Some Random Thoughts About Television... [R]

Cobra Kai right now:

 

Watching "The Kettering Incident". It's a few years old now, but somehow I missed it.

Elizabeth Debicki is a London doctor from Tazmania. She was involved in the disappearance of a childhood friend (?) and left Tazmania. She has black outs and nose bleeds, a patient died on her watch, and she sees a CCTV from the hospital where she works where she appears to be a trance and, well, tap dancing.
In the next scene, she inexplicably wakes up in a rental car in her hometown in Tazmania, with no memory of getting there. Everybody hates her (even her father), as she is blamed for the friend's (?) disappearance 25 years earlier.

I am six episodes in, out of eight total, I have no idea what the show is actually about anymore than I did in Episode 1.

There might be one or two murders (or not), there might inexplicably be UFOs involved, there might be environmental catastrophies involved, there are weird medical anomalies happening.

Her mother is in a persistent vegetative state but wakes up, ends up miles away at what might be a murder scene, and has lost a lot of blood (oh, and her blood type inexplicably changes).

Maybe the inexplicable above will be explained tonight, when I watch the final two episodes. Probably not, though.

The one thing that is certain is that Elizabeth Debicki is one tall, skinny drink of water.

 

I decided to time travel a bit and start watching network TV again this year. Pretty much picked a debuting show on each (major 4) network that intrigued me.

ABC:

High Potential - Kaitlin Olsen plays a woman who sees patterns well but struggles with pretty much everything else. She works as janitor at the local police station where she rearranges the evidence board one night and solves a murder. She then get hired on, working with a cop who can't stand her, and we get a fun little twist on the police procedural. Maybe my favorite this year.

CBS:

Matlock - Madelyn Matlock is a widow and former lawyer who decides to go back to work in her 70s after her daughter dies and she's stuck taking care of her grandson. Wasn't sure about this but the twist at the end of the first episode made it a must watch for me and Kathy Bates is absolutely killing it.

Fox:

Murder in a Small Town - Canadian made show set in Alaska with a lot of the secondary/guest characters being people who have appeared in shows like Heartland over the years. New sheriff, played by Rossif Sutherland, moves to a small town in Washington State (even though everything, including the names of places, is Canadian) where he gets involved with the local librarian (Kristen Kreuk) while solving the murder of the week. Just an 8 episode season, with no word on season 2 yet, but I enjoyed this quite a bit.

NBC:

Brilliant Minds - Zachary Quinto plays the brilliant, but troubled, doctor with unorthodox methods who specializes in rare brain disorders. This show had/has so much potential, but it's the only one I abandoned. They were going for gay House and ended up with gay Grey's Anatomy with the actual cases pushed into the background after 5-6 episodes. This could have been really good.

Night Court (Season 3) - I've enjoyed the first 2 seasons of the revival of the show, and thought the only change needed after season 2 was getting rid of India de Beaufort's character, and that's what they did. Wendy Malick already feels like the right move and the first couple of episodes of season 3 have been great.

Murder in a Small Town probably won't get renewed, because viewership has been quite low, but reviews are all solid. It feels like Canada is pumping out 60s-80s era family TV at an exceptional rate right now and US networks are starting to pick some of the shows up early. CW has a few I haven't watched yet. Sullivan's Crossing just got renewed for a 3rd season while Wild Cards got a 2nd season. Quite a few of the actors in these shows, with Heartland obviously being the big one (18 seasons and counting), also feature in the Hallmark movies I've been watching. It's an interesting crossover.

The other thing I've watched a bit on a network this fall is Trivial Pursuit on CW, the best new TV game show in quite a while. LeVar Burton is just perfect as the host.

I may go back and try to catch up on St. Denis Medical (NBC) and Rescue: Hi-Surf (Fox) as both did well as debut shows.

While not all of the winter/spring schedule is announced yet, I am looking forward to the new ABC Sitcom, Shifting Gears, that stars Tim Allen and Kat Dennings and has now cast Sean William Scott, Brenda Song, and Daryl Mitchell. The show is debuting January 8. The others I'm keeping my eye on are Watson (2/16 - CBS), The Hunting Party (2/3 - NBC), and Going Dutch (1/2 - Fox).

 

Star Wars - Skeleton Crew is pretty cute across its first two episodes. Goonies in Star Wars is the kind of sandbox type stuff I wish Disney would have focused on after acquiring the IP, instead of endlessly recycling stuff from the George Lucas era.

An entirely different thing, with the series finale of Superman & Lois, the last CW DC show has come to its conclusion. A run that started over 12 years ago with the first season of Arrow and at one point Greg Berlanti & co had six different DC shows on the air at the CW. Under Zaslav's post-merger restructuring, it seems like the CW will focus much more on non-scripted content in its programming, so it might be hard to imagine six scripted dramas airing at the same time on that network, let alone them all being of the superhero variety.

 

CW is in an interesting spot. They're adding a lot of sports, they've got two new game shows going, and despite the talk of fewer scripted shows it really feels like they're adding more but mostly stuff made in Canada instead of their own productions.

The winter/spring lineup has All American on Monday nights in the Superman & Lois time slot, and Wild Cards (Canadian series) on Wednesday night in the slot that was Sullivan's Crossing (Canadian series) in the fall followed by Good Cop/Bad Cop which is a scripted show that will air in the Inside the NFL time slot. They're also doing the old school Sunday Night Movie gimmick. So, two nights of scripted shows, Sunday night movies, Tuesday night WWE NXT, Thursday night cop docuseries shows replacing the game shows, Friday night unscripted magic shows, and Saturday night sports being replaced by a documentary series on politicians and celebrities that was originally slated for Paramount Network.

It will be interesting to see exactly where they go with things since they're leaning heavily into 2nd tier sports (LIV Golf, Nascar Xfinity series, etc.). They have unannounced times for things like Sherlock & Daughter that they're co-producing with Discovery+. They've latched onto things like The Chosen as well for broadcast. All American is the only thing they're still producing on the scripted side, but they've got 4 shows from Canada that they air, the new cop show that's partnered up with an Australian company as well as Roku, and 6 shows that are continuations from other networks.

It almost feels like they're leaning towards becoming more like modern day CBS than the early years of Fox. The shows they're pulling from Canada are either police procedurals or small town family friendly types that feel like they're looking for either a Blue Bloods level individual show or a franchise in the FBI/NCIS realm of things.

 

Creature Commandos is fun. Pretty safe space for James Gunn to start his DC tenure in, as it's once again about a team of misfit anti-heroes. Very much enjoyed the first two episodes.

 

A stroke of luck for them that he was already working on this before DC decided to put him in charge of the creative for all of it.

 

Nice voice cast, my favorite is Indira Varma as The Bride.

 

Really enjoyed that third episode of Creature Commandos.

I can't believe next week is the final episode of Lower Decks. I'm going to miss that absurd little Star Trek show.

COBIE SMULDERS on Shrinking just made my week.

 

Finally started Slow Horses last night.

Gary Oldman is living up to his name now.
His socks in the first episode were a bit of gratuitousness that was just not needed at all.

 

Liked the third episode of Creature Commandos.
Whatever else one might think of James Gunn, he always cares about his characters, which usually elevates what otherwise might be forgettable material.
G.I. Robot is an early favorite. Killing Nazis by the dozen has always been an admirable character trait in my book.

 

Just watched the 75 minute extended version of Rudolph that NBC showed this year. I always forget the weird elf that wants to be a dentist subplot.

There were some really good drugs in the 60s.

 

The bigotry against Rudolph, until they discovered how they could exploit him, is pretty despicable. Even as I kid, I thought that was weird.

Also, how could his nose be "so bright" that it could light the way for the sleigh?
Again, as a kid, I never understood it.
Yes, I was a weird kid.

 

Pretty sure they meant to suggest that one of the elves was . . . well. . .let's say "servicing" the abominable snowman



NSFW, if it wasn't a live-action claymation, regardless of how drug-induced it clearly was.

 

Hermie the Elf has one of my favorite lines ever, and one I still use: "Let's be independent together!"

 

Yellowstone lost its way a bit over the constantly delayed last two seasons, but the ending was fairly satisfying and wrapped up a lot more cleanly that I thought they could pull off.

 

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has my attention with the casting of WWE star Becky Lynch as one of the members of the bridge crew.

 

Night Court finishes the early part of the season on a strong murder mystery Christmas episode and returns on January 14 with Mayim Bialik and the Blossom intro dance.

 

I'm really going to miss Thursdays with both Lower Decks and Creature Commandos.

Lower Decks wrapped up their series really well and Creature Commandos is exceptional.

 

I think what Creature Commandos revealed again is that James Gunn is good at making people care about his characters. Occasionally there is slightly manipulative sleight of hand involved in that (like the cutesy animal stuff in the third Guardians film), but it's preferable to many other CBM movie and TV adaptations, which are increasingly just people in costumes exchanging smart alec dialogue.

 

Nate Bargatze's Nashville Christmas felt more like a 70s or 80s style TV special than anything I've seen in years. Every segment except the Titans bit was really good.

 

Finally got around to watching the final season of Snowpiercer.

It really fell off after Seasons One and Two.

The last season had some interesting developments, but not really Snowpiercer if, well, I won't reveal the spoilers.

It was good to see Jennifer Connelly and her amazingly pointy nose (and ridiculous eyebrows) again. Pretty clear she was on a "limited appearance" contract after Season 2.

 

Fall 2024 Anime Review


Dandadan~ Science Saru

This season's hyped shonen debut was absolutely bat s**t and completely exceeded the expectations. Two teens argue about the existence of aliens versus ghosts but immediately get involved in battles with both while gaining/awakening powers. The anime is working with a great source manga, but I think Science Saru excelled in adapting that to screen. It's just a lot of fun to watch and coming back for Season 2 in July. 10/10.


Blue Box ~ Telecom Animation Film

Taiki a freshman badminton player has a crush on the Chinatsu, the older basketball player who is the only one that shows up to the gym before him. I thought the high-school romance genre was just not for me, but this almost immediately won me over. By mixing romance with sports, the characters get a couple more dimensions and they're all likeable. There's a gimmick at the end of the first episode, that I thought I wouldn't like, but despite leaning on a lot of romance tropes, I've enjoyed this immensely. I binged the manga, which I loved. The adaptation is good, but not groundbreaking. 9/10


Mecha-Ude Mechanical Arms ~ TriF

Mechanical creatures from another world came to earth looking for help and fuse with humans. Hikaru finds a special escaped Mecha Ude and has to help it regain its memories and save the world or something. This was okay. It's story is kind of a muddled sci-fi mess that doesn't really flow coherently from episode to episode. 6/10


Shangri-La Frontier Season 2 ~ C2C

Trash-game lover Sunraku continues to explore AAA game Shangri-La Frontier after defeating a unique boss at the end of last season. I still really love this anime. It spends most of its time in a great fantasy world, but it's also very much just about gamers doing dumb gamer stuff like trying to solo speedrun a boss fight. 9/10

One Piece
Through 487 now (end of Marineford Arc). Slowing down. The anime slowed down Marineford to a crawl and it felt like more of a slog instead of one of the best arcs in the manga. We're getting close to Fishman Island arc that they're currently updating, so I'm excited to jump into the pared down version of that.

Skip and Loafer
Another high-school slice of life/romance that I started reading. I've only watched a few episodes of the anime (it's a couple years old) so far, but it's a feel-good story with a delightful main character. A very book-smart girl from a rural area moves to Tokyo to attend a prestigious high-school. Despite her lack of street-smarts, she wins over a group of friends.