Best TV Ensembles of 2022

 I contributed a couple entries to this TV Fanatic crowd-sourced article about best ensembles on TV.

My top pick: Reboot (Hulu)

Reboot is about the coexistence of different generations of artists. In that vein, who could be better epitomize that clash than Paul Reiser and Rachel Bloom as an estranged father and daughter entrusted with co-running a sitcom?

Reiser is an old-school 90s sitcom star with a comic delivery that borrows a little from Borscht Belt comedy. Rachel Bloom made her way to TV fame as the star and co-creator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend via YouTube stardom that turned musical theater conventions on their head.

The pair is complemented by a writing room that echoes Bloom’s Gen Z approach to artistic merit with Riser’s Borscht Belt big laughs approach, and the combination is hilarious.

Meanwhile on the show’s set, Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville (who thought of that casting choice?), and Calum Worthy play a quartet of has-been actors who form a found family with healthy doses of comedy and heart.

Other picks:
Ghosts (CBS): The eight actors who play the ghosts weren’t particularly hot on casting lists before this show. In an ideal world, they should be now. Each member of the octet provides such pitch-perfect character beats to create this great whirlwind of humor. It’s like your favorite comedic duo expanded by six with the rat-a-tat banter still operating like clockwork. Of course, credit goes to Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) for bringing the heart and grounding the plots. (I also wrote about Ghosts here)

Star Trek Picard (Paramount Plus): Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, and Santiago Cabrera bring a sense of visceral edge that I’ve never seen in Star Trek before. Pill’s displays an antsy-ness at being in space that seems pretty logical for most humans, but somehow Star Trek has never shown that side of the 24th century populance before. It makes sense: Star Trek: The Next Generation was designed to appeal to a broad audience in the 1980s so the actors weren’t aiming for high drama, but when the TNG cast is introduced they also are up to that higher bar.

Yellowjackets (Showtime): The show centers around a plane crash involving a teenage soccer in the 90s, and the way the survivors are traumatized all the way through their adulthoods. How fitting that the show cast three of the most promising ingenues of the 90s as the roles of the four main survivors: Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis. All three have long been underrated actresses and deserve to be attached to one of the hit shows on television. But that’s half the battle: The show also succeeds in casting matching teenage versions of these characters with all their drama.

Winning Time (HBO)-When you have two Oscar winners in your cast (Adrien Brody and Sally Field) and neither of them are central characters, then you’ve got a pretty deep talent pool. This docudrama about the Lakers 1980 championship features John C. Reilly in one of the most complex roles of his storied career as larger-than-life team owner Jerry Buss. Quincy Isaiah shines here in his first screen credit playing Magic Johnson as a bright-eyed superstar that’s still in the incubation phase. His main rival for the starting position is Norm Nixon played with swagger by the real-life figure’s son, DeVaughn. Surrounding them are a murderer’s row of character actors in Jerry West, Hadley Robinson, Jason Segel (did not see that coming), Tracey Letts, and the aforementioned Brody alongside Field who makes a strong impression with little screen time.

Ramy (Hulu): Ramy Yousef just plays a less self-assured version of himself, but there’s so much idiosyncrasy in the characters around him that this show deserves a place. Watching this show and not knowing the names of all the actors is a good reminder of the scarcity of Middle-Eastern actors with name recognition. Ramy’s parents are played by Amr Waked (Syriana, Salmon Fishing in Yemen) and Hiam Abbass (The Visitor) who have both done enough good work to be names among more astute American audiences, but everyone on this show deserves a brighter future. It also helps that the show format gives characters like Dena (May Calamaway), Uncle Naseem (Laith Nakli), and Ahmed (Dave Marheje) an episode in the spotlight or two.

The White Lotus (HBO)-This one is going to pop up on a lot of my lists because you can't make a TV series that works on so many layers without doing so many things right. This show has Lost/Arrested Development levels of Easter Egg placement and you better believe that the actors are in on the intricacies of each character. The show's brightest star is Emmy-winner Jennifer Coolidge but deserves a lot of credit for finding a new tone of deadpan for Aubrey Plaza, and making spaces for the largely unknown-to-American-audiences Italian newbies.

Top Ten Character Arcs in TV in 2022

 

10 Best Character Arcs on TV in 2022

I contributed a number of entries to TV Fanatic where I am currently writing:

Tori Nichols (Peyton List) Cobra Kai, Netflix-Tori caught the audience’s attention the first day when she walks into Cobra Kai and challenges anyone in her way to a battle royale. In 2002, she became a capable anti-hero that provides a welcome counterpart to Samantha’s privilege. Although we expected to cheer an eventual Samantha win at the tournament this year, it felt unexpectedly right to see Tori triumph at the end of the day (Even if there was a technicality involved).

Gordon (Paul Reiser), Reboot (Hulu): The best thing about Gordon is that he isn’t that much different from where he was at the start of the season. He makes insensitive jokes and doesn’t appear to have changed his ideas of what’s funny or what isn’t. But, he has formed a genuine relationship with his daughter and a genuine appreciation of the people he works with. With that, every insensitive joke he makes has a little more good intent behind it.

Al (Adhir Kalyan), United States of Al (CBS)-South Asian characters on TV are typically either ambassadors of cool (the personas of Kumail Nanjiani or Utkarsh Ambudkar) or sheltered nerds. Adhir Kalyan first became known through the 2007 TV series Aliens in America as an exchange student who was doomed to high school nerdom the moment he entered the school in his traditional South Asian garment. Most of Kalyan’s roles have been like that, but Al is a wonderful exception as he has started to change and (more importantly) assimilate to the better opportunities of his culture. He even gets a make-out buddy (Jayma Mays) and squares things better with his non-traditional love interest (Azita Ghanizada).

If I were to round out the list to a clean top 10, I would say:
Craig (Craig Robinson), Killing It (Peacock:) Learning to stop chasing some bourgeoisie vision of success is empowering (If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be writing these words). And learning to appreciate a good person (Claudia O’Doherty) for her faults and strengths takes a lot of growth as well.

Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz: (Jacob Bertrand), Cobra Kai (Netflix): It’s not just Tori that was a tournament winner that no one predicted. It’s also an ending we didn’t know we wanted until it happened.

Emma (Cristin Milioti), The Resort (Peacock): A determinator of a character, nothing will stop Emma from finding out what happened to these two random strangers 15 years ago. But she learns about herself and her marriage in the process. Sort of like that hackneyed “the treasure was friendship all along” trope, but tonally the show managed to work out Emma’s arc.

John Hunchman (John Hodgeman), Dicktown (FX): The stunted Encyclopedia Brown John Hunchman finally earns an iota of self-respect when he solves a 20-year-old high school case. The second season of Dicktown was more serialized than the first and it worked y to John’s favor.

D’Arcy Bloom (Alice Wetterlund), Resident Alien (SyFy): The idea of watching a Winter Olympian try to retain her former glory is always an interesting arc. It’s also a great anti-ship: Her relationship with Elliott didn’t work because she’s not there yet, but her efforts towards intimacy count for their own sake. It’s also unclear if a Season 1 version of D’Arcy would have apologized to Kate.

Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), The White Lotus (HBO): A lot of fellow fans of this show saw Portia as suffering from some sort of character defect for rejecting the vanilla Albie in favor of the bad boy. But, come on, she needed to go over to the dark side a little before valuing him properly. And what a wild episode it was: Surely more than the ennui-laden zoomer wished for when she wanted to feel alive.

George Shultz (Sam Waterson), Dropout (Hulu): Having unfortunately lived in the US during the last six years, it’s easy to see how evil is perpetuated by powerful people not wanting to admit they’re wrong. I’m not familiar enough with the real-life story of Elizabeth Holmes to know what George Shultz actually did but the idea of him is nice and we need to know more. And he’s pretty damn effective in Sam Waterson’s hands

What I'm Watching December Edition: Derry Girls, Inside Job, Alaska Daily, Bumper Goes to Berlin, Shantaram

 

Inside Job (Netflix)-Created by one of the writers of Rick and Morty, this is an animated office comedy in a place akin to Section 31, where a group of rogue agents keeps the lid on all the conspiracies that control the universe. The cast of characters includes a half-marcho-general-half-dolphin and an anthropomorphized mushroom spore. The series centers around the main character, Regan (Lizzy Caplan), who has Asperger’s, so score one for representation, and her dad is a bitter mad scientist akin (a little gentler than Rick, though).

This season’s plots have been getting more efficient, and Regan gets a boyfriend, which shakes things up a little.

Derry Girls (BBC4 -à Netflix)-Slowly moving my way through the seven-episode arc of the show’s final season, I started this month with the episode where things changed majorly in a teeny melodrama way: [Cue the orchestral swelling] Two characters kiss! And since there’s only one guy in the group, you can only guess that one of them is James, and it’s neither his cousin, Michelle, nor the lesbian character, Claire, who does the mouth tango with him. Plus, Orla might be classified as mentally deficient, making seduction problematic. Uh oh! Considering none of this sexual tension was telegraphed in advance, I’m not loving this.

Almost reading my mind verbatim, Michelle comments that it would change the group dynamics a lot if they started dating, and it might not be a good plot direction. The two pause their romance, which is an excellent direction considering it’s refreshingly counter to every other teen show.

The next episode is one of the best this series has ever done. It takes place at a class reunion for the parents of Claire, Orla, and Erin, plus all the characters of that generation. Also, Erin’s grandpa is thrown in for good measure, and the mature adult's lot get into the same shenanigans they chide their children for being unable to avoid. The theme: Some things never change.

In the penultimate episode of the series, the Erin-James romantic tension is hand-waved, and the quintet goes on one of their trademark disaster episodes that exemplifies Murphy’s Law.

The show might not be the most adventurous, but it can change gears well.

Alaska Daily (ABC)-As a journalist for over a decade, it’s thrilling to see a show the heroic and exciting side of journalism. Hilary Swank stars as a tough-as-nails reporter who’s exiled to Alaska. There’s a lot of excellent scenery porn and a healthy dose of small-town charm here.

The show almost gets journalism right, but journalists aren’t cops, and there are clear lines over how much you can press a subject that the show could articulate better. But there is a truth that if you can get facts under most circumstances, they’re fair game. So suck it, naysayers! Also, FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

To understand the show’s shortcomings is to also understand the constraints of network TV, where the cop/rogue doctor/hotshot lawyer is the most common archetype. Network TV viewers want a black-and-white rootable character.

Bumper Goes to Berlin (Peacock)-Of all the Pitch Perfect characters, I’d put Fat Amy and Chloe ahead of Bumper in terms of people I would have wanted to see in a spin-off. Would anyone really have Bumper as number one?

Still, the show kind of works. It’s silly and low-stakes enough that it’s popcorn watchable. Sarah Hyland (the vapid child on Modern Family) plays a plucky people-pleaser who balances out the cast well, and Flula Borg is a great comic talent. Part of me wonders if they set the whole thing in Germany because they wanted to build the project around Flula Borg.

The show captures the same themes that made the Pitch Perfect film a hit: Arrested development, a false sense of being elite, and people who take singing too seriously.

 

Shantaram (Apple TV)-This epic tells the story of an escaped Australian convict who gets caught up in the criminal underworld of Bombay. Only he can’t make a very good criminal because he seems too morally upright. In fact, he got in prison in the first place because he stopped mid-robbery to attempt triage on a cop trying to stop him.

Eventually, Lin (at least at the point where I am in this story) settles into an Indian village as a makeshift medic because the town needs him. He believes he has a moral debt because a fire happened on his watch, and he could not save a victim.

Lin’s story to find of finding redemption and do good in a lawless society echoes the narrative arcs of Buddha and Jesus. The symbolism is a bit more obvious when you consider that the title of the series takes its name from what the Hindu villagers give him: "Man of God's peace."

But if this is an elaborate religious allegory, it’s a very gritty and sexy one. Charlie Hunnam sports a man bun and a rugged build and always delivers smoldering looks to the camera. Similarly, there is a confident femme fatale (Antonio Desplat) and a prostitute (Elektra Kilbey) who ratchet up the heat. Although it was shot in Thailand during COVID, this is one of the most visually ambitious TV series I’ve ever seen in terms of exotic on-location shooting.

Inside Job (Netflix)-Created by one of the writers of Rick and Morty, this is an animated office comedy in a place akin to Section 31, where a group of rogue agents keeps the lid on all the conspiracies that control the universe. The cast of characters includes a half-marcho-general-half-dolphin and an anthropomorphized mushroom spore. The series centers around the main character, Regan (Lizzy Caplan), who has Asperger’s, so score one for representation, and her dad is a bitter mad scientist akin (a little gentler than Rick, though).

This season’s plots have been getting more efficient, and Regan gets a boyfriend, which shakes things up a little.

Why would we feel bad about Holland beating us at the World Cup?

 

Is there really anything to be upset about that the Netherlands beat the US in the second round of the World Cup by a 3–1 score?

First, off, let’s separate the winning-or-death mentality that dominates our sports landscape from reality: Soccer is a sport with a highly varied set of outcomes every time the whistle blows.

As all-time leading US World Cup scorer Landon Donovan put it when the United States got eliminated in the second round of the 2010 World Cup: “I’m proud of what we did here. Soccer’s a cruel sport.”

The U.S. finished ahead of a couple world powerhouses by making the second round and scored a goal against the Netherlands which isn’t easy to do. The squad was one of only five teams to have no losses through three world cup games. I know this glass-half-full approach doesn’t vibe with American sports fans but welcome to soccer. The upper echelons are already filled by established powers so your odds of making it late in the World Cup if you’re not Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal or Holland are never going to be that good.

If anything, it’s humbling and that’s what I love about Soccer. It’s the great equalizer among socio-economic powers: We are the most militarily powerful country in the world and we have been eliminated from the World Cup twice by a Sub-Saharan African country (Ghana in 2006 and 2010) that’s squarely in the third world. There’s nothing more humbling than losing to a country with a GDP per person (average yearly salary) of $2,445.30. And it’s hard to not appreciate such parity even when you’re on the losing end of it.

But even if we did win, so what? Unlike Ghana or the Netherlands, we don’t need World Cup victories to make us feel strong as a country and if we do, then we have some serious inferiority complex issues as the number one economy of the world and the harbinger of democracy for the last 100 years (yes, I know we’ve been slipping as leaders of the World since, ahem, 2016) BUT this American sports exceptionalism mentality has been going on long before that.

What’s more striking is that soccer isn’t even a sport we’re good at. If ticket sales for the Big 4 (Football, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball) are any indication, soccer is fifth in the batting order in a best-case scenario. So how arrogant do we have to expect to do well against other countries who prioritize this sport far higher? Why do we feel the need to win at everything?

I understand the idea of rooting for your country if it appears in a game, but I completely understand why Holland would be likely to beat us in most scenarios and I am nothing but happy for them.

Top Twenty Cast Members Screwed Over by Saturday Night Live

 Top 20 Cast Members screwed over by SNL:

1. Michaela Watkins (Midseason 2008- 1/2 seasons): So many memorable characters in half a season and that's the thanks she gets?

2. Luke Null (2017 1 season): If you're going to hire a musical guitarist and not use them once on the guitar, what's the point of the experience for either party?

3. Paul Britain (2010 1 1/2 seasons)-Wtf? Firing him midseason for almost no reason (I believe it was budget concerns) and then putting out a false press release that it was an amicable split?

4. Gilbert Gottfried (1980)-Gottfried said that the writers hated him and maybe it was a two-way street of antagonism, but he never got to show off his signature comic style. Shouldn't the writers have to bend to the star?

5. Casey Wilson-(midseason 2007-2008 1 1/2 seasons)-According to sources, the SNL producers wanted her to lose weight and she didn't lose enough. The consensus was that she was capable but not a stand-out by most counts, but if the rumors are true, that's the cruelest thing SNL has done.

6. Laura Holt (2020 1 season)-Give the woman a break! She came on during a 20-member cast which was the biggest cast in history at the time (just five years prior, the cast size was 15). Yes, there's a sink-or-swim mentality, but her lack of screen time could have been excused considering the heightened level of competition from an uber-bloated cast.

7-8-9. Brooks Whelan, John Milhiser, Noelle Wells (2013 1 season)-

This trio had the bad luck of being hired when the audience started to care about the racial make-up of the cast. Reports from Brooks echo the fact that they were shut out of the writing process quite a bit (maybe also due to cast overcrowding?). But come on, it's not their fault that they're white.

10. Michael O'Donoghue (1975 less than one season in opening credits with an asterisk)-I see fan art and memes about the original seven cast members all the time. This guy will forever be linked with the history of the additional cast to die-hard fans, but he deserves to be remembered in casual pop culture way as an original cast member. He was in the very first sketch that aired in show history. He had his name in the credits for much of the first season, so he should properly be called an original cast member.

11. Anne Riseley (1980 1/2 season)-She was just as capable a cast member as the ones who were able to withstand the mass firing of 1981.

12. Norm MacDonald (1994 4 seasons)-Yes, he got to stay far longer than anyone else on this list but there is the issue of him being kicked out due to blatant backstage politics

13. Tim Robinson (2012 1 season)-A more than capable player who got his own show, and a place in the writing room after he was demoted from stage performer. Still, we already know just how much potential he has. SNL really needed him during the mid-2010s.

14. Nancy Wall (1995 1 season)-Pretty much everyone from the 1995 cast got a fair shake. In hindsight, it seems foolish not to have given David Koechner a second season now that we've seen his versatility. Back then, he was mostly playing obnoxious and brusque characters. Nancy Walls, on the other hand, held down the fort for the ladies along with Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri. There were usually only three women prior to 2000 and she was a massive improvement over the more one-note female characters in the first half of the decade (Melanie Hutsell, for example). Unfortunately, she's now mostly known as Mrs. Steve Carell who guested for a few episodes of The Office

15. Jerry Minor (2000 1 season)-Introduced along with Maya Rudolph and Tina Fey and a year before Seth and Amy, Jerry Minor proved a very gifted utility man who got crowded out by a much larger cast. They should have still recognized his talent.

16. Damon Wayans-(1985 1/2 season)-Fired on the spot over an ad-lib. A little cruel, no? Fortunately, he did get to host in 1995.

17, 18. Laurie Metcalfe and Emily Prager (midseason 1981, 1 episode)-They were supposed to work the back half of the midseason but the writer's strike took over one episode into their reign, so these are the two shortest cast members in SNL history. Laurie Metcalfe did eventually get famous from Roseanne.

19. Jon Rudnitsky (2015, 1 season)-A capable sketch player who could make sketches funny (like Nasty Jack with Miley Cyrus or Space Pants with Peter Dinklage). I could have seen his fate going the other way

20. Randy Quaid (1985, 1 season)-A genuinely funny cast member who's time was cut short in a reboot. With Oscar nominations and a film career, he seemed overly qualified for SNL anyway.

Other candidates:

Janeane Garofolo (half a season starting with 1994) and Chris Elliott (the full 1994-1995 season) were both really unhappy on the show, but they got ample opportunities to blame the show while they were there which is a privilege few other cast members have enjoyed. Jeaneane was let out of her contract so that's kind of a win in my book.

Shane Gillis (2017) Some have argued that he should have been suspended or put on some indeterminate leave while they saw whether his character improved or he could do an apology tour, but he was never a cast member so not up for consideration

Is Ramy a Bad Guy? (Thoughts on Season 3)

Ramy (Hulu)-Fun fact: This is one of the three shows I’m listed as a RottenTomatoes critic for. Anywho, to catch you up, Ramy Yousef is the writer and creator of this pseudo-autobiographical show about a highly introspective American Muslin trapped in a phase of Arrested Development and living with his parents. I’m reading insightful reviews from Vulture by a Muslim woman (Deena El Ganaidi) that mention Ramy is about a man who does a lot of wrong. I’m not sure if the show is about a man beating himself up so much as it’s about a man living in a complicated world. Is it really automatic that you should ditch your racist uncle because he says racist things? Is temptation from marriage universal? I’d make the case that Ramy appears to exemplify the type of bad luck that befalls sitcom characters like The Life and Times of Tim or Seinfeld. Not everyone has a past fling show up on the night before their wedding to seduce them, after all.In fact, as much as I loved the second season, Pastor Malek’s pronouncement “F — k you, Ramy, you hurt people” rang a little false to me. Ramy’s friends also use him, his uncle doesn’t really respect him, and his parents often don’t make a sufficient effort to understand the context of Ramy’s world. It’s not as if he’s in the best of circumstances. In a recent episode where Ramy’s parapalegic friend, Steve, is using him for a ride. Over the course of the evening, Steve reveals to Ramy that he wants to propose to his girlfriend whereas Ramy reveals.Comedy often invites us to revel in the misfortune of our protagonists (Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier, Three’s Company) but if Ramy does anything differently, it blurs the lines between comedy and drama enough that we’re invited to witness the tragic undertones of a modern Muslim life for a young single mam.To give credit to Ramy, it’s not just male-centered angst. His sister Deena is also navigating the BS that goes on in corporate culture as an aspiring lawyer. Or maybe it’s standard drudgery that you have to do to work your way up. Or parents who don’t understand her. Or a man who blames her for taking his virginity. If Deena is a female counterpart to Ramy who feels like modern life can’t give her a win, at least she and Ramy are self-aware of their imperfections (if perhaps a little hard on themselves).Both their parents and, especially their uncle, are ill at ease to handle life’s complicated moral quandaries. My mother is an Israeli-born woman of Iranian heritage and you couldn’t drag her to a therapist even if it was free. That’s why I think the thesis of the show is towards the value of self-awareness and the moral costs (something the young generation has due to their unique cultural assimilation) that the older generation is unable to do.

Catching up on Derry Girls (Netflix) Season 3, and Ghosts (CBS) Season 2

Derry Girls (Netflix)- Books and media taking place in the pseudo-war zone of Ireland are an odd phenomenon to reflect on today. With this greater awareness for “people of color” and images of genocides in Haiti, Cambodia, and Ethiopia sprawled on the covers of National Geographic, it’s hard to picture Ireland---one of the world’s biggest tourist hubs—as some sort of war zone: Between civilized people of the same pale color.

My sister briefly taught abroad in Ireland and it was exciting to see this normally apolitical get all passionate about the conflict there. But I must confess—five years later, I don’t remember who did what to whom. Still, the interesting thing is that Ireland is much closer than actual war zones—Ethiopia, Haiti, Nigeria, Indonesia—to the creative centers of power so if creative figures like Kenneth Branagh, Neil Jordan, and Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee have stories to tell about it, there’s a much higher chance that that story will be told.

Derry Girls, now entering its third season, tells the story of five childhood friends bound together by familial bonds (among the five are two sets of cousins and they all grew up in the same side of the neighborhoods) who are getting into enough trouble in their Catholic girls’ school to make Lucy Ricardo look tame by comparison. One of the running jokes is that one of the five “Derry Girls” is an ordinary straight guy, James, who tags along with them to the girls’ school because, well, who knows. It's not important. The show uses a lot of 

It’s not exclusively about war zones and class conflict but class (the protagonist Erin’s parents and grandfather all live under the same roof) and religious conflict (the fear that James might be picked on if he went to a protestant school) insert themselves in organic ways to create a very strong sense of place which is this show’s biggest appeal.

 

Ghosts (CBS)-Continuing to work my way up the list of best shows of the year, the show is about a mansion run by a couple of yuppies that is inhabited by ghosts of eight different time periods—a Viking, a Native American pre-Columbus, a Revolutionary War soldier, a widow from the guilded age, a jazz age singer, a hippie, a dweeby travel agent from the 80s, and a Wall Street boy-with lots of unresolved issues and a great sense of camaraderie. Due to a near death experience, the wife (Rose McIver) can interact with ghosts (who use most of their interactions with her, using her as a TV remote control among other things) but her husband can’t, which creates a pretty ripe dynamic for comedy. The first season was pretty exposition heavy with each character getting a day in the limelight so the writers can milk entire episodes on exposition.

In the second season, Ghosts seems to find their groove even more as the characters change enough to keep things interesting but not hard enough to disrupt the status quo. After all, these characters have been in existence for centuries in some cases. The mood whiplash for them in changing overnight is a real thing, so it's been wise to take the changes slow.

It's also interesting to note how even though Utkarsh Ambudkar is the epitome of coolness (he raps with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Daveed Diggs), he successfully pulls off a dork here (his hobbies aren't too far off from Phil Dumphy on Modern Family

Review of Reboot (Hulu)

 

I generally dismiss shows about show business as a tired trope from unimaginative writers, but occasionally something pops through that’s worth fighting against that bias. Created by Steve Levitan (Just Shoot Me, and more recently Modern Family), this show contains some of the more wholesome relics of old-school sitcoms while still maintaining a sharp subversiveness.

The doozy of a plot is as follows: Three has-been actors (Johnny Knoxville, Judy Greer, and Worthy) and one classically-trained has-been in denial (Keegan Michael-Key) are recruited to revive a multi-camera (AKA old-school, laugh-track) sitcom in a comedic landscape of more advanced comedy. This wouldn’t be unusual as tons of 90s schlock is being rebooted, but in this case it’s a little of an in-universe head scratcher as the proposed TV executive, Hannah (Rachel Bloom from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), has pretentious high-art tastes. Secretly, however, Hannah is doing the show because her estranged dad, Gordon (Paul Riser), is the creator and she wants to ruin his legacy. Her daddy issues reemerge when Gordon appears back on set and has decided not to surrender the intellectual property so these two knuckleheads have to now work together.

They also have competing writing rooms: Old Borscht Belt comedians verses the kinds of LGBT and POC headliners who often populate hotlists merely because they are gay or a person of color (this is demonstrated by two women of color pitching a joke about two women discussing the Bechtel test but having nothing funny in the punch line). The show is an equal opportunity skewer (or is the word skewerer?) and the comedic tension of these eight secondary characters has the potential to give me about as much hope for intergenerational friendship as this polarized age can provide.

Like Levitan’s previous hit, Just Shoot Me, this is a sharp comedy with very shallow back-stabbing characters with the emotional heft of a (forgive me for using such a gooey word) beautiful father-daughter relationship.

Ten Notes on the Back Half of Resident Alien

The show this half-season has shifted focus to Olivia Baker’s alien sightings, D’Arcy’s attempt at romance and attempt to regain her ski career, Ben’s attempts to boost the town’s profiles with a resort (precipitating one of TVdom’s most avoidable marital spats). Some thoughts:

1. Whether Terry O’Quinn’s character was going to be killed or not was as good of a cliffhanger as ever. I found myself preparing to disown my allegiances to Harry if he went through with that murder, which is an indication that the show still has me frantically guessing well into its second season. A good sign.

2. Because we’re introduced much earlier to Ben as an audience and he’s constantly being belittled by the town he tries to do good for, he’s pretty rootable. Therefore, his wife Kate has an uphill battle at trying to win the audience’s affections and her arc has been based on adapting to the town. Kate’s love story is with Patience (as evidenced by the bonding with the ladies of Patience) and it’s even tied with her reconnection to Ben (the two are often a couple in distress) because she has to understand what he loves. Therefore, it’s been jarring to see the thing that binds them become such a source of division in a melodramatic story plot that seems like it’s halfway to becoming Kramer vs Kramer.

3. The D’Arcy/Asta relationship is becoming the key to the show. The only hitch was that, we (I’m presuming the audience was with me) couldn’t bear to see the inevitable breaking point when Asta’s secret was going to jeopardize her friendship. How often does the show rely on the catharsis of Asta and D’Arcy making up from a fight? About the right amount, I’d say.

4. If D’Arcy Bloom was an Olympian in 2016 and the show is set in the present, that means that her big comeback is happening 15 years later after she was at the top of the world. The number of people who have qualified for the Olympics in a competitive sport at the age of 40 or older is probably extremely tiny (I’m sure archery or golf might be exceptions). No wonder she needs painkillers! Even then, that’s not going to give her the leg strength of a mogul skier in their 20s. Still, despite some real gaps in realism, the subplot with D’Arcy as an Olympic skier provides some rare TV insight into post-Olympic depression I’m thankful for.

5. It’s time to see Judy be more than the punch line of a joke. Some shows like Parks and Recreation or Cheers have the running gang of the celebration of the found family being contradicted by someone who’s the butt of every joke. The incongruity provides humor, sure, but this is a show that’s more about tugging at the heart strings than easy jokes, and too many of us in the audience find Judy endearing.-

6. Deputy Baker is pretty far removed from the central action to be getting such thick side plots but it can work based on the strength of the material. Her fight to stand up to her boss was plenty juicy, but the “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” subplot this half-season feels thin in certain situations. When it’s about putting the pieces together better than her boss, but her wonder that aliens exist feels like a jarring genre shift. We’re kind of past the point of caring that aliens exist so she’s not necessarily much of an audience surrogate.

7. I’ve always felt the show had a kid-oriented vibe taking cues from 90s shows like “Who’s Afraid of the Dark”, “Goose Bumps”, or “The Outer Limits” and a lot of that is in the score, which alternates between sci-fi eeriness and semi-comedic bounciness.

8. As the show moves along, it’s smart that any resolution on the Asta/Jay relationship seems to be slow. This is a good way to keep the show from burning through plot.

9. Ah, that short-lived Judy/Harry relationship that lasted about 37 seconds. Priceless!

10. I’ve always theorized that the monotone voice of Harry is only what we hear as the audience, and not what’s happening in-universe.  Otherwise, wouldn’t the denizens of Patience be far more suspicious of Harry? After all, there is no accent that matches his voice other than alien or mentally disabled and they trust him to be a doctor. Unfortunately, my theory became disproven when D’Arcy who made fun of his voice. On the other hand, it’s a good sign of that D’Arcy’s development as a less clingy person, that she’s willing to so readily make fun of someone she was previously smitten with.

Favorite Songs for their Lyrics: Part IX

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Cyndi Lauper (1984)-I hate to over-rely on words like “classist” or “feminist” but this song is practically begging me to. Overtly this song is under the guise of a girl power anthem. The plural here-“girls” instead of “girl”--makes the biggest difference: In songs, the relationship is the celebration and it’s not a song of self-discovery, but rather a song to the “ladies out there” like Beyonce often targets her audience.

There is one explicit reference to the narrator being underclass in the song: “Oh mommy dear, we’re not the fortunate ones.” But within a larger scope, “when the working day is done” and the pressure from the narrator’s parents to do something with their life, indicates that fun is a rebellion from what could be a more dire need to produce money than someone of higher status. In other words, Lauper is a fiery proletariat who wants to team up with Marx to burn shit down: Only, through partying.

Lyrics

Give it Away, Red Hot Chili Peppers (1992)-This song is very direct please about altruism which sounds not particularly grunge (honestly, I’m not too familiar with that genre). I love how in the sense that rap is about bragging, this song is about being selfless. At the same time, he’s bragging at the same time about how he can’t tell the difference between “being a kingpin and a pauoper” The song is also structured like a square dance where a series of instructions is shouted to the audience in a participatory manner  and there’s a certain amount of repetition.

Lyrics

No More Tears Left to Cry, Arianna Grande (2018)-Released amid one of that year’s most public celebrity break-ups with Pete Davidson), this song is more of a response to a news event than it is a musing on love in a cultural vacuum. Since songs have to be economical with their words, I once again am drawn to how one or two words makes a difference. The “more” and in No More Tears, implies she has already been crying to the fullest extent of her body’s capacity. And it’s a positive song. The narrator expressed, “I’m loving, I’m living, I’m picking it up.”

Lyrics

Hold On, Wilson Phillips (1990)-This has been a song that has got me through some depressing times lately. It perfectly encapsulates the way you should respond to someone with depression. The song opens up with, “I know there’s pain” which is what I generally want someone to say to me on a bad day: An acknowledgement that whatever I’m going through is legitimate. However, the narrator gets into the tough love phase of the heart-to-heart talk “No one can change your life except for you/Don’t let anyone step all over you.” This mirrors the kind of sentiments that countless therapists, bartenders, or best friends will tell you when you ask or pay them to lend an ear. The ultimate through-line of the chorus “Hold on for one more day” is really solid advice for someone who feels like hopeless about the future. I’ve been there before and in those cases I have often made the mistake of looking really far ahead and forecasting doom and gloom. In reality, I should have just found happiness and hope on that day. There are a lot of songs about lifting you up out of depression and this is one of the best of them.

Lyrics

Easy on Me, Adele (2021)-Do relationships really work on this? Does an equal relationship where participants (of whatever sort) are squaring off about their emotions and someone requests “go easy on me?”  Someone can soften their tone in a touchy emotional discussion, but you can’t request they suppress their feelings. So it’s an interesting request.  This might come off as a love song, because, most songs are love songs, but there is reason to suspect that this is about a mother trying to apologize to her kids for being young and unprepared for motherhood (I’m not willing to Google whether Adele is a mother because I want the text to speak for itself) as she says “I changed who I was to put you both first but now I give up” and I just don’t see Adele as a swinging polyamorist.

So much of the song is covered in vivid imagery like “no gold in this river that I’ve been washing my hands in forever” (economic strife?) and “didn’t get the chance to feel the world around me” and I especially like how Adele feels like she’s drowning in silence followed by the line “baby, let me in.” Maybe going easy on her is merely giving Adele the chance to speak?

Lyrics

Get Me Away from Here I’m Dying, Belle and Sebastian (1996)-I heard this during the sound track of “Resident Alien.” The title of the song (and also its first line) doesn’t really match the intensity of the rest of the song’s lyrics which is mostly playfully breaking the fourth wall about writing. The narrator laments “Write me a song to set me free” to save him from his impending death (probably exaggerated). He then follows, “Nobody writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me.” It’s even humbler than the most humble of brags that the narrator plans to be a rock star just because he feels a void needs to be filled. He even follows it up with the line “You could either be successful or be us.” How can you not be charmed by these guys with their “winning smiles.”

Lyrics

Mrs. Rita, Gin Blossoms (1992)-The song was written about a palm reader in Tempe, Arizona who lived down the street from band member Jesse Venezuela. In the song, the narrator sings both about a lost love and his dependence on Mrs. Rita to tell him his future.  The character is also a little aimless which fits into why he needs a fortune teller. Like Two-Face in the Batman, if he was a little more decisive would he really need a fortune teller? In that sense, is it a complimentary song of Mrs. Rita? Well, in reality the song was not remembered as one of the band’s biggest hits but it was enough to quadruple Mrs. Rita’s business.

Lyrics

Makes Me Wonder, Maroon 5 (2007)-The narrator here has a pretty well-expressed sense of self-awareness as well as a resignation that he isn’t in total emotional control of this situation. He’s clearly not over his break-up and expresses his lust for her in some pretty NC-17 ways (“struggle to memorize/the way it felt between your thighs”). He pretty overtly says he wants to get her back but also possibly looks forward to the day when “it won’t hurt anymore.” Perhaps reconciling those two facets of his emotions is why he feels like he has something to hide (hence, “You’ve caught me in a lie/I have no alibi”). The most definitive thing we can conclude is that he’s in the phase of a break-up where he’s trying to process it and find answers.

Lyrics

All Songs I've Analyzed at this point (check the lyrics tab):

Adele: Easy on Me

Anna Nalick: Breathe

Arianna Grande: No More Tears Left to Cry
Augustana: Boston
Avril Lavigne: I'm With You
The Bangles: Hazy Shade of Winter

Belle and Sebastian: Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying
Ben Folds: Landed, Annie Waits, Time, Evaporated
Barenaked Ladies: Testing 1 2 3
Bruce Hornsby: On the Western Skyline
Cat Stevens: First Cut is the Deepest

Cyndi Lauper: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Charlotte Martin: Your Armor
Coldplay: Speed of Sound, Viva la Vida
Counting Crows: She Don't Want Nobody Near, Hard Candy, Rain King
David Bowie: Changes
Dave Matthews Band: Gray Street, #41, Dancing Nancies, Grace is Gone
Ed Sheeran: The A-Team
Fall out Boy: Dance Dance
Five for Fighting: 100 Years
The Fray: You Found Me, Over My Head
Foo Fighters: Learn to Fly
Gin Blossoms: South of Nowhere
Goo Goo Dolls: Broadway is Dark Tonight, Better Days, Here is Gone
Green Day: Wake Me Up When September Ends
Jason Mraz: On Love in Sadness
John Cougar Mellencamp: Jack and Diane
John Mayer: Clarity, 3 X 5, No Such Thing, Bigger than My Body, Why Georgia
Howie Day: Collide
Hootie and the Blowfish: Time
Leona Lewis: Better in Time
Lorde: Team
Macklemore and Lewis: Thrift Shop
Mamas and the Papas: California Dreaming

Maroon 5: Makes Me Wonder
Matchbox Twenty: Downfall, All I Need, Let's See How Far We've Come, Black and White People
Michelle Branch: Game of Love
Nickel Creek: Green and Gray, Seven Wonders
Paramore: Ain't It Fun
Pink: Raise Your Glass 

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Give it Away

Sara Bareilles: Bottle It Up, Fairytales, Hold my Heart
Sarah McLachlan: Adia, Angel
Smashing Pumpkins: 1979
Script: For the First Time
Sister Hazel: Your Winter
Steely Dan: Barrytown
Switchfoot: Stars, Dare You To Move
Sum 41: In Too Deep
Taylor Swift: Blank Space
Tori Amos: Silent All These Years
Wilson Phillips: Hold On
Whitney Houston: I Want To Dance with Somebody
Zedd: Clarity