March-April Edition: What Am I Watching: Miracle Workers, Superstore, Tales from the Loop, etc

Shows I'm watching live:

1 Miracle Workers: Dark Ages (TBS). The first season was an extremely clever show from Simon Rich (Man Seeking Woman) who is an extraordinarily witty outside-the-box writer. It involved three angels (No offense, but I’m not counting Lolly Adefope’s character as part of the team, more of a last-minute convert) who are trying to work around the fact that God (Steve Buscemi) is an idiot. An errant decision of his dooms the planet Earth and the seven-episode season revolved around a two day clock. "Miracle Workers Dark Ages" uses the same sense of humor and cast but it's a completely different scenario.

Not only does the second season lack the stakes of a doomsday scenario, there’s a potential-squandering lack of direction here. Alexandra (Geraldine Viswanathan) wants to avoid the profession of her father (Steve Buscemi) Edward Shitshoveler. Within the first three episodes she leaves the profession twice only to land back at square one like a Road Runner cartoon. The next episode involves the difficulty of her brother (Jon Bass) in making friends and then there’s an episode that’s an allegory about dealing with political nut jobs at the Thanksgiving table that’s a little thin. It’s only in the last two or three episodes that an arc forms. Still, there are plenty of jokes that land and the characters are very likable. With the creative team behind this, I’m confident that this can be a great third season with a reset button.

Source: Time Magazine

2. Nora from Queens (Comedy Central)  The star vehicle for Awkwafina is about an immature late 20-something who has a really strong personality. Watching this makes me wonder how "The Farewell" could be considered a success when it squandered such a great comic talent.

Her comic personality is primarily one of childlike impatience and over-eagerness to spread her brand of fun to strangers, but she has a lot of gears she can go to. The central question of the show (it’s about a 27-year-old living at home and taxing her dad’s lifestyle) is about how to adult on your own terms. Also of note, Jennifer Eposito rocks an eccentric wardrobe and personality and shines in general as a love interest for Awkwafina’s father.

3. Superstore (NBC)-Business as usual. America Ferrera's Amy Sosa as the boss makes the show much better.

Credit: TV Line

4.Zoey's Infinite Playlist (NBC)-Jane Levy is a young computer coder who just got a promotion as a manager to a team of programmers including her best friend who has a crush on her (Skyler Astin, Pitch Perfect) and an engaged programmer she has a crush on. She also has misfortune at home because her dad (Peter Gallagher) had a stroke and is possibly terminally ill. Her chaotic home and work life are thrown for a curve when she discovers that she has the unique power to hear other people's emotions in song and that apparently the universe won't leave her alone unless she helps the people singing with their life problems. 

The show has a great cast with Mary Steenburgen as Zoey's mom and Lauren Graham as her boss. It's kind of ironic because 95% of Peter Gallagher's screentime is just sitting in a chair. Poor Peter.

The show isn't amazing and the love triangle is highly predictable (and problematic...Zoey's pretty casually ok with breaking up a marriage) but it's certainly watchable and like any musical, when the choreography and music works, it increases the rewatchability. 

6. Tales from the Loop (Amazon)-The show resembles "Wayward Pines" or "Castle Rock" in that it's a mysterious New England town [Correction: It's in Ohio, but seems very New Englandish and is actually based on concept art from Sweden] with conspiracies or scientific anomalies (in the case of the former or "Once Upon a Time") to uncover. It's mostly serialized with a "Twilight Zone" element. 

The show moves on a new level of slow and requires a conscious downshifting of gears on the part of the viewer to take it in. There's enough time to take in the scenes but there's a lot of dead space that isn''t necessary. Still, it can be chalked up to an apt stylistic choice.

"Twilight Zone"-type shows like this work through an Earth-shattering twist at the end that inverts your perception of what you thought you know and hopefully sparks a deep thought or two. The leisurely stroll of the show prevents such a dramatic twist. In the first episode, the twist occurs about halfway through the episode which is a major pacing mistake that causes the epilogue to drag on to mind-numbing lengths.

The second episode (in which two teens from different socio-economic backgrounds switch bodies) is a little more clever about misdirection but then all of a sudden a robot shows up which is neither here nor there. The main question of the plot was how the kids would react to their new lives (Answer: one of them would use it to take advantage of the other). Again, the epilogue is an answer to a question that the viewer never asked.

Slow shows take a while to click and the third episode seems to be where things fall into place. It builds on previous installment and there are multiple twists that are well-timed and build on top of one another. The third episode (two kids decide to make a forbidden romance a reality through the stopping of time) finally starts to get the hang of it.

7. Good Girls (NBC)-The first season and change had the problem of Rio being too powerful and Beth not having enough leverage. I say this often but tragedy has less of a place for my appetite in TV than in film: To watch the same character be beaten up over and over can be highly dispiriting whereas to see someone make the wrong choice and have them pay for it in a two-hour span is a fine bit of poetry. "Good Girls" started to get good when Beth started to figure out Rio and play as his equal.

For some reason, I fell off viewing this show and planned to catch up but it became more daunting as the increasing number of Season 3 episodes meant I would have to invest more hours. A week ago, I started randomly watching (because of the "Zoey's Playlist"lead-in) and found the show to be nice and easy to jump back into. The Beth vs Rio interplay is still there and grounded in a sense of healthy reality and there is sufficient side plot fodder for Annie and Ruby.