March-April Edition: What Am I Watching: Miracle Workers, Superstore, Tales from the Loop, etc

Shows I'm watching live:

1 Miracle Workers: Dark Ages (TBS). The first season was an extremely clever show from Simon Rich (Man Seeking Woman) who is an extraordinarily witty outside-the-box writer. It involved three angels (No offense, but I’m not counting Lolly Adefope’s character as part of the team, more of a last-minute convert) who are trying to work around the fact that God (Steve Buscemi) is an idiot. An errant decision of his dooms the planet Earth and the seven-episode season revolved around a two day clock. "Miracle Workers Dark Ages" uses the same sense of humor and cast but it's a completely different scenario.

Not only does the second season lack the stakes of a doomsday scenario, there’s a potential-squandering lack of direction here. Alexandra (Geraldine Viswanathan) wants to avoid the profession of her father (Steve Buscemi) Edward Shitshoveler. Within the first three episodes she leaves the profession twice only to land back at square one like a Road Runner cartoon. The next episode involves the difficulty of her brother (Jon Bass) in making friends and then there’s an episode that’s an allegory about dealing with political nut jobs at the Thanksgiving table that’s a little thin. It’s only in the last two or three episodes that an arc forms. Still, there are plenty of jokes that land and the characters are very likable. With the creative team behind this, I’m confident that this can be a great third season with a reset button.

Source: Time Magazine

2. Nora from Queens (Comedy Central)  The star vehicle for Awkwafina is about an immature late 20-something who has a really strong personality. Watching this makes me wonder how "The Farewell" could be considered a success when it squandered such a great comic talent.

Her comic personality is primarily one of childlike impatience and over-eagerness to spread her brand of fun to strangers, but she has a lot of gears she can go to. The central question of the show (it’s about a 27-year-old living at home and taxing her dad’s lifestyle) is about how to adult on your own terms. Also of note, Jennifer Eposito rocks an eccentric wardrobe and personality and shines in general as a love interest for Awkwafina’s father.

3. Superstore (NBC)-Business as usual. America Ferrera's Amy Sosa as the boss makes the show much better.

Credit: TV Line

4.Zoey's Infinite Playlist (NBC)-Jane Levy is a young computer coder who just got a promotion as a manager to a team of programmers including her best friend who has a crush on her (Skyler Astin, Pitch Perfect) and an engaged programmer she has a crush on. She also has misfortune at home because her dad (Peter Gallagher) had a stroke and is possibly terminally ill. Her chaotic home and work life are thrown for a curve when she discovers that she has the unique power to hear other people's emotions in song and that apparently the universe won't leave her alone unless she helps the people singing with their life problems. 

The show has a great cast with Mary Steenburgen as Zoey's mom and Lauren Graham as her boss. It's kind of ironic because 95% of Peter Gallagher's screentime is just sitting in a chair. Poor Peter.

The show isn't amazing and the love triangle is highly predictable (and problematic...Zoey's pretty casually ok with breaking up a marriage) but it's certainly watchable and like any musical, when the choreography and music works, it increases the rewatchability. 

6. Tales from the Loop (Amazon)-The show resembles "Wayward Pines" or "Castle Rock" in that it's a mysterious New England town [Correction: It's in Ohio, but seems very New Englandish and is actually based on concept art from Sweden] with conspiracies or scientific anomalies (in the case of the former or "Once Upon a Time") to uncover. It's mostly serialized with a "Twilight Zone" element. 

The show moves on a new level of slow and requires a conscious downshifting of gears on the part of the viewer to take it in. There's enough time to take in the scenes but there's a lot of dead space that isn''t necessary. Still, it can be chalked up to an apt stylistic choice.

"Twilight Zone"-type shows like this work through an Earth-shattering twist at the end that inverts your perception of what you thought you know and hopefully sparks a deep thought or two. The leisurely stroll of the show prevents such a dramatic twist. In the first episode, the twist occurs about halfway through the episode which is a major pacing mistake that causes the epilogue to drag on to mind-numbing lengths.

The second episode (in which two teens from different socio-economic backgrounds switch bodies) is a little more clever about misdirection but then all of a sudden a robot shows up which is neither here nor there. The main question of the plot was how the kids would react to their new lives (Answer: one of them would use it to take advantage of the other). Again, the epilogue is an answer to a question that the viewer never asked.

Slow shows take a while to click and the third episode seems to be where things fall into place. It builds on previous installment and there are multiple twists that are well-timed and build on top of one another. The third episode (two kids decide to make a forbidden romance a reality through the stopping of time) finally starts to get the hang of it.

7. Good Girls (NBC)-The first season and change had the problem of Rio being too powerful and Beth not having enough leverage. I say this often but tragedy has less of a place for my appetite in TV than in film: To watch the same character be beaten up over and over can be highly dispiriting whereas to see someone make the wrong choice and have them pay for it in a two-hour span is a fine bit of poetry. "Good Girls" started to get good when Beth started to figure out Rio and play as his equal.

For some reason, I fell off viewing this show and planned to catch up but it became more daunting as the increasing number of Season 3 episodes meant I would have to invest more hours. A week ago, I started randomly watching (because of the "Zoey's Playlist"lead-in) and found the show to be nice and easy to jump back into. The Beth vs Rio interplay is still there and grounded in a sense of healthy reality and there is sufficient side plot fodder for Annie and Ruby.

My Week in TV II: American Crime Story, Crashing, Superstore, Another Period

American Crime Story-House by the Lake
The main draw of this show was watching innocent, sweet Darren Criss try his hand at playing a cold serial killer. So far this show lacks any sort of thru-line except Criss’s character himself. Last week, “Random Killing” centered around the killing of a notable real estate magnate presented with little context as for the “why.” Andrew Cunanan was analyzed so little that it felt like we were meant to accept him as simply a deranged man without rhyme or reason. Did we make more progress into figuring out what makes him tick this week? Not yet, but the season is long enough that we have reason to think that the show will at least attempt to mine that territory.
In the interim, this week was a thrill of a ride that seemed unpromising at the first commercial break because it seemed like the episode tipped its hand early. These episodes seem most fun when those around Andrew don’t know he’s a serial killer so I wasn’t sure why I wanted to keep watching once that was done with. I even turned off the episode at that point, but when I returned a couple days later, I realized how wrong I was.

The episode resumed into a tense hostage situation with Andrew taking his reluctant friend/lover- and witness to the murder number one – on the road with him. Why doesn’t David scream for help and run for cover at the diner? Why doesn’t he wait until Andrew is sleeping to make a phone call? All we can say in the wake of David’s tragic end is that hindsight is 20/20.

Like past episodes, the series does an excellent job of spotlighting the tragic nature of living in this community regardless of whether they’re being hunted by a serial killer or not. The way they seek love on the DL makes them more vulnerable to being taken advantage of and the errant looks of passersby invites suspicion no matter what.

Another Period-The Olympics
This show has haphazardly thrown every famous person Helen Keller to Harriett Tubman to Sigmeund Freud to Thomas Edison to Scott Joplin into the circle of the Bellacourts regardless of plausibility. It reeks just a little of stunt casting but that’s generally a complaint to make when such stunts aren’t effective. In these cases, the intersection of the famed historic book cutout with the Bellacourts has presented an opportunity for pointed social satire: Like musicians today, the show posits that Joplin was likely aided by his historic rise through a mix of talent and being in the right place and right time promotion-wise. Similarly, the unabashed reverence that we give historical figures is challenged with Harriett Tubman and the vouyeristic possibilities that came as a result of Edison’s moving picture inventions are commented on by making Edison a snuff film pervert himself.

This week it’s Adolf Hitler. He’s derided by some critics as an easy joke target and that same school of thought translates to putting him in a historical fiction comedy. Aside from my preference for the show to focus on American figures (they jive better with this show’s take on the origins of American excess), there’s nothing much they do with him other than make him play the “who would you kill if you could go back in history game?” and, oh yes, they do give his hatred for Jews an origin story. But still, there’s nothing particularly sharp about it. On the bright side, it is a return for Brett Gelman as the shady lower class squall Hamish who apparently is a friend of the doctor. As a Jew, I can tell you that the praying they do before the Shabbat dinner is authentic Hebrew.

In other news, the incest plot between Freddie and Beatriz sister sort of gets resolved but sort of doesn’t. For my money, this thread seems like a remnant of the show’s early days when they were all over the place tonally and this is one of their ickier ideas. There’s also an archery competition which returns Helen Keller and Lillian who’s not as nasty to her fellow woman as usual. That job belongs to Brian Huskey’s character who’s gay repression has made him angrier and angrier and if seeing him get ANGRY tickles your funny bone, you might like this B-plot.

More of my writings on Another Period

Crashing-Pete and Leif/Bill Burr (Season 2 Episode 2, Season 2 Episode 3)-
There’s significantly more wiggle room in Pete Holmes approach to the rapidly oversaturating genre of comedians playing themselves when one considers that few comedians are as wet behind the ears as the Pete Holmes character. The format of using an audience surrogate who’s naïve and sweet allows us to witness all the freedom and decadence of the comedian lifestyle with enough distance that the audience is freed from complicitness.

In the season’s second episode, Pete sleeps with a woman who’s not his wife for the first time and, like many of Pete’s other misadventures, the differing view between Pete and Ally over “what last night meant” is a wake-up call that Pete is woefully unprepared for modern city life. It’s a mostly harmless encounter (I might be wrong, maybe he’ll be in therapy for this all the way through Season 4, who knows?). The distance between Pete and his friends is highlighted by the fact that his friends are much happier than he is that he slept with Ally. Also worth noting, Ally ( Jamie Lee ) looks a helluva lot like Pete’s first wife (Pete the character, that is) Lauren Lapkus that the casting doesn’t seem coincidental here.

Questions of Pete’s masculine identity are once again challenged by his host of the week Bill Burr. I have no idea who Burr (question of the week: does anyone know what Bill Burr is famous for? Does anyone want to save me the trip to IMDB?) so f--- him because he’s more toxic than Artie Lange in continually trying to turn Pete into something he’s not: a man’s man. Then again, Burr’s not that mad at Pete for his screw-up of the week, so it evens out. Although people repeatedly screwing up in epic ways is the hallmark of much of sitcom comedy, this show is too sweet to do that to its protagonist and that’s part of the charm. It’s also revealed somewhere in that Pete Holmes has a new gig as a warm-up comic for Dr. Oz so it looks like he’s at least gotten a second chance which is fitting for a show about second chances.

More on Crashing

Superstore-Groundhog Day
My general assessment of this show has been that it’s a bit overrated but it has its moments. Also some dead weight in Glenn (a waste of Mark McKinney’s talents) and Dena but this is an episode with minimal amounts of those two so that’s a plus. In fact, this was really a great episode all-around with plenty happening on the sidelines to give this place the feel of a hang-out show that it achieves in its finest moments. Jonah and Kelly handling of the announcements (with Sandra as a special guest) is the epitome of workplace goofiness that many with semi-fond experiences in the retail sector (if you were lucky enough to have a boss or two who granted you a little leeway) can relate to. Also worth asking, did anyone else see the lack of build-up to Jonah and Kelly’s romance as a missed opportunity? The show could have used just a few ounces of courtship.

While Kelly and Josh provide some levity, Garrett’s promotion provides a little impetus for self-examination. How much do the people in a place like this crave upward mobility? Most of us can relate to having worked a job like this and simultaneously wishing to be the boss while not wanting the responsibilities of the extra paperwork or coming in to the store early as the key holder. Even bigger question here: Does the show really expect us to believe that intellectually curious egghead Jonah would be content at this job for this long? When I worked at a movie theater or a tea store, the college educated kids would generally be in and out the door in a few months as they used the job as a place holder for the next big thing.

Lastly, there’s the central plot: Amy getting back in the dating scene. The plot nicely uses light-hearted comedy to approach serious challenges in the female dating experience like slut-shaming and objectification. There’s also the more universal issue of the complexities of workplace dating. Also worth noting here, I just noticed that Tate is played by Australian comedy star Josh Lawson of “House of Lies”, “Anchorman 2” and is an amazing improviser. I also just found out while looking at the photo of the Academy Awards Luncheon that Lawson got Oscar nominated this past month for his short film . Congrats!