A Teacher (FX)-A thought-provoking look at female teachers who sleep with high school students as exemplified through one example. Kate Mara plays young teacher Claire Wilson who’s stuck in a bad marriage and forms a friendly relationship with an economically disadvantaged student named Eric (Nick Robinson). The characters are based on composites rather than a real person which gives the show freedom to expand in any which direction.
Watching the show and absorbing it’s aftertaste on the internet reveals a dissonance. The TV show is about a complicated forbidden love affair. Wilson makes bad decisions but so does Eric (who instigated the relationship twice) and it’s a progression of mutually consummated destruction that the pair goes through.
The internet chatter, however, wants to make clear that Claire is the instigator and this is a horrendous crime. I’m not personally well-versed on the psychological case studies on this phenomenon, but the TV show does what it should do by showing us complicated characters in a horrendous crime. It’s gripping drama. If you wish to know what’s behind this issue (as you’re supposed to do with every other work of fiction), research the cases behind it.
Studio C (BYU TV)-From what I can gather, there's a sketch comedy group on campus at BYU in Provo, Utah. Some kids from this sketch group decided "hey, let's be professional sketch comedians." I'm sure there are lots of other capable college kids in college sketch groups who have had those same thoughts before reality and student debt hit them. But these kids had two advantages: 1) The college owns a successful TV station with a base that pulls on the Mormon community which includes half the state of Utah and 2) These kids have a distinctive brand of comedy.
BYU, and Mormon culture in general, is watchful of things that are PG-13 rated entertainment-wise. As a result, all of BYU's content is family friendly which means no swearing and limited talking about sexy stuff. There might also be other stuff they're not allowed to do on TV- like portray demon worship, express enjoyment towards the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or show people drinking hot tea*-- but I have absolutely no idea as I don't have a copy of the standards and practices in front of me.
*They did a pretty clever sketch with a couple going on a romantic dinner and milk was used a stand-in for wine. Maybe that's poking fun at a restriction the writers have on using alcohol in sketches?
The end result is a sketch comedy that goes out of its way to be family friendly. The show might be less edgy in terms of blue content but one can admire the way they work with less punchline options to produce more.
Another great thing is that, regardless of your religious affiliation, most parents wouldn't let their kids skip straight from Sesame Street to Saturday Night Live. This show has the potential to get kids involved in sketch comedy before they're old enough to watch Saturday Night Live.
The show's cast was originally comprised of students transitioned from college to the show. They deserve credit for taking the idea and launching it successfully but it was clear that this was a college sketch troupe.
At some point, the old cast went to form a patreon-funded sketch troupe independent of the TV station and there was a nationwide casting call that drew in professional actors to the show. The show now has a new level of polish and a universality (the original cast relied on inside jokes) that takes the concept to a new level.
Animaniacs (Hulu)-I grew up on this show and it personifies the 1990s for me. As a result, it’s a bit jarring to see this show updated to have Dot reference having a crush on Chris Pine and having the theme song discuss being pronoun neutral, but I’m no purist. Rebooting a good thing doesn’t ruin the original and the show does a pretty darn good job of keeping the spirit of the original in tact. It’s a little disappointing to see the lack of Slappy the Squirrel, Rita and Runt or the Goodfeathers. It’s interesting that those sketches were based on then-recent hit films (Goodfellas, Rain Man) but those films have survived the test of time and one would hope they’d do some of their long-storied rejected characters.
One thing I can appreciate is the way the animation supplements the comedy the way Mad Magazine or Futurama does. Everything from Easter egg gags in the background to the way faces are drawn to convey what we should expect from their personality sets the stage.
Bless the Harts (Fox)-I love this show. Each of the four main characters is extremely
endearing and there’s been a lot of world building towards some of the lesser characters (the high-pitched Randy is becoming a favorite, the cheery news lady who’s mouth is glues into a smile like the Joker’s victims in the 1989 Batman, etc). The show is about a lower-class family in small town North Carolina features a waitress with modest aspirations to rise within her station, her sly mother (whose primary motivations in life are besting her rival Crystal Lynn, feeling young enough that she can flirt with construction workers, and pulling off semi-fraudulent schemes), her boyfriend (a trucker persona with a teddy bear persona underneath), and her dead panning daughter. It’s an extremely strong quartet of characters who exhibit great chemistry.
Saved by the Bell (Peacock)-I’m not sure if this is needed past Saved by the Bell The College Years and The New Class. Let’s not act like this is the only sad attempt to revive the show. This show is a bit more woke but it’s also self-conscious about the limits of that wokeness. On paper, the show’s not bad but it’s far from the best teen comedy on the air right now
Fargo (FX)-I’ve rarely seen organized crime justified so well through a work of fiction. Much of the television I’ve watched in the mob genre simply takes killing and mob violence as a necessity but this show portrays it in pragmatic economic terms. The show is a masterclass in visual storytelling and it shares the touch of Joel and Ethan Coen of a fascination with the quirky sides of dark characters.
We Are the Champions (Netflix)-For a long time, I’ve been fascinated with some of the world’s craziest sports and have even played underwater hockey myself. This is a documentary-style TV show that’s heartwarming, revels in the bizarre, and tells a consistent narrative.
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