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Category Archives: Television
“Simpsons Safari” Represents the Supreme Laziness of The Simpsons’s Decline
The greatest sin of Mike Scully’s time in charge of The Simpsons — that period from season 9 to season 12 when the show fell from grace — isn’t what you might think. As I discussed on The Simpsons Show Podcast, it’s not the show’s humor, which became vastly more hit-or-miss in that four year stretch. It’s not the characters, who grew more and more flat and caricatured under Scully’s reign. It’s not the stories, which became ever more disjointed and rambling. And it’s not even the extra zaniness, which frayed whatever remained of the series’s thin tether to reality.
It’s the laziness, the sloppiness, the sense that the people making what had once been the greatest television show of all time had just kind of stopped caring.
Posted in Television, The Simpsons
Tagged Africa, Episosde Reviews, Homer Simpson, Jerkass Homer, John Swartzwelder, Mike Scully, The Simpsons Season 12
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Game of Thrones Gets Mad and Throws One Hell of a Party in “The Last of the Starks”
The good guys (so far as there are any good guys in Game of Thrones) are licking their wounds and burying their dead after the Battle of Winterfell. But after a time to mourn, there’s also a time to celebrate, and to start thinking about what tomorrow looks like, now that there is a tomorrow to think about. The first half of “The Last of the Starks” builds that festive atmosphere, one that lets our heroes bask and joke and revel in the afterglow of their victory, before whatever comes next.
Game of Thrones Slays the Stakes Amidst the Darkness of “The Long Night”
It’s the battle you’ve been waiting for over the past eight years. The White Walkers are bearing down on Winterfell; the coalition of the willing in Westeros has girded themselves for war, and a battle to end all battles is in the offing. Almost everyone we know and care about is hunkered down in the North, as the combat en masse begins and a murky, grueling, near-wordless siege of our heroes’ homeland begins.
Game of Thrones Enjoys the Last Gasps of Life Before War with “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”
It’s the night before the Battle of Winterfell, as the last few stragglers gather in the Starks’ castle before the White Walkers descend. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” picks up where the season premiere left off, offering plenty of long-awaited reunions, closing the loop on a few longstanding relationships, and giving the audience one last chance to simply hang out with these characters before the game-changing fireworks begin and the casualties start piling up.
Posted in Game of Thrones
Tagged Episode Reviews, Game of Thrones S08E02, Game of Thrones Season 8
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Game of Thrones Picks Up the Pieces and Forges New Destinies in “Winterfell”
Game of Thrones goes back to where it all began, mirroring the series’ first episode with a royal procession into the heart of Winterfell. With that reintroduction, the show is slowly but surely assembling almost all of its major characters in one place to prepare for battle against the White Walkers. But before that can happen, these strange bedfellows have to decide who to follow, who has the right to rule them (not to mention, the temperament), and who, if anyone, they’re willing to fight and die for.
Posted in Game of Thrones
Tagged Episode Reviews, Game of Thrones S08E01, Game of Thrones Season 8
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The Case for the White Walkers Winning the Game of Thrones
Predictions are a fool’s game, particularly for a show as resolutely shocking and twist-heavy as Game of Thrones. But discussions of what a show ought to do, how it might pay tribute to everything it’s shown to the series’ devotees to the point of its final season, and reach a conclusion as earned as it is satisfying, is a separate matter. As the countdown to the show’s final season and its conclusion begins in earnest, both of which have been met with no shortage of speculation, the answer to that question becomes as clear as it is startling upon realization. The White Walkers should win.
Posted in Game of Thrones, Television
Tagged Essays, Game of Thrones Season 8, White
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Veep Kicks Off Its Seventh and Final Season in Familiar Fashion
It’s time for a “New Selina Now,” as America’s favorite foul-mouthed ex-Vice President (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) makes her bid to stay in the Oval Office for a term longer than the average celebrity marriage. Along the way, she has to combat some new foes and familiar faces, including the deplorable extraordinaire himself, Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons). Her old staff is along for the ride, with their mercenary schemes and acid-tongued repartee still out in full force. As Veep kicks off its seventh and final season, it promises a heap of the show’s usual pointed political pugilism, as Selina and company rumble through Iowa and New Hampshire in an effort to woo voters and sate their own egos and ambitions.
Posted in Other Sitcoms, Television
Tagged Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Season Reviews, Veep
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Black Monday Styles, Snorts, and Saunters Its Way Onto Television
It’s 1986, and Mo Monroe (Don Cheadle) is the coke-snorting, name-dropping, robo-butler-boasting head of his own rough-and-tumble Wall Street firm. Alongside his equally profane but effective lieutenants, Dawn (Regina Hall) and Keith (Paul Scheer), Mo is literally kicking in the doors of the New York financial scene, trying to use his ostentatious, unorthodox style to help his upstart firm keep up with the big boys. A chance encounter brings him face-to-face with Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells), a newly minted, squeaky-clean business school grad with an algorithm that could revolutionize the trading floor. What none of them know is that one year later, they’ll all be a part of the worst stock market crash in Wall Street history. That day of financial disaster, dubbed Black Monday, lends the title to this comedy series, which offers rapid-fire humor, an impeccable cast, and boundless style.
Posted in Other Sitcoms, Television
Tagged Comedy, Don Cheadle, TV Reviews, Wall Street
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20 Years Later, The Sopranos Is the New American Tragedy
Send ‘em home happy. If you spend season after season, year after year with a show and a cast of characters, you want their final notes to be pleasant ones. As viewers, we’ve also invested in them. We’ve committed to their journeys by that point. To have them end in pain or tears or frustration would be too much after all of that. And most series, no matter how dark or cynical they may be, oblige their audiences on that account.
In the 20 years since The Sopranos first took to the airwaves, scores of shows followed in its footsteps, imitating its dark-hearted approach, novelistic bent, and antihero bona fides. In the ensuing two decades, television’s level of moral complexity rose; the chances to see protagonists make ethically questionable choices soared, and examinations of the grim underbelly of everything that TV once made bright and clean became legion and fashionable. But for all the titans who emerged in Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) wake, few if any have had the stick-to-your-guns conviction to finish their runs on a note so bleak, a loss so complete, or an ending of such unmitigated tragedy.
Posted in Other Prestige Dramas, Television
Tagged Essays, HBO, The Sopranos, Tony Soprano, Tragedy
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Why The Haunting of Hill House Succeeds Where So Many Other Netflix Shows Fail
Every prestige-ish drama has to have a mystery box. Whether the cultural influence comes from J.J. Abrams or Game of Thrones or the other forces that prompt studios and creators to play follow the leader, no season of television, particularly genre television, can seem to get by without some burning mystery that you’ll have to wait till the season finale to see resolved.
The Haunting of Hill House is no exception. As I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist podcast, the horror series from writer/director Mike Flanagan actually has two mystery boxes. The series gradually ladles out the story of the Crain family — two young parents and their five children — in both the past and the present, offering parallel mysteries in both timeframes. And its puzzles and scares are each centered around the titular haunted house.
Posted in Other Prestige Dramas, Television
Tagged Haunted Houses, Horror, Netflix, Season Reviews, The Haunting of Hill House
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