So while debilitated, I watched a lot of stuff. Probably more stuff than usual.
Also I watch stuff while I do my homework. Or while I do freelance work. Or while I'm lazy.
Read all about it!
Hilarious and delightful goof on Mexican telenovelas that functions perfectly well as a telenovela itself. Inciting incident: at a gynecological checkup, Jane (a virgin) is accidentally artificially inseminated. And gets pregnant. With the child of someone she happened to love years ago. Creating a love triangle with him and her current lover! Plots within plots unravel from there! Bonus: the thick, booming narrator's goofy voice as he comments on all the madness as we go along.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
This series has already had infinite scholarly articles and books written on it so I have nothing original or new to add. Just this: solid, funny stuff. Love all the social commentary on high school and college life. Some episodes are genuinely scary. Especially the one with the silence demons. But the verbal banter is the real star here. The last couple seasons are a bit scatterbrained, but I don't regret a minute I spent watching this silly show.
Angel
The flipside of Buffy. Ironically, I hated the Angel character on Buffy (Soulful, brooding vampires are not my jam). But in this setting, he works perfectly and this series explores the darkness of life in L.A. both directly and allegorically. Buffy is a show about growing up. This is a show about being an adult and facing difficult adult responsibilities and decisions. Dark stuff, too. Some laughs, but mostly hard-hitting. Also very creative and unpredictable.
In fairness- gotta ding it for the Surprise Pregnancy in season three. And then they used the Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome trick to immediately turn the baby into an adolescent and shoe-horn him into the narrative (the same way Buffy awkwardly shoe-horned Dawn in there). Proving that even quality shows are vulnerable to Cousin Oliver Syndrome.
Dollhouse
Wild stuff! Basic concept: people go to a secret organization to rent out their bodies- as "dolls"- for a couple years. The dolls are programmable to be anything and know anything, so clients can use them for missions or to solve crimes or for pleasure. One doll goes super-rogue and another doll breaks the system. The show explores the abuses and ultimate nightmarish implications from this technology. They could have done a pretty lazy show with the premise with a mission-of-the-week, but they went bonkers and epic with it.
The first HBO show I've ever seen that your mom can watch. It could air uncut on network TV. Also it's a really good adaptation of the Alexander McCall Smith book series. Pleasant characters, well-written scripts, beautiful Botswana scenery, and lots of gentle laughs.
The West Wing
Aaron Sorkin's masterpiece. Almost every episode has enough material and concepts to sustain a film. And every character is interesting. Sorkin left after season four- having written an astonishing 85 of the 88 episodes- but his absence isn't really palpable until season seven. That one misfires in the first half when it focuses on new characters who just aren't as interesting as the ones we know and love. It recovers and closes strong, though.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
I like a lot of Andy Samberg's digital shorts, but never thought much of him as an actor. And the pilot for this show did NOT grab me when it first aired. Seeing it now, though, in a world where we no longer have new episodes of Parks & Recreation...it's a pretty solid ensemble comedy! It takes a few episodes to get its groove- a qualification that normally kills my interest- but once it's going, every episode is laugh-out-loud funny. Even when it misses the mark, it does so cheerfully and moves on to the next gag.
House
He's bitter. But he's brilliant. But just so bitter. Still...so brilliant! I was in a lot of pain post-surgery while I watched this show, so House's anger and extreme leg pain made perfect sense. While in my right mind, however, I don't think I could roll with it.
I don't like singing and I'm not crazy about fairy tale shows. This is a fairy tale show with non-stop singing. And it's MAGNIFICENT! Unapologetically goofy and dumb, with fantastic guest stars including Weird Al, John Stamos, and the dad from Downton Abbey. Two seasons of hilarious non-stop joy. They hold nothing back- every episode swings for the fences.
The Newsroom
Aaron Sorkin unleashed. Lots of people yelling at each other. Lots of cussing. Lots and lots of political/ social commentary, all very much in your face. The best scene in the entire series was when Jeff Bridges' character goes too far in interrogating a gay African-American Republican. What could have been played as a partisan political cheap shot came across as savagely emotional and honest. This here is the scene. Overall, not a bad show. I miss The West Wing.
Scream
It's less a slasher satire and more the kind of straightforward slasher that Scream was satirizing.(And heck, if you'd like an edgy slasher satire show, the bizarre, delirious, and NASTY show Scream Queens is probably more to your taste. Scream Queens is what I was expecting this show to be.) Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson made a similar mistake when he scripted the generic slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer right after scripting a movie that made fun of generic slashers. This show is a teen drama about cyberbullying where someone gets stabbed now and then. There's a clever line here and there, but the tone is mostly morose.
The weight of teens dying is heavy on the characters. Which is good, really. It's honest. Hundreds of teens get wasted on Buffy and it never registers- school and the characters keep going on as normal. So I guess you can credit this show with taking a dean teenager story seriously.
It's okay, I guess. Bogs down in the middle. Would have made a better movie. And nice touch-they dedicated the final episode to Wes Craven, director of the film Scream and countless fantastic horror films, since he died right before the show aired.
Walking Dead, Season 5
It took five years, but this has finally become a halfway decent show. Started strong with season 1 and has been fumbling ever since. This bodes well for future seasons.
Supernatural, Season 10
Season 9 was just...okay. So I didn't bother with this season as it aired. Too many mediocre seasons in a row left me cold. Well, this one isn't bad! Or it could be that this show just works better when binged. Mucho monsters, mucho mayhem, mucho brotherly love. A great meta-episode, "Fan Fiction." Some of the gore and the violent opening scenes are just nasty. But it's a horror show, so hey.
Sad to say, nothing in this series surprised me. The state wasn't even pretending they had anything other than a coerced, inconsistent confession from a mentally-challenged minor elicited without a lawyer present, along with some blatantly planted evidence put there by people with a strong motive to frame the defendant. Also- at no point did I hear any believable reason for the defendant or his nephew to hurt the woman they were accused of murdering.
There's a series of depositions where the people that framed the defendant back in the 80's are answering for their crimes. And in one of them, this evil-looking curly-haired lady is just flat-out smug and condescending. It could not be more clear that she's gleefully lying and unrepentant about railroading the defendant. She's proud of herself and she's giving that attitude ON-CAMERA. You can only imagine what these people do and say when there's NOT a camera on them.
SPOILER, but the missing piece in the defense was that they never presented a believable alternative killer. Avery killing the woman made no sense, but no one else had motive to kill her, either. I absolutely 100% believe the cops planted evidence at Avery's place. But I don't think even I am far enough gone to believe that the cops murdered that woman with the intention of setting Avery up. That's the only alternative I see, but that's dark even by my standards. They mentioned the woman's roommate briefly as a possible suspect- he was fishy, but that aspect wasn't explored. No motive for him to kill her was ever presented. Though this isn't really about finding the truth, it's about exploring how Avery's right to a fair trial was abused.
NarcosI was totally on board for this Netflix show. The first episode was totally compelling, with great performances, intense action, lots of twists, and- amazingly- NO GRATUITOUS SEX! I was like "Wow! An adult Netflix drama that isn't trying to out-sex HBO!" So I settled in for episode two. Aaaaand there's four gratuitous sex scenes in a row. Peace out. I'm not the target audience here. Really lame of Netflix to wait until the second episode to let you know the show's actually cheap smut. Thanks, Obama.
Z Nation
It's okay. It's made by the schlockmeisters behind most of SyFy's giant monster movies, so it's a miracle that it's even watchable. It's basically a low-budget fast zombie movie with above average production values, stretched out over several episodes.
The Simpsons
I stopped watching Simpsons around 1997. Then a couple years ago, when we started using Hulu, I noticed the show was still on the air. WHA?!? So I started watching it and was surprised by how sharp and well-written it was. I understand it's fashionable to hate it now (If you're REALLY cool, you have to say it stopped being good in season four or something) but I really believe a lot of that comes from just taking the show for granted. It's been around so long, people don't appreciate how consistently solid it is. Coming at it after a 15-year hiatus the way I did, I was shocked by how good it was. Most recent episodes have been solid, too.
First season was a cool, messed-up The Thing-esque Arctic body horror thing. Second season just dropped on Netflix and hoo boy, there's some sick stuff here. It's got a wonderfully messed-up sense of humor. They're really embracing it now, probably because they knew they were getting canceled. I guess they figured they wanted to get some solid gross-out stuff in and some really cruel funny-music-playing-over-disturbing-scene gags. And the editing is so jagged and the tone shifts are so brutal. Neat show. SyFy is getting better at making stuff. Also- something happens at the halfway point in this season that's just jaw-droppingly horrifying and makes you wonder how this show made it on the air.
-Phony McFakename
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