Current Shows:
Wanda Vision (Disney Plus)-With
such mind-boggling layers of symbolism, this is as if the world's best
escape room writers were tasked with writing a sitcom that entrusts viewers to be active rather than passive participants in decryption. The
series takes the viewer on a journey through various sitcom tropes on a decade-by-decade journey with underlying storylines dealing with grief, manipulation, and escapism as a form of evil. With all the painstaking detail that the prodution team implants its easter eggs, this is a sure contender for the most intricate show on television if not its most ambitious. I have little familiarity with the MCU but was able to peace most details together.
Great North (Fox)-It’s hard to tell much through two episodes, but the show isn’t off to a great start. It seems like it has the same boundless potential that any animated show begins with in the post-MacFarland/Groening era with the added pedigree of the cast (Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Jenny Slate) and the allure of a cool setting. But part of the problem is I’m not a Nick Offerman fan. Different stars have different comedic personas and the effectiveness of those personas is somewhat subjective. To me, he’s generally a manly man with no comment on any modern image of masculinity. When he sings the theme song dedicated to hard work, or espouses the value of waking up ridiculously early, and having birthdays devoid of emotion, there are characters who serve as reluctant foils to those plans but Offerman’s character (much like his trademark P & R character) doesn’t have that much commentary. One nice detail is the interracial marriage between Offerman's adult son (Forte) and an import from California (Dulce Sloane).
Call Your Mother (ABC)-Starring Kyra Sedgwick as Jean, it’s an old-school multi-cam sitcom that strives so hard to squeeze a peg into an outdated sitcom format of a round hole that it‘s almost adorable. The show is about an empty nest mother who moves to LA to be closer to her kids and simultaneously rediscover her identity aside from her kids. If you paid close attention, the two parts of that last sentence were complete opposites and that sort of clash of premises is rearing its ugly head quite haphazardly so far. In one episode daughter Jackie tells her mom Jean she feels neglected, and in every other episode Jackie is trying to get space from Jean like a cloying mother. Anywho, this is like Mary Tyler Moore if Moore found her Mr. Right, had kids, spent 18+ years tending to that whole thing, and came out on the other end looking for her new purpose in a spunky way. Based mostly on Sedgwick's charm, the show is mildly passable on the whole and has the occasional moment for an emotional payoff.
Call Me Kat (Fox)-A successor to "New Girl" in that it's a celebration of a woman owning up to her quirkiness and (by extension) her singleness. The problem is this character (Mayim Bialik) is written as over-the-top quirky for the sake of being quirky and the inauthenticity makes her, for lack of a better word, uncool. The show's breaking of the fourth wall
Mr. Mayor (NBC)-Another entry in the canon of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock that's a little more "30 Rock" than "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." The humor is clever but skin-deep. Don't expect pathos-driven growth with the narrative highs of Kimmy, Titus and Jaqueline. At the same time, the show, set in the Mayor's office of L.A., has much less of an insider vibe. Show biz types celebrating the ordeals of being millionaires and running into network standards has gotten tired. As it's mostly episodic, the show lives or dies by the episode but it's hard to deny that the show hit a lot of home runs in the back half of the season.
Young Rock (NBC)-Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has cemented his status over the past couple decades as a lovable guy. He's a self-aware hunk of beefcake and he's been relegated to action roles but his public persona has been that of an ideal celebrity. He's often talked about running for president and, while I'm sure his reasons are more noble than Trump, the last thing I want to meditate on is another celebrity president. Unfortunately, the show unironically posits that Johnson (as himself) is the 2032 candidate for president and it reeks of of self-congratulations. There's a difference between most of us liking The Rock and The Rock making a show about how he got to be so likeable. The show is also only slightly self-aware to be effective enough commentary on the relationship between celebrity and cultural/political clout.
Fortunately, that's just the framing device. Through two episodes, it's basically just a typical adolescent comedy that could easily be called "It's not easy being a jock" as the 15-year-old Dwayne Johnson is twice the side of his peers. It's moderately charming.
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