binge watching

Lunchtable TV Talk: Difficult People & Casual

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In typical gluttonous fashion (for me), I inhaled all of the first seasons of both Difficult People and Casual within the last week (among other things). My conclusion, at first, was that Hulu is the platform for “bad humans” – the unlikable, negative, snarky types that we imagine we ourselves are not but enjoying watching in others (as long as they are not real and in our own daily lives). We enjoy seeing both their snark and sarcasm (which seems funny and sometimes smart/incisive) but also their failures and falls (which seems both relatable and also a-long-time-coming for people who are so unpleasant). I’d include The Mindy Project in this Hulu-based conglomeration of self-centered character comedy (even if I would not call all these things strictly comedy, and even though Mindy started on network TV, was canceled and snapped up by Hulu, which has arguably improved the show, in my opinion). But then I would be remiss if I did not state that Hulu isn’t the exclusive refuge of damaged-people comedramedy. You can get your fill of that kind of stuff all over the place – You’re the Worst is probably the best example, and one of the endurance runners (it’s back with its third season at the end of August). These kinds of shows take a while to catch on, if they do at all. This might be why they find their homes on non-network platforms, like Hulu.

These initial impressions, though, aren’t quite the whole picture. It’s a pretty obvious statement, but people are rarely, if ever, just bad, negative, bitter, cruel, difficult to the core just because they can be. Our protagonists in Difficult People clearly have family issues, and when we see how these unfold, we can see why the main characters are as damaged and making-light-of-it as they are/do. I watched Difficult People and enjoyed it (but was perhaps not as enamored of it as I should have been because I was also defrosting my freezer at the same time, which should have been an hour-long job that turned into an eight-hour ordeal). I guess it’s not necessary to be able to relate to the characters for a show to be good or enough – for example, on some abstract level I could relate to ‘protagonist’ Julie’s neuroses and self-involvement after seeing her mother. But real people, were Julie real, might gain some self-awareness from this kind of thing. She might not go on to railroad and take for granted her long-suffering, PBS-employee boyfriend, Arthur (the brilliant James Urbaniak). (I could be wrong, of course – I have plenty of acquaintances who are completely blind and lacking in self-awareness.)

Her best friend, Billy (our other ‘protagonist’) is the only person she confides in, does not take for granted, never criticizes, is supportive of… and there is some relatability in that, but not enough.

For me, the first season of Difficult People was quite entertaining, but ‘not enough’, which is not the most descriptive or resounding praise. It had a few twists that showed real glimmers of satisfying brilliance (for example, the dog-park con, the child menu restaurant, simultaneously breaking into the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme song, which is fitting considering that the show is a nod to Curb’s misanthropy). Despite not being quite enough in its first act, I am looking forward to seeing what its second act offers.

I expected Casual to be something along the same lines – comedy with a dash of humanity, all mixed up with some snarky sarcasm and unpleasant people. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not what I expected. At the risk of sounding hokey, I found myself moved in one way or another in almost every episode in Casual’s first season.

I, like most, had only seen Michaela Watkins, one of the series’ leads, in comedic and mostly in roles as the crazy/annoying/weird neighbor/ex-wife, etc. I’d never seen her be a lead, much less in a semi-dramatic role. She brings a sense of reality and vulnerability to the role of Valerie; you like her even when she’s making a mess of things and root for her, knowing what she has been through. She is very human, very feeling, eminently fallible, but always doing her best. In Casual, we meet Valerie just after her divorce (her husband has cheated on her with a younger woman, and Watkins channels just the right amount of pain-as-bitterness to reflect this), when she and her teenage daughter, Laura, have moved in with Valerie’s brother, Alex. Both Valerie and Alex are successful people, but their personal and emotional lives are a mess; it’s clear that they have a very close sibling relationship and, as becomes clear over the course of the first series, have had to rely on each other thanks to their flaky non-parenting parents.

Casual made me laugh, actually made me cry a couple of times, and on the whole, was enough because it spoke to me on many levels, because it had a bittersweet quality to it, because it could embrace cynicism without being caustic, because it was imperfect and still beautiful.

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Night Shift

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Sometimes the stuff television offers feels like it’s churned out on a conveyor belt in a factory. Some time ago I watched the previous season(s) of The Night Shift, about a bunch of doctors working the – duh – overnight shift in a Texas hospital. It was not anything special – in fact when I picked up watching the latest season, I did not even remember that there had already been two, not one, seasons. But… I still kept watching.

Between seasons of The Night Shift, I started watching the Chicago juggernaut (Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D.). Not only did Chicago Med (and all its gratuitous crossovers into the other Chicago properties) wash away all memory of The Night Shift, when The Night Shift returned, it felt and seemed a lot less interesting than it had been because it was a lot like watching more Chicago Med, only with characters I no longer remembered or recognized. (Weirder still, they are all on NBC in the US, so… burnout, anyone?

Despite the American appetite for medical, legal and cop shows, I’d think the idea of getting lost in the oversaturation of the theme(s) would be enough reason to look at different topics. I don’t know – despite the “danger” in being lost in a sea of sameness, people keep introducing new shows in the same mold, and some catch on while others don’t. I don’t know why. I tried to watch Code Black, but holy shit – I could not even get through one episode (it seemed badly miscast), but it was renewed – multiple times, maybe. I thought Monday Mornings was a good premise, and I liked it, but it didn’t last and its decent cast landed elsewhere (e.g., Jamie Bamber had a great turn in the deeply unsettling but immensely satisfying British crime drama, Marcella, and prolific and interactive Tweeter – she seems exceedingly generous with her time – Jennifer Finnigan is a lead in Tyrant). I thought a Jennifer Beals-led medical-supernatural drama, Proof, was overegged, and it too was canceled. Go figure.

The Night Shift, being rather lacklustre and lacking in any real hook, seemed like it might suffer a similar fate. Maybe watching Scott Wolf be an alcoholic surgeon “working the steps” (in The Night Shift) rather than Oliver Platt being a particularly intuitive psychiatrist (in Chicago Med) is the kind of thing that makes the difference. I don’t know. It’s not like either show is must-see… it’s just that this is what is on in the background as I am working on a million other things. It takes something really remarkable to make me look up from my work and pay close attention (and there are very few of those things right now).

Lunchtable TV Talk: Burnistoun

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Watching the very Glasgow, very Scottish Burnistoun has been a bit spooky, as many of the sketches model near-exact conversations I have had, situations I have been in and linguistic bits I’ve noted. So many of the things I’ve long enjoyed and laughed at in everyday Scottish life, the Burnistoun sketches and their creators, Robert Florence and Iain Connell, have captured in comedic hyper-reality. It speaks for itself (or “itsel”, as the Glaswegians would say, because who needs the final “f”!). Just watch! Love love love.

(Makes me think of gone-Hollywood Gerard Butler and our discussions on how “Gerard” is pronounced GER-ard in Scotland and ger-ARD in the US)

(Hilarious take-off of TV historian-personality Neil Oliver, his dramatic delivery while the wind blows his flowing mane; something I’ve also long been having a laugh at.)

(Voice recognition lift in Scotland. Good luck with that!)

(Nae rolls! When all you wanted was a wee roll and sausage!)

(Kenny Rogers impersonators: “That’s the Kenny Rogers I’m gonna marry!” Actually, after all the work the real Kenny Rogers has had done, these impersonators look more like the real Kenny Rogers…)

Lunchtable TV Talk: Motive

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TV is a lot richer in summer these days than it used to be – we got a few seasons of some exciting new stuff, whole seasons of Orange is the New Black and BoJack Horseman on Netflix and quite a lot of “off-season” (if you can really even call it that any more) filler to carry us through until fall. In fact, you could almost argue that spring and summer bring some of the best stuff now. There are no boundaries to prime release time for TV shows (and, as I have argued, can you even call them “tv shows” any more, seeing as how they may fit the format but aren’t broadcast on any network and can be inhaled one full season at a time?

Because of that, addicts like me are spoiled – and never have to go through the withdrawals that generally accompanied the dry season of summer. Still, though, nothing is so abundant that I don’t end up seeking out filler beyond the filler I was already watching.

That’s how I ended up watching Motive. My mom told me about it, and apparently had been telling me about it for some time since I still claimed never to have heard of it when it was heading into its fourth season. Maybe because it’s Canadian and didn’t last in its big US network broadcast slot (and was eventually moved to USA), it was not a big title. Nevertheless, just before the fourth season kicked off, I watched all three of the preceding seasons. Why? Reason one: nothing much else to watch that weekend while I was busy with other things; reason two: Louis Ferreira. Who is he, you ask? Well, the only reasons I know and like him: he was Colonel Young in Stargate Universe (the only one in that franchise I cared for, largely because of Robert Carlyle) and was in Breaking Bad. There are worse reasons for watching a show. Reason three: I liked the idea of already knowing the crime and finding out the motive.

Oddly, for a Canadian police mostly-procedural, I have been pretty entertained. I raced through and didn’t pay rapt attention, so I can’t cite plot points or anything particularly notable. But I saw a lot of standard Canadian-actor extras and Battlestar Galactica alums, which is also fun. I didn’t remember at first that the lead, Kristin Lehman, had been a key supporting player in The Killing, which was also good – I like her a lot better in Motive as detective Angie Flynn. In fact, I came to like her a lot, and it’s the easy chemistry between Lehman’s and Ferreira’s characters that make the show as watchable as it has been. That is, chemistry based on deep friendship and respect between colleagues, not sexual tension or something similar. You don’t see that much on TV. In very subtle ways, stuff about Motive is different, and is why I keep watching.

Photo (c) 2014 Michalis Famelis.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Feed the Beast

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Feed the Beast is one of those kinds of shows that could go either way. Based on a loosely classified ‘Nordic Noir’ Danish show (Bankerot) about a restaurant and the criminal underworld around it, it could have been quite a vehicle for storytelling and talent. It also appears on AMC, which has a history of mostly quality hits rather than misses (with a few exceptions, of course). But then, even though the show is watchable, it feels like it is always on the edge of comedy, and I don’t think it is supposed to. Maybe this is because everyone in the show feels like a caricature.

First and foremost, David Schwimmer plays, Tommy, a slightly angrier, more bitter and grief-stricken version of whiny, pathetic Ross from Friends. It’s not that he is incapable of something else – it’s just that this role requires it. And we know from the 12 or so years of Friends that he has mastered that role (incidentally I read an interesting take on Friends’ Ross and how he – and how he was treated and turned into a kind of cartoon – mirrors the way society treats and views intellectuals. And Schwimmer is probably underrated in general; as far as I was concerned, his performance in The People vs. OJ Simpson – as Robert Kardashian – was one of the highlights of that program). In any case, despite Schwimmer’s capability, his presence in a role that so closely matched the Ross role on some levels distracts and inevitably leads the Friends-soaked brain to scream out: “comedy”.

Tommy’s best friend, a low-level conman – and chef – “Dion” (an effective Jim Sturgess), who “bobs and weaves” his way through life, also feels comedic, mostly because his egregious actions don’t seem to lead to real consequences. Sure, he went to prison, but in his own estimation, he enjoyed it there because he got to cook. When he crosses bad guys, he gets a beat down, but nothing he doesn’t just walk away from. He keeps getting chances – and maybe that is what I find unbelievable, even if in real life I see people who get more chances than they deserve and more chances than I can count. It is not unrealistic at all; it just seems that way to me because my own view of the world is linear, and I am not a conman who counts on wriggling and wiggling my way out of every scrape. (And of course these scrapes the character gets into are all his own making; all get worse because of his propensity for piling shit on shit and promise on promise – none of which he can keep.)

The two friends reunite and open a restaurant, Thirio (‘the beast’, apparently, in Greek), which had been their dream along with Tommy’s deceased wife, Rie. This explains Tommy’s grief and anger – and increasing alcoholism, which he tries badly to mask (with his career as sommelier); the only thing keeping him going at all is his son, who has not spoken a word since his mother died.

Naturally the restaurant opening is much easier said than done and ends up involving Dion’s connections and obligations to underworld criminals (the main one is played by Michael Gladis, who is best known as Paul Kinsey from Mad Men – a character who always struck me as near-caricature tragicomedy, which contributes to my feeling about Feed the Beast) and Tommy’s racist, hateful father (to whom he has not spoken since sometime before he even got married). It all makes for what could be a compelling story – but it never quite does. I keep watching because I do get drawn in; yet, it’s never quite as good as it could be. I suspect this is because of this aforementioned hint of comedy I keep getting the scent of (and shouldn’t be).

Lunchtable TV Talk: iZombie

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It’s no secret that I keep track of and write about a lot of my gluttonous overconsumption of television. I don’t write about everything I watch because some of it is not worth writing about, and some of it, like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, have been written about and analyzed to death. I’m not really interested in picking at the bones that remain of the overconsumed shows. I love them, anxiously wait for them, but I don’t have much to add to the discussion.

It’s the shows that people don’t watch and pick apart, those under-the-radar entertainment bits, that I sometimes feel an urge to write about. Often when I am surprised that I find myself watching a certain show (and liking it), it makes sense.

Recently I ran out of things to watch (summer is tv doldrums – with some highlights, but largely not as robust as other times), and scrolled through a number of “best things you aren’t watching” lists, many of which listed iZombie as a good choice. I had misconceptions about the show, much as I would about any show focused on zombies (a concept I am not fond of), and was pleasantly entertained when I finally did dig in and watch all of it. I don’t find the performances that compelling (they’re normal) but the inside jokes and references – and the Seattle setting – which too was part of the joke, as it is sometimes very obviously Vancouver, which they take no pains to hide (at least the cars have Washington plates) – kept me pushing “play” on episode after episode.

But that’s it – it’s mildly clever, pleasant … and not something I can summarize or from which I can pick out some unique aspect. (OH! Except that they mentioned Celtic FC of Glasgow, and what other American tv show would ever do that?) And, that, my friends, is probably the point. The show holds up a mirror: are we not all zombies, overfeeding on mindless tv and other vacuous entertainment (while the rest of the world burns down), despite not being “hungry”?

Photo (c) 2013 Mike Mozart.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Maron

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I don’t know of anything better than a certain self-deprecating humor, the likes of which Marc Maron has mastered in his podcast and further on his TV show, Maron. I binge-watched all four seasons in two days (could not stop), and read just as I slid into season 4 that the episodes shown this week would be the last ever. It did feel fitting and perfect, ending on his terms, well before some ho-hum inertia, repetition or dullness set in.

I think what gripped me about Maron is how the somewhat unusual parts, which appear in every episode, are still relatable. I was shocked to find how many times the plot points mirrored things that happened in my friends’ and acquaintances’ lives.

Cases in point:

  • A colleague forced an elderly, dying hamster on another colleague and then dodged her phone calls when she was trying to call and ask him about this sickly hamster. In the end she took the hamster to a veterinarian and had to spend about 200 USD to put the hamster down humanely.
  • A man I used to know was secretly living in his storage unit/garage. He built a loft inside. I did not know for a long time that he lived in a storage space, so was surprised when he drunkenly phoned me one night and reported that he had somehow fallen out of bed… onto the hood of his truck?! It sounded logistically impossible until I later learned he was sleeping in a loft above his vehicles.

I could continue this list but it’s useless. I only want to illustrate that there is something both real but unreal about Maron, and this is its perfect imperfection … and why it was utterly addictive.

(And, my god, who doesn’t love the cats?)

No half measures: Overmuch Maron & hula time

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It seems I cannot watch any tv show without bingeing on it. Very late to the party, I started watching Maron – and am already halfway through. Maron, though, is worth the binge.

Something shorter, like BBC’s Upstart Crow… also worth the binge. Quite funny in that Brit comedy kind of way (which I don’t care for unless I am in the right frame of mind).

Something like Canadian crime show, Motive. Not as worthy, but even that I sat sucking up episode after episode.

In between I pick up new episodes of Tyrant or the very promising The Night Of.

Yet still can’t avoid crap.

There are many ubiquitous things I keep seeing, each time annoying me more. Even the compulsive viewing of Maron doesn’t keep me from seeing the endless nonsense about PokémonGO (Chuck D of Public Enemy fame even tweeted, “If you LOVE POKE MAN go and buy yourself a adult diaper too.”).

I also have not avoided the tiresome tedium of Taylor Swift/Tom Hiddleston/Calvin Harris. All I can say to that: Who gives a fuck? And yet this makes headlines.

Puke. Time for some Tahitian hits. Childhood hula lesson memories, inspired by a Tweet from Marc Maron.

 

Binge fatigue

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After mainlining seven seasons of The West Wing in less than a week, I did not experience “binge fatigue” because, despite the length of the show, almost every episode was of the kind of quality that I never felt a lag. Each season had its arc and pace, and the scope was limited to one full, two-term presidency and a couple of election cycles.

Despite being pleasantly surprised by the content of other shows, like Person of Interest, I find (now nearing the end of season 4) that I am feeling the fatigue. Some episodes of POI are better than others, and since Taraji P. Henson’s character was killed off, there is a definite void.

I wonder what it is that makes the fatigue set in in some shows and not others? Or is the fatigue endemic to the binge-watching process?