watching Hacks. Discovered Westerman music in episode two, I'll keep on watching.

[therewillbeblus]

I was skeptical going in, but in reading uniformly rave reviews of Anne Hathaway's performance, I decided to give WeCrashed a go. After an amusing but not especially remarkable first two episodes, WeCrashed has really found its footing across episodes three, four, and five. The latter two surely owe some credit to Cory Finley's talents, but the tone set by Requa and Ficarra begun to take shape in episode three, arguably the series' best so far, forging a unique path of empathy for Hathaway's privileged and nonfeminist Rebekah- holding her unpolitically correct disposition with multidimensional shades of dignity hand in hand. The style crafts a dense mood that keeps our compassion in the fringes rather than seeking to pierce the character to surrogate depths, admirably restraining itself while also engaging Rebekah with profound unflinching intimacy.

This methodology is only elevated in the central blossoming friendship of episode four. That episode's reveal could have shifted its focus toward a 'gotcha' moment of ambiguously-subconscious motivations to dominate the narrative, but instead the episode's artists are far more interested in fleshing out the unambiguously organic and authentic friendship, Rebekah's loneliness, and her need for platonic social affinity based from nonmaterial or economic ulterior motives. These are allowed to be mutually exclusive, and the show carries such an ethos throughout its winding route of satire and sympathy. Episode five lands Hathaway's Rebekah back in a deceptively-shallow state, but because we've seen where she's come from and where she can go, these passive-aggressive actions have a subtext of erupting emotion spurting in "acceptable" places. The episode's narrative takes serpentine shifts towards a compassionate diagnosis for her behavior defending her ego via displacement, that turns the tables on what we may have mistakenly gleaned from the last episode and ultimately Hathaway earns her character's tragic lows and resilience towards compromised empowerment by the end.

Leto and Hathaway are both at the top of their game here. I don't typically like Leto, so I'm fine with him leaning hard (and I mean, hard) into full-ham, embodying the personified satire of deusionally unscrupulous entrepreneurship which is Adam. Yet Leto and the creators also leave room to get curious about, rather than simply mock, the bootstraps ideologies melded with the psychosocially-reinforced narcissistic-absurd shade of optimism he weaponizes to physically create the false narrative he concocts about his genius and what people want. The show's intelligence is in drawing how ironic it is that this is possible to be actualized in America because it's what we all buy into, regardless of the mirage. Hathaway is given the more complex role, and without her the show wouldn't be worth investing in, but the two drastically different characters complement one another well, and with only three eps left, I can say it's definitively been worth it thus far.

[flyonthewall2983]

Maybe the funniest Family Guy cutaway since the original run

[therewillbeblus]

Bob Odenkirk will follow up Better Call Saul with a starring role in new AMC drama series Straight Man, based on a Richard Russo novel

[beamish14]

I’ve been toggling between Superpumped, WeCrashed, and The Dropout, and I enjoy all three, but The Dropout easily has the best direction and acting, although Bill Irwin isn’t in it enough. I’d recommend reading Bad Blood and the ABC podcast it’s based on before beginning it

[flyonthewall2983]

From the two episodes I have seen so far, Tokyo Vice has all the trademarks of Michael Mann’s ability to render emotion for some pretty tough people, whether it’s a young American journalist in Japan in close contact with Yakuza and police forces, or the rugged detective with the mix of both decency and danger Ken Watanabe is capable of. If the season continues ratcheting everything up as I suspected from how the show starts and then the story, this might be the best thing Mann has had his name on since directing Collateral.

[therewillbeblus]

The only thing stopping me from watching is Ansel Elgort, though I don't think Mann has made anything great in this millenium (or even good, with Miami Vice the only thing I've grown to like on a semi-recent revisit)

[knives]

I’m curious about your thoughts on Collateral then since it’s the only Mann I like.

[therewillbeblus]

I'd have to see it again to give a fairer shake, but I watched it more than once in the aughts and felt it was way overhyped, which certainly softened its impact. It's not a bad film by any means, but I don't feel like anything special is going on- it more or less plays out exactly as one would expect from the start. Formulaic genre films aren't bad- but this felt like a subpar version of a 70s thriller with little going for it other than Mann's style, Foxx's better-than-necessary perf, and Cruise (who I like a lot) in a makeover. Maybe I'm just salty because there seems to be so much Substance lobbed on it and I've never understood these claims despite hearing broad "It's Just Awesome" praise from my friends for almost two decades. If someone gave me a list of post-Insider Mann to throw on right now, it'd certainly be the one though, for even if I've grown to at least appreciate Miami Vice on a deeper artistic level, it's not an especially enjoyable film for me to watch, whereas Collateral functions as a mindless programmer for me

[knives]

I don’t think it has terribly much depth, but I don’t find any of Mann’s films to and the attempts in The Insider don’t work for me to the extent that it instantly becomes a least favorite.