When someone asks, “Hey, have you seen XXXXXX XXXXX yet?” I have two responses: “I did, and …” or “It’s on my list.” I actually have a pretty long list, managed by a lovely Reelgood queue. Since I’m finally able to process and absorb stuff again*, I’ve been going along and clearing off items at a normal (read: not glued to the couch) pace.
* For a very long while, my depression kept me from being able to watch any new movie or TV show and actually process what I had watched — not even from a critical perspective, but just from a viewer’s mode. For a good six months through the middle of lockdown, all I could watch were RiffTrax films and THE VENTURE BROS.
TOKYO VICE (MAX, two seasons, 18 episodes total)
Sensational. It takes a really astute writing team to make the viewer so invested with the lead character actually yell at the screen when said character is doing something amazingly foolish. I didn’t want to look at the source material until after the show, but Jake Edelstein (unsurprisingly) looks nothing like Ansel Elgort. What the real Edelstein did is no less amazing than what the show depicted. Hellaciously good.
SHŌGUN (FX/Hulu, 10 episodes total)
Watching this around the same time as TOKYO VICE was a lovely little bit of synchronicity. Japanese culture is so lush and gorgeous in a way that American society can never approximate. It’s also amazingly brutal and constantly at war with its past, which is something both VICE and SHŌGUN illustrate extremely well.
I have very little memory of the 1982 miniseries based on Clavell’s novel — only that it was “must-watch TV” in the same way ROOTS and LONESOME DOVE were. I have no idea how much detail the original miniseries had when it came to period accuracy in Japan, but this version from Rachel Kondo and Michael De Luca is just … well, to this gaijin, it’s flawless. I’ll absolutely revisit it.
FALLOUT (Amazon, one season so far)
I haven’t played video games since high school. Never owned a console (the other kids had Atari and Nintendo systems, and I sucked when I went to their houses and tried to play). So, I have no frame of reference when it comes to series like THE LAST OF US or FALLOUT — for me, that’s a good thing, because I don’t have a frame of reference on what the show did right or wrong in the adaptation.
And now, I want to grill a gamer about how much the game FALLOUT added to this series, because the world-building is so incredibly solid. This series just grabbed me by the nose and refused to let go. Some series, like SHOGUN, I do not want to binge, because I need to let it sit and marinate for a bit in my brain. With FALLOUT, I could not wait to hit “Play Next Episode” because the central mysteries were so compelling. Glad it’s renewed for a second season, and I hate that it’ll be a couple of years until we get it.
SUGAR (Apple, five episodes total)
Midway through this short-run. I love film noir, and Mark Protosevich obviously does as well. You should always be leery of “a modern take on …” kinds of reimaginings, but SUGAR delivers on that promise in a big way (even though there’s a little bit of cheeky referencing of noir flashed occasionally - Mark, believe me, we get it). Farrell is fantastic, as usual. This is one I need to marinate with, so I’m watching an ep every other night.
THEM (Amazon, two seasons, 18 episodes)
I love horror. Whether it’s cheesetastic Eighties drive-in fare, or psychological piledrivers (I still posit that WHIPLASH is a horror film, and every person who has played in a band will agree with me), I love the places horror can take the viewer’s mind.
Being said, I still don’t know what to make of THEM. Watched both seasons, and by the end of the second, I was almost hate-watching to get through the finale. The series’ creators, Little Marvin and Lena Waithe, are adept at baking a lot of phenomenal social commentary into each scene… but there were times when it felt like the story had to wear too many hats. Multi-generational trauma has also been used elsewhere as an inflection point with black horror (I’m thinking of LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, and I know there’s others)… I dunno. Wanted to like this a lot more than I did.
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY (Paramount, five seasons, finale coming in five weeks)
I have tried to eat healthier in the last few years. Between my various health issues, and my age, I need to eat a lot less food that I know in my clogged arteries is bad for me, and will cause me intestinal distress down the road. However, dammit, every year, I find myself in a McDonalds drive-thru ordering a fucking Big Mac, because I love that initial taste of (Thousand Island dressing) sauce and fries.
This is the way I feel about STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.
The characters of DISCOVERY keep me coming back, season after season, because I dig them so much. The actors, as well - Martin-Green, Jones, Wiseman, Rapp, Cruz, del Barrio, Clutts - are all top-notch. (My love of Mary Wiseman is well-documented, and we do not deserve to be breathing the same oxygen as Doug Jones.)
However, dammit, every single season since S2, the MacGuffin simply has to be this thing that will destroy all life in the galaxy unless we stop it. By midway through the season, invariably, I’m watching the episode and asking myself “why”? And I’ll hate-watch the rest, because I’m a completist, and all the while I can hear Larry Young of Dork Court laughing at me from a thousand miles away, because his problems with Alex Kurtzman’s stewardship of the Trekiverse go far deeper than mine.
POKER FACE (Peacock, one season so far)
I love Natasha Lyonne. I love Rian Johnson. I love COLUMBO. Naturally, you put all three of these things together, and there is no way in hell I would dislike anything in this series. Not every episode was a banger (you can probably skip “The Future Of The Sport,” if you’re pressed for time), but they’re all compelling to a decent degree. Happy that it’s renewed for a second season.
I still want to know what your brain thought about Blue Eye Samurai, the world needs to know.