(DVD/YouTube) A quintessential 90s oddity, this was a six-episode show that aired on IFC and Bravo (back in the day when Bravo aired foreign films and ballet), and featured John Lurie heading out on a fishing trip with a famous friend each episode, such as Tom Waits or Dennis Hopper. Whether they caught anything was beside the point — well, perhaps except for the shark expedition with Jim Jarmusch.
Incredibly low budget with high travel aspirations, this was a bizarrely pioneering show that blurred the lines between reality, scripted comedy, and absurdity. A prototypical -adult swim- show, if you will. For those that witnessed this on their CRTs in the 90s, it was a strange, downbeat revelation.
I have high hopes that his new series, PAINTING WITH JOHN — which hits HBO MAX on January 22nd and feels like the flip side of a JOE PERA TALKS WITH YOU coin — will improve on the formula.
(Hulu/Freeform/VOD)? One of my favorite undersung TV shows of the last decade was PLEASE LIKE ME, a delightfully reflective queer Australian TV drama which introduced many folks to Josh Thomas and Hannah Gadsby. (It’s now available on Hulu.) Josh Thomas is now the showrunner of EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE OKAY, on Freeform of all places, which positions him as the caretaker of his two teenage half-sisters after their widowed father dies.
While Thomas was the focal point of PLEASE LIKE ME, he takes a few steps back here. EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE OKAY is primarily about his sisters, with the older sister trying to navigate teen life and her autism and the younger living in the shadow of so much grief.
However, like PLEASE LIKE ME, the show never wallows in sadness, and there are frequent moments of joy and warmth, as well as a fair number of laughs. I watched the last few episodes of the first season during the first lockdown and found it to be quite the balm. Perhaps you may, too. If all goes well, we’ll have a second season to look forward to.
Update (September 25th, 2021): Unfortunately, shortly after the second season finished airing, Freeform canceled the show, so two seasons is all we get.
(DVD) While I have a favorite Thanksgiving film (PIECES OF APRIL), and a favorite New Year’s Eve film (AFTER THE THIN MAN), I don’t have a favorite Christmas film. However, I do have a favorite Christmas TV episode, and MILLENNIUM’s -Midnight of the Century- is it.
MILLENNIUM is about Frank Black (Lance Henriksen), an offender profiler who has astounding intuition. Also, he can see angels and demons. In the second season of the show, he’s joined by Lara Means (Kristen Cloke) who also suffers from being bestowed the same ‘gift’. These are people who feel too much, feel too hard, who have insight and empathy they don’t want, but feel they have to utilize their gifts to help others.
MILLENNIUM’s holiday episodes, including the Halloween episode -The Curse of Frank Black- (also my favorite Halloween episode of all time) hit pause on the machinations of the Millennium Group that Frank Black is involved with, and instead focuses on Frank Black reflecting on his past, present, and future. -Midnight of the Century- features him mulling over the ramifications of passing along his ‘gift’ to his daughter, reminiscing about how his mother struggled with the same ‘gift’, and confronting his father (Kolchak himself, Darren McGavin — although I suspect most know him as the father in A CHRISTMAS STORY) about his mother holing herself up in their spare bedroom until she died.
It also includes a terrifically poignant story that involves a barely disguised Red Rose Tea figurine, the likes of which I grew up with.
It’s not all devastatingly sad, though: Frank Black takes a bit of time to detail why the killer in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is a spree killer, not a serial killer.
A hallmark of second season MILLENNIUM episodes are their exceptional music programming, and this episode doesn’t disappoint as it utilizes Tchaikovsky’s Arabian Dance (from his Nutcracker Suite – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPuf9krTR4w) as a haunting refrain.
It’s a quiet, contemplative episode that’s not only a substantial character study, but also perfectly captures the many facets of Christmas. While it is certainly not the most uplifting Christmas episode of a TV show, it is one of the most remarkable.
(Netflix) Natalie Palamides’ comedy special is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Plenty will compare it to Hannah Gadsby’s NANETTE or the original theatrical production of FLEABAG, but it’s completely different; it’s extraordinarily audacious, often puerile, but always surprising and challenging. I’ll mention that it’s EXTREMELY NSFW, both aurally and visually, but if you’re okay with that, do yourself a favor and go in cold and watch to the end.
(Hulu/VOD) I had very low expectations for a TV adaptation of 12 MONKEYS. I simply didn’t think the film’s inevitability and nihilism lent itself to serialized storytelling. I’m happy to admit that I was wrong.
12 MONKEYS is — by far — one of the most audacious and human time travel TV shows to make it to air and, despite the fact that I re-watched it during the pandemic, the hurt and twinges I felt while re-watching weren’t because of a portrayal of plague death, but because the ensemble were literally breaking the laws of time and space to rectify these deaths, whereas far too many people in real life right now aren’t fucking willing to wear a mask to save themselves and others.
That said, the plague is only a small part of this show; it’s used as a springboard towards some of the most high-concept plotting I’ve ever seen in a TV series. (Yes, I watched and loved FRINGE.) Where the characters are and what they’re trying to do in the first season is so far removed by the end of season four that it’s astounding, but it still works!
While the show is so high-concept, and so inventive, what really makes it work are the women. The men are mostly soldiers, grunts — disposable — although they all have their own quirks, emotions, and interesting character arcs, the women are the ones that propel the series:
The show gender-swaps Brad Pitt’s Jeffrey Goines to Emily Hampshire’s Jennifer Goines, which was a stroke of brilliance. It ramps up the pop culture riffs while giving her an autonomy and agency all her own. (She also gets some of the best set-pieces, and the writers clearly love writing her, sometimes a little too much.) Time scientist Katarina Jones is my favorite character: so driven, but so aware that she’s toeing an exceedingly dangerous line, while still trying to be mindful of her own humanity and what’s at stake and -juggling causality-. With apologies to Tracy Kidder, she’s the show’s soul of a new machine. Cassandra Railly hews close to Madeline Stowe’s character from Gilliam’s film in the first season, but becomes something radically different after, and someone far more interesting.
Better yet, just about every episode in the four seasons is satisfying — there’s not a single episode in the bunch where you feel the characters acted in a way that betrayed themselves, or that there was some sloppy plotting just to find some feel-good closure — and the show sticks the landing in ways you wouldn’t believe. And the lighting! In these days of under-lit, over-dramatic works like OZARK, it’s refreshing to see a show that leans into bright bursts of light, a show that pays attention to hues, that tints appropriately instead of painting everything in shapeless grays.
Most importantly, the show has a command over tone that comes along so rarely: it’s propulsive and smart, but it’s also poignant and — perhaps most importantly — surprisingly funny. The characters quip and throw barbs at each other like family, but you’re familiar enough with ‘em to get the inside jokes and swatches of character building they provide. For a show about the end times, you’ll find yourself laughing far more than you’d expect.
Ultimately, 12 MONKEYS is so satisfying is because it reckons with the fact that it -is- a serialized show, and that their time machine — simply because of the nature of TV -and- because they created a fucking time machine — can never bestow a proper ending for these characters. There can never be catharsis, and they use that self-awareness as a prop to the utmost effect. Everyone believes their mistakes and missteps are reversible, but causality/narrative gets in the way. The stakes escalate, rippling into more mistakes, more grief, which results in more attempts to rectify human missteps. (The show quickly shakes up its endgame to address this, but to reveal how would be cruel.) It’s brilliantly and profoundly tragic in a way I’ve rarely seen in a sci-fi show, which is what makes it so special, and so worth your time.
S1 Trailer:
Fan-based S1 Trailer:
One caveat: sadly that I need to mention that the show’s pretty myopic when it comes to representation. The few times you do see anyone that isn’t white, they’re part of a ramshackle tribe, a servant, or a prop.
A fortunate thing about 12 Monkeys is: you can watch any clip and still have no idea when/where it happened, so spoilers don’t exist! (That said, watching these will detract from the surprise from encountering them in the show, but if you’re on the fence about the show, they may convince you that it’s something special. That said, they’re mostly Jennifer clips, because she’s so entertainingly erratic, even out-of-context.)
U + Ur Hand:
Related:
Admittedly, this traffics in a fair amount of fan-service, but in-context it’s not as bad as it looks.
Jennifer in the bunker:
Endless Jennifer lines:
Life Isn’t Measured By Clocks (Spoilers for the entire series, but it’s endless heartbreak):
Many Endings. It was… is… a Love Story. (Spoilers for the entire series/ibid):
(HBO Max/VOD) The tagline for the first season of ENLIGHTENED was: ‘A woman on the verge of a nervous breakthrough,’ which does a damn fine job of succinctly setting up lead character Amy Jellicoe’s (deftly portrayed by co-creator Laura Dern) trajectory as a woman who thinks she has it all together, then a corporate affair destroys her world.
Mike White* (CHUCK & BUCK, SCHOOL OF ROCK), the other co-creator and head writer, does a great job of showcasing Amy’s attempts at becoming well-adjusted, trying to re-insert herself into her old positions only to find that they don’t fit. While flailing to find some kind of constant to hold onto, she reaches out to her addict ex, Levi (Luke Wilson).
What follows is a melancholy story of growth that, to some, may feel overwrought, but you’re seeing life through Amy’s eyes, and Amy is so well-realized between Dern and White that it’s worth enduring a few wide-eyed, over-earnest monologues. In fact, my favorite moment of the show occurs four episodes into the first season. She reflects on her life during an outdoor weekend retreat that doesn’t quite go the way Amy had hoped, and it’s the first time that she opens up to the audience:
(This is a combination of three monologues, just in case the segues feel abrupt.)
(The score really heightens that monologue, so it shouldn’t surprise you that Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO) was responsible for it.)
ENLIGHTENED is Amy trying to course-correct her life, trying to become a better person, but frequently screwing it up with her own navel-gazing and endless hope for external accolades to tell her she’s on the right path. It’s a mature character study that’s rarely told through TV nowadays.
Dern & White had hoped to tell a three season arc, but the critical acclaim wasn’t enough to make up for the paltry ratings, so they only received two seasons. Nonetheless, the second season ends satisfyingly enough.
“There’s time. There is time. There is so much time.”
Season one trailer:
Season two trailer:
Fun fact: Mike White was on two seasons of THE AMAZING RACE with his father, and they were delightful although — spoiler alert — they never came close to winning.
(DVD) ‘Improvised animation’ from Tom Snyder (no, not THE LATE LATE SHOW’s Tom Snyder — a completely unrelated Tom Snyder) featuring Jonathan Katz as a therapist to a litany of stand-up comedians, and father to man-child H. Jon Benjamin. While I think DR. KATZ is probably best known for the controversial SQUIGGLEVISION animation process (I’ve personally never had any issue with SQUIGGLEVISION) it still lasted seven years, and even had a syndicated cartoon strip, which was oddly antithetical to the premise of the show. I remember upon first moving to Chicago, I cracked open my first copy of the Sun-Times and was shocked to see it in print.
While the show’s built around extraordinarily deadpan jokes from some of the best era’s best stand-ups (Ray Romano, Joan Rivers, Steven Wright, Emo Philips, Andy Kindler, Mitch Hedberg, to name just a few), the animators always managed to insert more than a few amusing visual flourishes and gags, a stylistic tic that’s worked its way to future Snyder and Snyder-inspired shows, such as HOME MOVIES and BOB’S BURGERS. Additionally, while most of the characters — guests and otherwise — are stunted in many ways, there’s a warmth and acceptance that underlies the show.
The show’s endlessly re-watchable and perfect fodder to work or fold laundry to, especially if you love word play and stand-up.
No trailer, obviously, but in the spirit of the season, here’s their Thanksgiving ep:
(YouTube) Ah, the 60s, the heyday of high-concept TV shows! As you might surmise from the title, this is a belated TV adaptation of the novel/film, starring Hope Lange — in her first recurring TV role — as Carolyn Muir, and Edward Mulhare as Captain Gregg, the pirate captain who haunts the house that the widow Muir has moved her son, daughter, and moppet pup to. To inject a bit more conflict, Charles Nelson Reilly — also his first recurring TV role — is Captain Gregg’s very nervous great-grand-nephew Claymore Gregg, who is reluctantly renting the property — Gull Cottage — to Mrs. Muir.
The show was the brainchild of Jean Holloman, who also penned the epic melodrama MADAME X (1966) and, apart from the inclusion of Reilly and one more kid, the show hews pretty close the source material(s), centering mostly around the tension (albeit less sexual and more about sharing a space) between Mrs. Muir and Captain Gregg. However, it’s been modernized a bit — Carolyn’s already an established writer, she wears pants, and she takes no guff. That said, they needed to ramp up the conflict, which usually meant random folks and guest stars would drop by, and hijinks would ensue.
It only lasted for one season on NBC, but then ABC picked it up for a second season — handsomely pairing it with THAT GIRL and BEWITCHED, but it still failed to catch on and ABC canceled it after the second season.
I won’t pretend that the show is brilliant, but it’s a comfortable oddity, admirably performed, and perfect for a lazy long holiday weekend. I don’t believe it received an official US DVD release — my copy consists of bootlegs acquired from eBay — but nowadays the entire series can be found on YouTube.
(Prime) I think it’s fair to say that J.J. Abrams has probably had the biggest impact on serialized dramatic TV within the past 20 years. From ALIAS to LOST to FRINGE, everything boils down to conflict via -family dysfunction-, a conceit usually trotted out in films and not in TV because it’s traditionally been considered too soapy.
While PATRIOT isn’t one of the first spy shows to riff off of the spy family template of what Abrams wrought via ALIAS (if you haven’t seen ALIAS, you can start and end with its second season), it’s by far one of the most inventive. It’s a crackerjack of a thriller that, while its machinations are intentionally convoluted, the character work is the core of the show, and is a simply soulful as can be.
PATRIOT features John Tavner (Michael Dormer) as an unofficial CIA operative who operates under Tom Tavner, John father’s (the incomparable Terry O’Quinn), supervision. Occasionally John’s brother and Texas Congressman (Michael Chernus) gets roped in to John’s missions, simply to balance him out. While Tom realizes the stress he’s putting his son under, he feels it’s for the best of the nation (and also you sense that he revels in the control he has over his children) but he doesn’t quite realize just how frayed and worn down John is. To cope with matters, John sings about his missions Dylan-style on the street and in open-mic nights.
Yes, it’s a spy show and yes there are a lot of broken bones and MacGuffins changing hands, but those details matter as much to the audience as they do to John , which is to say: they don’t except for a means to an end-scene. It’s really about John’s dissonance and his breaking from reality, how the responsibilities his father piles onto him are breaking his humanity.
There’s an early scene in S01E08 (-L’Affaire Contre John Lakeman-, ~7:45-11:40) that I find an emblematic example of the show: John sits in the middle of a construction site as everyone involved in his life walk through, peppering him with expectations and disappointed laments while he sits there, framed by a concrete pipe, numb to their words. It’s one shot, camera static, as they slowly push in, the frame tightening on John’s back, slightly coiling the tension which builds, then whimpers away.
The first season of PATRIOT toys a lot with dialogue and very dry editing, but the second season features an explosion of virtuoso camera techniques and visuals. Sadly, a third season wasn’t meant to be, but I can only imagine the new ground it would have broken.
(AMC+/fubo/VOD)? I honestly don’t know how many folks are familiar with WGN as a channel. If you live in the midwest, you know WGN, as it’s a local Chicago network and probably broadcasts to you. (Well, if you have an antennae or cable box.) They went national in the 80s — I have a vague recollection of watching Godzilla marathons on holiday weekends via their NYC affiliate, but I may be misremembering that.
Anyway, a handful of years ago, they decided to branch out into prestige television and produced the amazing, underrated UNDERGROUND series (created by Misha Green, who just wrapped up LOVECRAFT COUNTRY). MANHATTAN was the second of their big dramatic swings.
MANHATTAN is a deep dive into the community created by the US military to develop the first atomic bomb. A nerdy DEADWOOD, if you will. It’s a story of divisive opinions, splintered factions, and tawdry affairs — quintessential historical dramatic prestige TV — and while it had a number of asshole, self-important male protagonists, it also had Katja Herbers (currently on CBS’ underrated EVIL) as Helen Prins, Rachel Brosnahan (MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL), and Olivia Williams (RUSHMORE, DOLLHOUSE) as smart women who refuse to be wallflowers. (Oh, and Mamie Gummer — Meryl Streep’s daughter — shows up in the second season in a role I will not divulge.)
The show occasionally feels a bit overburdened by everything it’s trying to accomplish: domestic drama, espionage thriller, docudrama, scientific intrigue, etc. but ultimately it’s more than the sum of its parts, not just because of the brilliant cast, but the stable of writers (including Lila Byock, who wrote some of the best parts of THE LEFTOVERS -and- WATCHMEN).
Sadly, even if MANHATTAN’s ratings were good (they were not), they still would’ve been canceled as WGN were sold off by Chicago’s Tribune Corp. and purchased by the conservative Sinclair Media Group, which had designs to turn WGN into a right-wing news outlet, and all original programming was shuttered. (WGN is now currently owned by Nexstar, another conservative outlet, but instead of hewing towards news, they’ve basically turned WGN into another TV nostalgia channel. Yay, capitalism.)
