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| Credit: TVline.com |
She's not quite "Flight of the Conchords" Kristen Schaal crazy, but crazy enough to think there's a reason to stop at a traffic light when there are no other moving vehicles on the planet. Schaal wants Forte to "marry" her and then do some hard-core repopulation to save the human race and Forte eventually relents because he's just plain horny. But we have ourselves a love triangle when a third survivor turns up who turns out to be Forte's dream girl (a very down-to-earth January Jones) and he can't do anything because he's a "married man."
This isn't a show that has an interest in fleshing out any view of the apocalypse. Not even at a comedic level. How these people hijack cars at will, why there aren't dead bodies, or what the hell they're all doing in Tucson (where summer daytime temperatures average over 100 degrees) are questions the show isn't interested in answering. The show can best be described as a Twilight Zone episode wrapped up into the sensibilities of an SNL sketch. Forte finding himself locked out of his dream girls' pants because he quite reasonably married who he thought was the last girl on Earth is the sophomoric comedic equivalent of Meredith Burgess's bookworm character having access to all the books on Earth as its last survivor only to have his glasses broken.
Glee (FOX)-With the pressure of telling the story of a Glee club out of the way (it was supposedly dissolved and the writing room covered their bases by having all the underclassmen mysteriously transferred out), Season 6 had the potential to hone in on tighter stories. It was highly possible for the show to have a decent swan song, but instead Glee devolved massively. Why does everyone end up back in Lima coaching glee clubs when the overarching theme of the first few seasons was the first couple of seasons were primarily about high schoolers harnessing the power of song and dance to avoid being "Lima Losers"?
In the fifth season, the show's infrastructure fell apart as so many of the original characters were graduating and scattering in different directions. To hold the show together, "Glee" has employed every artificial coincidence imaginable. The show has gone beyond jumping the shark: It's almost as if Glee's writing room had determined that their last chance at cultural relevancy would be to jump the shark in such a memorably absurd way that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull's "Nuke the Fridge" might be supplanted with "Hypnotize the Chord Overstreet character" or "sex-change the football coach."
Nostalgic folks who look at the disaster of Season 6 and long for the days when Glee wasn't so erratic are forgetting that this show has always had a problem with burning through plot too quickly. If you remember, Finn and Rachel would quit or rejoin the show every other episode, and it was only a matter of weeks before big bully Puck was part of the gang and dating Rachel.
The show succeeded in stretches where the brand of crazy managed to be contained towards amusingly out there as opposed to batshit insane.This was one of show's few sensible long-term decisions Murphy and his crew consciously made. It was also the show's last good decision.
Togetherness (HBO)-Although I suspect that the half-hour length will place this show-- about a couple of thirty-something lost souls simultaneously crashing on the couch of a couple undergoing marital decay-- squarely in the comedy category. who are we kidding here? The Duplass brothers' style has strains of what I believe is referred to as neorealism (think Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Noah Baumbauch, or Alexander Payne) where the story line is paced at the speed of life. Two of my favorite films in this mold that coincidentally came out in the same year are "Lost in Translation" and "Master and Commander." The former tracks a chance platonic relationship in a foreign country and the latter tracks a war ship in the Napoleonic Era. Neither film moves faster than the speed of life and that adds value to the storytelling. In reality, a ship in that era would go long stretches of time without seeing any significant action and by setting the story mostly during those lulls in action, the viewer feels an appreciation for the vast distances in time and space in the 19th Century.
This is all well within the mold of the Duplass style but at the same time, previous efforts such as "Jeff Who Live at Home" and "Cyrus" had hooky scenarios. This show's scenario seems to have potential as two adults are navigating a weird situation but many of the episodes focus on low-key activities. The episode where Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) tries to spice up her sex life with Brett was even tame by the standards of today's television landscape.
This isn't to say that the show isn't watchable. Melanie Lynskey and Amanda Peete are excellent actresses who truly elevate the material and the chemistry between Steve Zissis and Duplass as two lifelong friends has a lot going for it. Similarly, there's nothing emotionally unfulfilling about the main storyline of this marriage on the rocks. There's just a little bit of energy lacking at times.
Archer (FX)-I analyzed this show to death over at TV Fanatic this past season so it's best to read my reviews there. To give a brief summary on my views of this season, Archer Vice was a bold experiment that paid off tremendously, but this season took us back into the old groove of Archer. I know going into the season that unless something drastic happened to Adam Reed's brain chemistry (I learned over the course of this season that Adam Reed writes nearly every episode of the show himself), that the writing would be as steady as it had always been. The difference is that without the overarching through lines, each episode had to sink or swim on its own merits.
The season was largely one of regrouping as the gang welcomed Slater into the fold as a sort of surrogate Mallory (leaving Jessica Walter with less airtime). Slater has spent quite a bit of time with the gang at this point and has managed the remarkable feat of spending time with the gang and not getting a little bit batty himself. As we've seen with Cyril and Lana, the descent from sensible human being to can amusing miscreant is inevitable when you spend enough time with Archer and company.
The bottle episode and the mansion listing episodes were the season's strongest outings and demonstrated that when the gang gets together in one place and all of their various ineptitudes are combined in pursuit of an outlandish goal, the possibilities for humor are endless.
Too often, however, the show broke off the main group into an action-oriented A-plot and highly forgettable B-plots which carried out their designated function of breaking up the action and that was about it. Most of the B-plots revolved around Baby AJ who was a pretty questionable addition considering Archer and Lana were already on a collision course anyway and we already had the wee baby Seamus (a definite fan favorite, ok, not really, but...). It's also worth noting that this is a baby Lana had using Archer's man juice (I spent a while thinking up a good word there) without his permission which is a pretty bizarre thing for anyone to do who isn't a psychotic stalker. That's pretty far away from what Lana is.
Write-ups to come on: Fresh off the Boat, Modern Family, Empire, 12 Monkeys, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It's Always Sunny, The Librarians, Schitt's Creek, Daredevil
[Ed. Update: Part II is here http://sophomorecritic.blogspot.com/2015/04/spring-2015-roundup-part-ii-schitts.html]
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