My Week in TV: The Mick, Man in High Castle, The Mayor, Fresh Off the Boat, Ingobernable

The Mick-The Divorce:
From the creators of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” this show engages in the same kind of duality of lovable yet deeply offensive characters as its sister show. As the year closes, this has been one of my highlights and will likely place in my top 12 this year. This week (or rather, 2 weeks ago), Chip discovers his birth dad and tries to get close to him in a way that goes haywire, as should be expected in sitcom land here. Anyone familiar with my writing or the views I tend to espouse on Disqus knows I’m not generally one to overuse feminist arguments or analysis, but man, does Chip really cry out for it. White male privilege, masculine anger, toxic masculinity all seem to describe this misguided adolescent. Perhaps his only saving graces are his sheer cluelessness and loyalty to his family and the former is certainly emphasized here. To watch Chip undergo all the sexual frustration of an adolescent times ten, it’s nice that he finally got kissed on screen but the incest is still gross, and most importantly he might have blown his chance at a father-figure. Oh well, there’s always next week.
In other news, Alma, Ben, Sabrina, Mickey and Jimmy probably did stuff too though I can’t remember what.

The Man in the High Castle-The end of Season 2:
Keeping up with Peak TV is exhausting. My recommended strategy: 1) Make sure you’re not wasting your time on frivolousness 2) Watch a mix of stuff that challenges you and stuff you like 3) Watch some of the mainstream stuff so you can enter into a conversation or two 4) Don’t worry about the rest. Still, there’s  LOT of TV and it’s fairly easy to start something with the intention of finishing it and burning out in the middle. Sometimes the more complex shows can throw you off during season breaks (but those season breaks are necessary at the same time to stave off exhaustion so it’s “chicken and the egg”). Shut Eye (Hulu) was in my top 12 last year and when I tried to get back through the season premiere, I kept scratching my head so much, that it really wasn’t worth it. I’m proud to say I made it to the end of this series. Maybe this isn’t like I climbed Mount Everest, but I definitely feel like I climbed a bunny slope or two.

"Man in the High Castle"—Set in an alternate version of the early 1960’s where the Axis powers won the war and the US has been divvied up between Japan and Germany -- is one of many, many shows that would have dominated water cooler talk (or the vaping corner to update it to 2010’s terminology) ten years ago but it has since been squeezed out of here-and-now relevance as a consequence of peak TV. It’s not too far in quality from “The Americans” though when it comes to historical spy thriller and has a lot going for it. It’s produced by Ridley Scott’s production company and it might possibly be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen on TV and it lays out a tremendous amount of world building. If you’re a history aficionado who loves the “What if?” scenarios, this is your thing, but it’s good enough to transcend most of that because it’s rooted in so much of our everyday American experience and self-image.

The first and second seasons are both at their most entrancing towards the end with double and triple cliffhangers prefacing the season finale. The rest of the time, it’s been a pretty solid ride as a sprawling story is told out with several characters and locations. The second season involved significantly more of an “alternative universe” which I desperately wanted to discard (If I was ever tempted to fast-forward through anything it was this stuff) until it worked its way back through the plot but I still hated. Still not sure the how or the why of why it’s here, but it’s A-OK with me.

The Mayor-Here Comes the Governor-This show has been well-received but, to me at least, there’s a lack of star charisma that’s keeping this from becoming must-see. Lea Michelle and Yvette Nicole Brown have never done it for me and Brandon Michael Hall is uninspiring though I appreciate throwing in a lot of tension among his entourage with the bickering sidekicks (raise your hand if you can tell them apart. I can’t either). My proposed solution? Throw in better stunt casting a la Parks and Recration. Where would the show be without Ben Schwartz, Jenny Slate, Allison Becker, Patton Oswalt and the rest of that gang. Maybe they’ll even find a Chris Pratt equivalent here.

In this week’s episode, Courtney gets a visit from the state’s governor and the two engage in some serious politicking between rounds of golf and shvitzing. Structurally, this was a solid episode involving Courtney growing as a politician and playing the game. It was even laced with some insightful political commentary. The show is still not notable on the comedic end, however. It’s been a few days since I watched this, so if anyone remembers any laugh-out-loud moments please share.

Fresh off the Boat-Side Effect

Another dependable favorite of mine, this show is very much in the mold of family sitcom with the bonds between family members meant to be inspirational to the rest of us who might not be as appreciative of our parents, siblings, etc and might not spend enough time with them. It plays off our perceptions (possibly true, possibly false, verifying the accuracy is above my pay grade) that families from East Asia tend to uniformly have tight-knit families with children who overachieve to please their parents. Oldest child Eddie is the main character of the series, however, and as he is in adolescence, he’s a bit of the loose cannon of the family at this point. Does he still get A’s like his siblings?

This episode highlights Eddie’s downward slope as the apotheosis of adolescence. It’s a family-sitcom in the mold of the 90’s so Eddie is always programmed to do the right thing at the end, but he’s capable of sliding off quite a bit before the end. Eddie shows no loyalty to his friends and ditches them in a bridge-burning fashion for the second time this season. To be fair, they have developed some weird hobbies, but still. Part of Eddie’s character is he’s written as sociological commentary of the 1990s from the perspective of exactly two decades in hindsight. Eddie’s penchant for gangsta rap gives him a veneer of toughness.

Ingobernable-Season 4-Another candidate for my top 12, this is a Homeland-style thriller that’s also part steamy Mexican soap opera. The basic plot is the President of Mexico is murdered, the first lady is the prime suspect, and she has to figure out what’s happening as she’s on the rise.

This episode works in a stand-alone fashion. Emilia (the above-mentioned first lady) is kidnapped for ransom to extract some money out of her rich father. Then, big twist, one of the kidnappers re-kidnaps her (or perhaps the word is double-kidnap?) because he wants to make her pay for the death of her sister. He’s not so much evil with a twirly mustache but just a product of the lawless culture. Meanwhile, a sharp-looking woman is invited by the interim president to conduct an impartial investigation and she looks like she’s got things under control when she aces her introductory interview (choice nugget: There are no truths, only accounts). Oh, and the late president and security chief had lots of gratuitous hot sex.