What I'm Watching August Edition: Reviews of Loot, Central Park, Resort, Never Have I Ever, The Shrink Next Door

Loot (Apple Plus)-Maya Rudolph stars as a rich socialite who decides to take a more hands-on approach to running her own charity after her husband dumped her. It’s a classic classist comedy like “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” or “The Nanny” in which people of different social strata learn a little bit from one another. Joel Kim Booster (Fire Island) and Ron Funches are a highlight as a pair of co-workers who are a better fit as besties than Booster’s character would care to admit.  The show is watchable but seems to rely a little too heavily on Maya Rudolph to carry the jokes. Unfortunately, Rudolph’s character of Molly Novak isn’t that much more memorable so far (I’m 4 episodes in) than her character outline suggests.

Never Have I Ever (Netflix)-I hate to use the term “jump the shark” because that fails to acknowledge the show’s achievement of once being good and it implies that it’s the show’s fault that current viewing isn’t as rewarding as past viewing. Never Have I Ever ended on a happily-ever-after resolution that took away my investment in seeing where the characters might go next. Season 2 featured a wonderful arc with Common as a love interest for the mom, the cousin standing up for herself professionally, and the independent-minded Dev yo-yoing between Ben and Paxton before landing in a place of self-respect. I’m still nipping away at an episode here or there, and I’m always happy that other people will get a chance to enjoy another season of a deservingly good show. I just might not partake.

Central Park (Apple Plus)-Set in New York’s Central Park (something I personally view as a minus), the story tells the tale of villainous hotelier Bitsy Bindingham (Stanley Tucci) and her efforts to purchase over Central Park for presumably nefarious purposes. Defending the park are expose reporter Paige (Kathryn Hahn) and husband and Central Park manager Owen (Leslie Odom Jr) and their two mixed-race children Molly (Kristen Bell) and Cole (Tituss Burgess Jr) are also pretty equally invested on the side of good. The family and story’s narrator (Josh Gad) provide the warmth while Bitsy’s snootiness and the deadpan of her devious lackey Helen (Daveed Diggs) provide the humor. And did I mention there’s songs provided by the musical talents of Leslie Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, and Kristen Bell?

The Shrink Next Door (Apple Plus)-A harrowing yet highly engaging watch about a cunning psychiatrist, Ike Herschkopf (Paul Rudd), who manipulates his patients into giving up their lives in service to him. Although the real Herschkopf swindled at least 16 patients, the story focuses on a nominal millionaire (Marty, played by Will Ferrell) who comes to visit Dr. Ike at a low point in his life (parents just died, uncle is suing him, ex-girlfriend is demanding, yada yada yada) and feels like a new man after a few sessions.

I watched this show in a vacuum so I had no idea through the first two or three episodes where this eight-episode miniseries was going. It seemed like an uplifting story of a therapist helping a timid sack of a man with a few dark undertones here or there. Of course, I knew that prestige TV networks since roughly 2010 haven’t been interested in low-stakes feel-good stories in eight-episode chunks. So yes, I was prepared for the dropping of the other shoe (is that an expression? I don’t even know), and boy did it drop. Dr. Ike persuades Marty to cut off his only family (sister Phyllis, played so endearingly by Kathryn Hahn), make him president of his business, take over his house in the Hamptons and move into the master bedroom, and eventually write him in his will.

Like the aftermath of Hitchcock’s The Birds, I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizeable number of viewers get a nightmare or two about what evil lurks in the hearts of their own therapists.

The series is tear-inducing with credit going to the performances of Will Ferrell and Kathryn Hahn (although it’s regrettable Hahn isn’t in most of the middle episodes) with Rudd providing equal weight as the villain. This isn’t a sad clown performance where a comic actor wants to stretch his wings: This is the real deal.


The Resort (Peacock)-A married couple (Christine Milioti as Emma, William Jackson Harper as Noah) is experiencing the doldrums during their 10^th anniversary vacation to a tropical Mexican resort. What possibly shakes them out of their rut is when Emma get shaken out of their rut when Emma discovers an old cell phone from 15 years  through going down the rabbit hole of a local  missing persons case.

During one frightful and stormy night (cue the organ music) 15 years ago, a pair of young lovebirds (Skyler Gismodo as Sam and Nina Bloomgarden as Violet) disappeared during a hurricane. Careful not to reveal the sequence of events before Emma and Noah (and the audience) learn them, the series deftly cuts between past and present as Noah and Emmy chase after the trail of Sam and Violet.  

There’s an unevenness between the relative excitements of the past and the present. Sam and Violet, are a fun combination of hormones, angst, and naiveté, whereas Noah and Emma are about as fun as the Needlers (Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers) on SNL. What saves their scene is a delightfully kooky local named Balthasar Frias who fashions himself a noir detective.

The series is ambitious--needle-dropping all over the place and taking its time to cut between stories--and while it's uneven from week to week, it's enough to keep me guessing.

"The Resort" (Peacock) Review

 A married couple (Christine Milioti as Emma, William Jackson Harper as  Noah) is experiencing the blahs on a 10-year-anniversary vacation to a  tropical Mexican resort. William Jackson Harper has only been known to  the world-at-large as the tight-laced hypochondriac ethicist from The  Good Place so it’s a little jarring to see him chilling out in the  tropics with his hair in an — — sorry I’m not well-versed on  African-American hairstyles and not going to try — un-Chidi-like state.

Anywho,  Noah and Emma get shaken out of their rut when Emma discovers an old  cell phone from 15 years through going down the rabbit hole of a local  missing persons case. During one frightful and stormy night (cue the  organ music) 15 years ago, a pair of late adolescents (Skyler Gismodo as  Sam and Nina Bloomgarden as Violet) disappeared during a hurricane.  Careful not to reveal the sequence of events before Emma and Noah (and  the audience) learn them, the series deftly cuts between past and  present as Noah and Emmy chase after the trail of Sam and Violet.

It’s soon revealed that Sam and Violet had a steamy fling, and the  series tries a little hard to posit Sam/Violet (Vam? Siolet?) as younger and hornier doppelgangers to Noah and Emma who not so coincidentally  also met for the first time 15 years ago. Although the series  acknowledges that Noah and Emma are going through a funk, they still  never exhibit much chemistry and are often the least interesting part of  the story except as audience surrogates.
Sam  and Violet, on the other hand, are a fun combination of hormones,  angst, and naiveté. They bounce between a coo coo hotelier who kinda sorta kidnaps them, to an  outdoor farmer’s market to an author (Luis Guzman) with mystical  prophecies and, remarkably, they still manage to stay separated from  their parents for over six episodes and counting.

In the interim, Emma and Noah join forces with Balthasar Frias, a local heir to a powerful family of tailors (this series more than any other needs a larger fan base, just so a  more robust wiki can be created and confusions like “rich family of  tailors” can be sorted out) who’s a delightful brand of kooky on  his own. Frias came to the resort looking for a job of any sort and is  urged by the manager to reinvent himself so he fashions himself a  detective after the novels his father used to read to him as a kid.

It’s  the same character motivation that defines many a film noir protagonist  like J.J. Gittes in Chinatown or Holly Martins in the Third Man who get  caught up in their own myth and are determined to solve the mystery at  any cost. For his part, Frias is still obsessed with this missing  persons case 15 years later, and it seems possible that he’s gotten a  little warped about it with time. He’s the kind of guy who takes the  Dirk Gentley Holistic Detective Agency approach to crime-solving (i.e.  he somehow believes that asking Noah and Emma about their sex life will  somehow provide a clue of a missing cell phone) than standards nuts and  bolts stuff. But what can I say, the show needs a wild card, so away we  go.

Filled with needle drops and time jumps upon time jumps,  the show is certainly ambitious. Whether it follows through, it can be a  little touch-and-go based on the episode, which is why I'll reserve judgment until season's end, but I'm enjoying it so far.

God's Favorite Idiot (Netflix)

God’s Favorite Idiot (Netflix)-The premise of a modern-day prophet dealing with the absurdities of a religiously mixed-up world has already been done quite a bit before, most notably with Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s best-selling book “Good Omens” and its subsequent 2019 Amazon TV series. Ironically, that show came out in the same year as the phenomenally funny God-as-aimless-idiot series “Miracle Workers” which was created by “Man Seeking Women” showrunner Simon Rich. There’s also the 1999 film “Dogma”, “The Life of Brian”, College Humor’s series about God’s Boss, Craig. This is all on the heels of the immensely thorough “The Good Place.” Considering how brilliant all of those things are, the bar is pretty high.

Clark (Ben Falcone) is a typical office drone with a sad sack aura about him (think George Michael from Arrested Development if Rebel Alley hadn’t come along) and a crush on his co-worker Amily (Falcone’s real-life wife and creative partner Melissa McCarthy). They work in a small office with a lot of bickering (of the funny-ha-ha variety) and a boss (oddly named Frisbee, IMDB don’t lie) who’s basically asking to be the butt of the joke.

In the opening scene, Clark gets struck by lightning and starts exhibiting strange powers. We then segue to eccentric co-worker Amily telling her co-workers about her discovery that Clark seemed to be glowing, while also confessing that her recent cocaine consumption makes her an unreliable narrator. Melissa McCarthy is one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood (to the extent that stardom still exists), she’s certainly capable of driving a scene, and she’s getting good scene partners here.

But it becomes increasingly distracting that Clark isn’t really at the center of the pilot. He not only lacks running time, but the story isn’t even told from his point of view. The majority of the episode’s running time is a mix of indirect office speculation over what to make of Clark, and Clark’s awkward courtship with Amily.

There are also a number of scenes from an exterior view of the office’s two toilet stalls, where Clark has to repeatedly remind his coworkers that he doesn’t really like to talk while on the toilet. This is where Clark shines comedically: He’s an awkward being who verbalizes his awkwardness in a unique take on classic deadpan characters (i.e. Aubrey Plaza in Parks and Rec, Greg from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Sophia from Golden Girls).

Falcone has not just been overshadowed by his wife in their dual projects, but his filmography is littered with thankless projects. He’s paid his dues in supporting and recurring roles in plenty of promising sitcoms such as “Joey”, “Up All Night”, “My Name is Earl”, “A to Z” (Cristin Milioti and Ben Feldman’s breakout series), and “New Girl” but the show takes a while to let Falcone actually take the lead. It’s as if Melissa McCarthy (or the writers’ lack of confidence in the audience to want to watch a show that’s not McCarthy-centric) felt that Falcone needed training wheels in the first few episodes.

As a result, its relatively late in the show’s eight-episode run that the plot kicks in and by then the elements are too densely packed to properly breathe. There’s a preacher who’s anti-Clark because, haha, preachers are dumb; the angel and the devil are literally going to war with Clark’s dad as a hostage; the four horsemen of the apocalypse show up; there’s a beta romance developing in the background; and Clark’s naggy mom makes an appearance.

There are also abrupt jumps in plotting. In one episode, Clark gets his first visit from an angel; in the next, Clark is passing out flyers on behalf of God. But did the Angel ever give him instructions?

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the show’s content. It’s hilarious and has a unique take on a well-treaded genre. However, this is a textbook case of bad pacing. Hopefully, season 2 will hit the ground running with the exposition out of the way. 

What I'm Watching July Edition

 Severance (Apple Plus)-One of the best-developed science fiction worlds I’ve ever entered, Severance is about a world where a set of workers have their memories completely compartmentalized when they are in and out of work. Audience surrogate Helly (Britt Lower) works in a classified division of a faceless company who clocks into work every day and has no memory of what her life is like outside. When she clocks back into work, she is essentially a different person with a different set of memories. For Mark (Adam Scott, in his first Emmy nod), erasing his memories for eight hours a day is a good way to deal with the grief of his lost wife. Like great sci-fi, the show explores big themes of the human condition in dramatic terms. There’s also a good mystery angle that moves the plot forward. For reference, the show reminds me of Orphan Black on BBC.

The Bear (Hulu)-This show, about the adrenaline of a gourmet chef managing the kitchen of a high-end New York restaurant, is getting some good reviews. It’s an exciting sphere of our world that we don’t often get a glimpse of, so there’s a lot of potential here on paper. However, I personally wasn’t hooked. It either works or it doesn’t. The show is episodic and none of the 30-minute plots were memorable enough to remember 5 minutes after the show’s conclusion so the show relies primarily on atmosphere which isn’t enough to get over the hump. At the very least, the show gives employment to Abby Elliott, a decent character actor, who was very much in no man’s land through three and a half seasons of SNL.

The Orville (Hulu)-The Orville: New Horizons expanded in ambition this season with a larger special effects budget (a plus) and a new one-hour-plus format (a mixed bag).

The first few episodes were wobbly right out of the gate and when an episode doesn’t hit, the longer running time makes things worse. Ideally science fiction combines character development with the kinds of thought-provoking situations that can be created by when reality can be altered through scientific imagination. But the first two episodes of the first season are based on character moments that are irrelevant to the viewer: The first episode deals with the crew hating on Isaac but didn’t Isaac’s betrayal of the crew happen in early season 2? The second episode revolves around Claire’s ex-husband but he never existed before.

Another episode, “A Tale of Two Topas”, is a blatant attempt to preach around the modern-day issue of gender identity but it doesn’t combine the character development with any science-based plotting. It’s essentially a soap opera that’s too topical to have breathing room. On the other end of the spectrum, another dud of an episode, “Mortality Paradox”, is all science and no character, and there’s nothing remotely interesting behind the science. An away team goes to a planet or something that resembles a high school cafeteria (maybe they ran out of budget and decided to scout the nearby high school?) before being wandering aimlessly to a Moclan death crypt and a lake on Keyali’s home world. The episode sprinkles a couple clues as to what’s really happening and eventually the reality is revealed, but if this is an episode based on a twist, the extra-running time doesn’t suit that twist.

That being said, even as four of the first five episodes failed to land, there was no show I was looking forward to each week because the potential was always there to turn in something good. Ambition and a firm tonal grasp always trumps a mediocre show. As such, some of the greatest episodes I’ve seen all year have occurred in the back half of the season.

What We Do in the Shadows (FX)-Regularly topping my list of favorite shows, this show continues to be all that and a bag of chips. The third season saw the characters attempt to do big things. Nadja was going to take over at the world vampiric counsel, Nandor was going to travel the world, Guillermo was going to be a vampire, and Lazlo was going to raise Colin Robinson (mistakenly thinking that the new creature that emerged from the old Colin would be less boring). This is a sitcom so a lot of those arcs got aborted, but the show wisely has continued to mix things up.

Star Trek: Picard & Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount Plus)-My first time coming into contact with either of these two shows on the instructions of an editor for an essay I was writing.

Strange New Worlds is typical Trek. The characters are a bit more modern and relatable (and Spock’s jacked), but it’s the same technobabble-heavy tripe.

Picard, on the hand, is a season-long mystery. It’s visually stunning and tonally coherent. There are characters here you’ve practically never seen in Star Trek. A vagabond pilot (Santiago Cabrera), a nervous nellie of an engineer (the always underrated Alison Pull), and a depressive who self-mediates to escape her pain (Michelle Hurd). Picard is like a late-stage-John-Ford Western hero, once revered but now living with guilt. There was never a fraction of this depth on TNG, and Patrick Stewart finds a way to be true to the shallower version of Picard without making him an entirely new character.

The first season (of which I’ve seen six episodes so far) is a mystery that can compete with TV’s Golden Age in terms of telling a story that can integrate flashbacks and switch points of view without losing a beat.