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.
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