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Category Archives: Television
Season 2 of Westworld Had Bigger Challenges Than Before, But Couldn’t Overcome Them in “The Passenger”
Season 1 of Westworld had an easier task than Season 2 did. The first season of the show, as Clementine might put it, didn’t have much of a rind on it. All of its mysteries, all of its characters, all of its ideas, were completely new. The audience was starting from square one, and the show was able to spoon feed details and reveal important facts bit-by-bit until the shocking twists burst out. The first season also had a clearer trajectory for its season-length mega arc, with early hints that there was something amiss with the hosts, building to a full blown revolt at the end.
But as I discussed on the Serial Fanaticist Podcast, Season 2 had no such luxuries. Despite the introduction of a handful of new characters, when the second season rolled around, Westworld’s major figures had become known quantities. How the park worked, the contours of this artificial world, was no longer as burning a question after ten episodes’ worth of worldbuilding. And the path from business as usual in Westworld to all hell breaking loose proved a much clearer and more direct path than Season 2’s disparate collections of characters who each want different things, and are all marauding around the park in a far less unified fashion.
Posted in Other Prestige Dramas, Television
Tagged Akecheta, Episode Reviews, Season Reviews, Westworld, Westworld S02E10, Westworld Season 2
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ReBoot: The Guardian Code Earns Its Fan Backlash
I’m old enough to be able to remember when The Simpsons first started using Comic Book Guy — the portly, surly, and above all opinionated proprietor of Springfield’s local comic shop — as a stand-in so the show could poke fun at its die hard fans. The reaction was as swift and negative as you’d expect, with series’s biggest devotees (often its biggest critics) taking great offense, not only at being cast as schlubby lowlifes, but at having their concerns dismissed as pointless, nerdy nitpickery.
So it felt like deja vu when ReBoot: The Guardian Code — the 2018 revival of the groundbreaking 1994 computer-animated television show, ReBoot — depicted the hardcore fans of the original series in nearly the exact same way and received the same sort of response.
Posted in Other Animated Shows, Television
Tagged Computer Animation, Fan Backlash, ReBoot, ReBoot: The Guardian Code, Revivals, Season Reviews
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The Walking Dead Ponders the Same Old Moral Quandaries in “The Lost and the Plunderers”
I’m not the first person to suggest that The Walking Dead has exhausted itself creatively. Eight years in, almost any show is going to have trouble feeling vibrant and fresh. But what’s conspicuous about “The Lost and the Plunderers” is how clearly it evinces the sense of a late era version of this show — a show that’s always tried to aim a bit higher than its grindhouse roots — that’s running out of meaningful things to say.
The Simpsons Botches the Relationship Between Homer and His Daughter in “Make Room for Lisa”
Homer and Lisa have the richest, most complicated relationship on The Simpsons. The series will no doubt continue doing Homer and Marge relationship episodes until the sun burns out, and Marge and Lisa have an undeniably special kinship, and Homer and Bart never fail to make a stellar comic duo. But Homer and Lisa are complete opposites who, nevertheless, love each other dearly. That means there’s always fertile ground to cover about how a father and daughter learn to relate to one another and, gradually, understand each other a little better.
Posted in Television, The Simpsons
Tagged Homer Simpson, Lisa Simpson, Mike Scully, The Simpsons S10E16, The Simpsons Season 10
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The Walking Dead Can’t Get Out of Its Own Way, Even When It’s Trying to Say Goodbye in “Honor”
The opening few minutes of “Honor” are The Walking Dead at its best. If you want me to give your television show a little slack, to feel a little extra emotional resonance in an important sequence, then you’re hard pressed to do better than employing a little music penned by Conor Oberst (or, as the show has done before, John Darnielle). “At the Bottom of Everything”, the opening track from Oberst’s seminal album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, is the perfect accompaniment to the episode’s opening montage. The song tells a story and offers an anthem about the absurdities we face and the joys we wring even in the face of oblivion.
The Office’s Top 20 Episodes
Andrew joins Matt Melis to rank and review the 20 best episodes of this outstanding comedy.
Posted in Other Sitcoms, Television
Tagged Dwight Schrute, Jim Halpert, Michael Scott, Pam Beesley, The Office
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Archer’s “Danger Island” Proves the Show Can Work Anywhere
Another season. Another reboot. The powers that be behind Archer have figured out that the motley collection of personalities the show’s crafted over the past eight years are now officially commedia dell’arte characters — distinct enough to be recognizable but malleable enough that you can plop them into any variety of new stories and situations and trust that they’ll fit right in.
Enter “Archer: Danger Island”, the show’s latest seasonal refresh. Season 9 offers a new backdrop for our favorite band of former secret agents/private detectives/drug runners/noir gumshoes/astronauts/submariners/alcoholics — a Casablanca-esque, French-occupied island in the South Pacific named Mitimotu. The action takes place in 1939, with references to the looming war and a winking vibe that tracks with the characteristically wide-ranging cultural pastiche of an “American abroad” island adventure.
Posted in Other Animated Shows, Television
Tagged Archer, Archer Season 9, Season Reviews, Sterling Archer
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Krypton 101: A Brief History of Superman’s Home Planet
Andrew joins ace T.V. writer Clint Worthington and Cameron Cuffe, star of the new series Krypton, to discuss the different versions of Superman’s home world on the page and screen over the years.
Ranking: Every Season of The Wire from Worst to Best
Andrew joins Randall Colburn and Greg Whitt to rank, dissect, and honor one of the greatest television shows of all time.
Star Wars Rebels Chooses Not to Remake the Past in “A World Between Worlds”
I’m always suspicious of time travel stories. Too often, they open up a big can of worms that even great T.V. shows can’t reseal. They tend to either involve paradoxes and bits of convenience that we just have to accept as part of the time-bending shenanigans. But most of all, they create problems for both plot and drama.
If you can just go back and change some explosive event in the past, why not travel back even further to a more boring one that lets you avoid the conflict altogether? And more to the point, why do any of your actions matter if they can simply be undone down the line? Time travel risks breaking your universe and weakening your ability to tell meaningful stories.
So I was worried, naturally, when Star Wars Rebels introduced what amounts to time travel in “A World Between Worlds”, thereby allowing the show to revisit two of its most heightened and dramatic moments. It’s a choice that connects this series with the past, present, and future of the Star Wars franchise, while also creating the opportunity to rewrite these major events in the show’s own history. But fraught though these time-tampering opportunities may be, Rebels approaches them in a way that is not only satisfying in terms of mechanics and continuity, but which exists as an episode-length rejoinder to the idea of “let’s just fix the past” that’s otherwise inextricably a part of the DNA of time travel stories
