What I'm Watching May Update: Being Erica, Flight Attendant, Winning Time, Pentaverate, Adventure Beast

 

 

Adventure Beast (Netflix)-Bradley Trevor Greive (AKA BTG) is a field zoologist who is so enthusiastic about animals, that he regularly gets mauled and nearly eaten by them on an episodic basis and does so with effective zeal. In other words, he's a pretty zany character and the actor has an easy time selling the part. After all, the character is heavily based on the actor who is an ex-Australian military paratrooper and naturalist who has appeared on Animal Planet series such as Fear Island: Fortress of the Bears and Nature's Strangest Mysteries: Solved.

BTG is joined by two extremes as his side kicks: Overly timid field assistant Dietrich and exuberant niece Bonnie. Both push the extremes of their characters for great comedic effect.

Each episode is set in a different ecosystem with solid plotting and has a semi-educational nature, as BTG spews animal trivia like he has tourette's syndrome. On the whole, it's mostly a lot of fun. HIGHLY RECOMMEND

 

Pentaverate (Hulu)-Mike Myers plays separate members of a secret cabal of five highly influential people who secretly control the world or some junk. Myers also plays a washed-up reporter investigating this titular cabal as his last big scoop. Pretty much the only non-Myers characters are Keegan Michael Key (and later Ken Jeong) as the audience surrogate who is inducted into the Pentaverate mid-series and they’re both pretty refreshing additions because we can only watch Myers ham it up so much.

Through four episodes, I’m thankful there aren’t as many characters as gross as Austin Powers’ Fat Bastard or midget humor (AKA Mini-Me) as Mike Myers has been known to go overly blue before.

The thing is I want to like Myers: His versatility on Saturday Night Live and his commitment to a comic concept is pretty admirable, and in some ways he’s pioneered comedy. However, even if he’s safely veering away from gross, the series still runs out of steam. For the deep dives that Myers does into certain topics like Eastern mysticism (The Love Guru) or, in this case, conspiracy theories, there’s a tremendous laziness in the world-building aspects of the show. Instead, it feels like an excuse to do impressions. 

Winning Time (HBO)-Possibly my favorite show of the year. This docudrama about the beginning of the Magic Johnson era is apparently completely detached from the historic story. At the same time, maybe it's better in this age of hyper scrutiny to just throw an honest attempt at documented history out the window and rely more on the "based on a true story" moniker at the start of each episode? The advantage is that it allows producer Adam McKay to tell the most exciting story his imagination can muster and it's pretty damn exciting.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

 

Being Erica (Soapnet, available on Hulu)-A woman goes back in time on an episodic basis to readjust her life so that she can’t be a failure. Let’s first clear this up: Is she really a failure? She’s 32 and unmarried and didn’t use her high-powered degree but is pretty independent anyways. Can we stop with the single-shaming?

The show is a mix of Hallmark Channel female-centered wholesomeness (with Erin Kapluk ably filling in the plucky female protagonist) and the kind of thinky what-if scenarios that populate good low-stakes science fiction.

One last thing to note:  Plot congruity might not be this show’s strong suit as the butterfly effect is treated extremely casually here. The kind of scrutiny that fans have deployed on Marty McFly’s time-travelling would just not work here. 

Flight Attendant, S1 (HBO)-Loved this black comedy about an impulsive flight attendant who's one-night stand leads to Breaking-Bad-levels of terror as the FBI, crime lords, and an enigmatic assassin are after her. The show’s efforts to evoke horror through quick-take psychological flashbacks (a bit like Homeland’s opening credits) fall a little short, but most of the show manages a lot of moving parts well. Shows where characters are trapped in humongous illicit messes of their own making are plentiful on TV and this is narrowly unique, well-paced, and enjoyable enough to stick out of that pack.

TV Recommendation: Peacock's Killing It

Two broke Floridians, Craig (Craig Robinson) and Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), team up for a contest to kill an invasive species of snakes. As the season goes on, the plot places its two protagonists within a web of the type of opportunist Floridian characters that originally showed up in Carl Hiassen or Dave Barry novels, and have now become meme-worthy.

Initially, the show seems like a pedestrian odd couple comedy with a standard hook, albeit one a bit squicky (fortunately, the serpentine death blows are mostly off screen). However, there’s a lot to appreciate with this show as the stakes increase.

Like “Superstore” or “Raising Hope”, the show aims to tell a story of the lower class, and does a superb job of translating the disparity between the haves and have-nots to solid comedy. Jillian, for instance, is an uber driver, task rabbit, snake killer, web cam star (she caters to perverts who want to watch her eat exotic foods), and rents out her cab for billboards while also helping control the snake population. In the premiere episode’s go-big-or-go-home comic set piece, Jillian tries to fulfill her Ubering and snake murdering duties at the same time while Craig is her passenger.

We also come to meet Brock (Scott MacArthur), who’s snake hunting is a side hustle to his main dream of getting YouTube famous in a Jackass sort of way.

The basis of crazy Florida stories is people getting creative in how they try to eke out a living, but perhaps there’s a deeper factor at play: These characters are painted into a corner and maybe that inequality is also the Florida way. A cursory look at the landscape when I’m in South Florida (half my family lives there) and my knowledge of the state’s tax structure, indicates a pretty individualistic society where capitalism reigns supreme.

Perhaps, the greatest strength of the series is how well the stars’ screen personas fit the story. Craig Robinson has always had a deadpan weariness that has been best exemplified in Judd Apatow comedies and “The Office” but takes it to the next level here. Despite being a little of a slacker, Daryl was someone to root for because the series splattered moments of the character’s thoughtfulness. This Craig Robinson is someone who you desperately want to give a hug.

The cleverest thing about Jillian is that she’s initially presented as so incompetent at life that she’d be classified by TV Tropes as The Load: A character that doesn’t provide any useful assets to their partners in crime like Carl Showalter in Fargo, Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars, Willie in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Buttercup in the Princess Bride, or Zaphod in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She’s entirely unfocused on the task at hand and generally has terrible instincts. However, she comes to be a sympathetic character and even a useful person without ever appearing to fundamentally transform. A lot of it has to do with how O’Doherty simply shows us different sides of the same character.