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TV Post-season Review: Short Shots
Jun. 15th, 2020 11:55 amKilling Eve (available on BBC America and AMC)
Solid season for The Continuing Adventures of Villanelle, but there's a problem with this "Eve" character hanging around the margins, moping about a husband who should have been written out a year ago. Some people say this "Eve" could be the main character of her own show, but since the writers hardly seem interested in her, I tend to doubt it.
Main thesis of the season seems to be that mothers well and truly suck, what with Oksana's toxic bio-mom (you really can't go home again), her nag of a surrogate mom (bye, Dasha!), and Carolyn Martens treating her poor, grieving daughter like an unwanted pizza delivery. (For the record: Konstantin sucks too, but he knows he sucks, and at least has a sense of humor about it.)
The central mystery of the season--Kenny's murder--was solved in an infuriatingly lazy and offhand manner. The workings of the Twelve were so boring, even Carolyn stopped caring about it. At best, a transitional season; at worst, the writers have no idea how to push this series forward. Maybe Phoebe Waller-Bridge needs to step back in here.
Killing Eve S3: C+
Quiz (available on AMC)
A replay of the game show scandal that riveted England in 2001-- a British military officer charged with cheating his way to a million pound payoff on Who Wants to Be a Milloinaire? It sounds can't miss, and with a great director like Stephen Frears in charge, it should pop with vivid, delightful characters. But it doesn't. Frears' approach is shockingly workmanlike; the characters just seem to lie there, and Frears never makes the social context of the scandal interesting.
The only person who's having fun is Michael Sheen as Millionaire host Chris Tarrant; he's pure British ham, playing to the audience both inside and outside the drama. (He even gets to show off his dance moves in a fantasy musical number.) Without Sheen, this would have been a long three hours.
Quiz: C+
What We Do in the Shadows (available on Hulu)
In every great comedy series, there's a moment when you feel everything come together; the characters all click on an individual basis, and generate huge laughs bouncing off each other's idiosyncrasies. Season 2 was WWDITS coming into its own, solidifying as a great comedic ensemble with top notch writing and quality guest stars (Haley Joel Osment, Mark Hamill) blending in seamlessly.
My favorite was energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), who made a meal out of trolling his gullible vampire roomies and feasting on his hapless employees at work. But honestly, you could pick out any member of the cast and run down great moments. (Jackie Daytona! Creepy Nadja doll! Nandor/Laszlo ho-yay! Laszlo and Nadja do 'A Mighty Wind'!)
But Harvey Guillen's Guillermo owned this season. His transformation from put-upon familiar to fearsome vampire slayer was perfectly executed (sorry), and his throwdown at the Theatre des Vampires was the greatest exhibition of slayage since the glory days of Buffy. (If Joss Whedon is still going ahead with the reboot, he should crib Guillermo's 360 degree holy water spray of death.)
Brilliant.
WWDITS Season 2: A
Final Space (available on Cartoon Network)
An engaging animated cosmic adventure series in the Guardians of the Galaxy mold, with just enough weird characters and moments of intense emotional pain to make it interesting, and too many clichés keeping it from being great.
Season Two is best when it focuses on the loneliness and emotional isolation of its characters. The loss of Quinn at the end of S1 haunts Gary the entire season. I like the almost cruel sci-fi spin on the Gary/Nightfall relationship: each is a version of the person the other loves, but neither one is exactly that person. Claudia Black is her usual, badass self as Gary's mercenary thief of a mother, trying to piece together the life she destroyed thirty years before.
Still, there's a lot of boilerplate here, and it drags down the stronger material. Series creator Olan Rogers plays Gary Goodspeed(!) as a Starlord-type wisecracking manchild, with Quinn/Nightfall as his Gamora. Ash is a Phoenix-type flame throwing force of nature. There are too many cute, blobby creatures/wacky robots/snarky AIs floating around, and you can feel the series strain trying to squeeze them all in.
The truly inspired character here is Tribore (Rogers again), a green, six-eyed Resistance leader with a slight lisp and an enormous ego. He's apparently a great resistance fighter (although I'm not exactly sure who he's fighting), but he's more interested in achieving the look of a great leader: intense stares, heroic stances, and above all, forward-looking fashion. A few seconds of Tribore cuts through the space opera better than a full episode of Gary's exasperated quipping.
Final Space Season 2: B
Man with a Plan (no longer available anywhere)
Is there a place on TV for an average sitcom?
Matt LeBlanc's Man with a Plan was never going to win any awards. It was the prototypical family sitcom with the manly dad trying to navigate modern married life, his much sharper wife (Liza Snyder), his doofy brother (and his nagging wife), the gruff dad and the world weary mother. It had a murderer's row of comic/character actors (Kevin Nealon, Kali Rocha, Stacey Keach, Swoosie Kurtz) as backup and used a fraction of their talent.
All the characters were fairly agreeable. There were a few good laughs. LeBlanc still had a way with comic exasperation when his character was in way over his head.
There was absolutely nothing original here. After four seasons, the final episode aired last week, and it'll be forgotten a year from now. Yes, it seems wasteful to spend so much money on something so vanilla. But there are worse ways to kill 30 minutes. Is that so bad?
Man with a Plan (full series): B-
Solid season for The Continuing Adventures of Villanelle, but there's a problem with this "Eve" character hanging around the margins, moping about a husband who should have been written out a year ago. Some people say this "Eve" could be the main character of her own show, but since the writers hardly seem interested in her, I tend to doubt it.
Main thesis of the season seems to be that mothers well and truly suck, what with Oksana's toxic bio-mom (you really can't go home again), her nag of a surrogate mom (bye, Dasha!), and Carolyn Martens treating her poor, grieving daughter like an unwanted pizza delivery. (For the record: Konstantin sucks too, but he knows he sucks, and at least has a sense of humor about it.)
The central mystery of the season--Kenny's murder--was solved in an infuriatingly lazy and offhand manner. The workings of the Twelve were so boring, even Carolyn stopped caring about it. At best, a transitional season; at worst, the writers have no idea how to push this series forward. Maybe Phoebe Waller-Bridge needs to step back in here.
Killing Eve S3: C+
Quiz (available on AMC)
A replay of the game show scandal that riveted England in 2001-- a British military officer charged with cheating his way to a million pound payoff on Who Wants to Be a Milloinaire? It sounds can't miss, and with a great director like Stephen Frears in charge, it should pop with vivid, delightful characters. But it doesn't. Frears' approach is shockingly workmanlike; the characters just seem to lie there, and Frears never makes the social context of the scandal interesting.
The only person who's having fun is Michael Sheen as Millionaire host Chris Tarrant; he's pure British ham, playing to the audience both inside and outside the drama. (He even gets to show off his dance moves in a fantasy musical number.) Without Sheen, this would have been a long three hours.
Quiz: C+
What We Do in the Shadows (available on Hulu)
In every great comedy series, there's a moment when you feel everything come together; the characters all click on an individual basis, and generate huge laughs bouncing off each other's idiosyncrasies. Season 2 was WWDITS coming into its own, solidifying as a great comedic ensemble with top notch writing and quality guest stars (Haley Joel Osment, Mark Hamill) blending in seamlessly.
My favorite was energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), who made a meal out of trolling his gullible vampire roomies and feasting on his hapless employees at work. But honestly, you could pick out any member of the cast and run down great moments. (Jackie Daytona! Creepy Nadja doll! Nandor/Laszlo ho-yay! Laszlo and Nadja do 'A Mighty Wind'!)
But Harvey Guillen's Guillermo owned this season. His transformation from put-upon familiar to fearsome vampire slayer was perfectly executed (sorry), and his throwdown at the Theatre des Vampires was the greatest exhibition of slayage since the glory days of Buffy. (If Joss Whedon is still going ahead with the reboot, he should crib Guillermo's 360 degree holy water spray of death.)
Brilliant.
WWDITS Season 2: A
Final Space (available on Cartoon Network)
An engaging animated cosmic adventure series in the Guardians of the Galaxy mold, with just enough weird characters and moments of intense emotional pain to make it interesting, and too many clichés keeping it from being great.
Season Two is best when it focuses on the loneliness and emotional isolation of its characters. The loss of Quinn at the end of S1 haunts Gary the entire season. I like the almost cruel sci-fi spin on the Gary/Nightfall relationship: each is a version of the person the other loves, but neither one is exactly that person. Claudia Black is her usual, badass self as Gary's mercenary thief of a mother, trying to piece together the life she destroyed thirty years before.
Still, there's a lot of boilerplate here, and it drags down the stronger material. Series creator Olan Rogers plays Gary Goodspeed(!) as a Starlord-type wisecracking manchild, with Quinn/Nightfall as his Gamora. Ash is a Phoenix-type flame throwing force of nature. There are too many cute, blobby creatures/wacky robots/snarky AIs floating around, and you can feel the series strain trying to squeeze them all in.
The truly inspired character here is Tribore (Rogers again), a green, six-eyed Resistance leader with a slight lisp and an enormous ego. He's apparently a great resistance fighter (although I'm not exactly sure who he's fighting), but he's more interested in achieving the look of a great leader: intense stares, heroic stances, and above all, forward-looking fashion. A few seconds of Tribore cuts through the space opera better than a full episode of Gary's exasperated quipping.
Final Space Season 2: B
Man with a Plan (no longer available anywhere)
Is there a place on TV for an average sitcom?
Matt LeBlanc's Man with a Plan was never going to win any awards. It was the prototypical family sitcom with the manly dad trying to navigate modern married life, his much sharper wife (Liza Snyder), his doofy brother (and his nagging wife), the gruff dad and the world weary mother. It had a murderer's row of comic/character actors (Kevin Nealon, Kali Rocha, Stacey Keach, Swoosie Kurtz) as backup and used a fraction of their talent.
All the characters were fairly agreeable. There were a few good laughs. LeBlanc still had a way with comic exasperation when his character was in way over his head.
There was absolutely nothing original here. After four seasons, the final episode aired last week, and it'll be forgotten a year from now. Yes, it seems wasteful to spend so much money on something so vanilla. But there are worse ways to kill 30 minutes. Is that so bad?
Man with a Plan (full series): B-
