The new look at the new season of True Detective gives us a dreary, grim atmospheric feel, along with clips of the new cast in their roles. I don't know- I'm not feeling particularly optimistic about this show without McConaughey and Harrelson there to elevate the material, which I think they most definitely did last time.
RECAP: Mad Men 7x13 "The Milk and Honey Route"
Wow. This was quite the Mother's Day episode. You know, of all the people I thought might actually die on this show, for some reason I didn't think it would be Betty in the end, despite how long I've hated the character. But Matt Weiner feels differently, and that's what we're going to get to right now. Poor Betty. And that might be the first time and last time I ever said that.
Betty continues to go to college, but she collapses on the stairs one day, and the next thing we know, the school doctor is referring her to a real doctor, and the real doctor wants to talk to her husband of course and not her (sexist), whom he finally tells that Betty is in the near final stages of lung cancer and likely has less than nine months to live, maybe a year with treatment. After that bombshell (and just when she was finally happy and not so mean to everyone), Henry wants her to fight it, but Betty is resigned to her fate and just wants to keep going to classes until the end. Henry refuses to accept this and shows up at Sally's school, where he's hoping that telling her against her mother's wishes will allow her to be able to talk her into treatment, but he breaks down crying as a scared Sally attempts to comfort him. When Sally comes home, Betty ends up giving her a letter to read as soon as she's dead, which Sally reads on getting back to school, and it simply details the arrangements for her funeral and the dress she wants to wear, while also telling her that she knows her life will be an adventure. Sally is devastated and ends the episode in tears, and even though I've never been a Betty fan, even I'm not made of stone when it comes to a goodbye letter from a parent to a child after their death. Man. That's rough.
In Pete world, this episode gave us his swan song, and amazingly enough, under circumstances which Pete himself can't even believe, he ends up getting the happiest ending of any former SC&P partner. He's doing well as VP at McCann, but out of the blue, Duck Philips shows up (how is it that that guy has managed to make at least one appearance every year of this show's run?) and somehow woos Pete into inadvertently interviewing for a corporate position at LearJet. The company wants him to relocate to Wichita, where he'll have the personal use of his own private plane to take anywhere in the world at any time, and though Pete resists this, knowing he's already got it good, Duck keeps pushing it on him, since he's the guy who's supposed to hire people for this company. Pete shows up at Trudy's a couple of times to play with Tammy and continue to ask her to go to dinner with him, but Trudy refuses, standing her ground in refusing to be hurt by him again. Pete then goes to dinner with his brother, where he wonders why they cheat on their wives to begin with, what the point of it all is anyway, and Duck drunkenly shows up at his hotel to tell him he actually landed the job without even showing up at the dinner meeting. Pete's in shock about this but seizes the chance to go to Trudy in the middle of the night, passionately tell her he's never loved anyone else, and that he'll use this incredible new job as a second chance for life with her and Tammy, which he promises never to screw up again. Trudy can't resist this time, and you know what- even I believe him. Out of all the couples on this show, to me, Pete and Trudy always seemed to genuinely love each other, despite Pete's douchey attempts to imitate the sleazy behavior of his co-workers. He was always his most relaxed and honest self when he was with her, and they matched better than than any of the other pairings. Pete walks out the door on air, and secures himself the happily ever after I never thought he'd get. So long, Pete Campbell.
Finally, we get to Don, who's still on his sojourn across the country and traveling through the midwest now, Kansas of all places. But he hasn't exactly dropped off the radar, as we see that he's in constant contact with Sally, who's asking him about every detail of the trip over the phone and the two remain close, as they've been since season six, which is nice to see. But the Kansas stop involved getting his car fixed and being conned by a sleazeball motel worker, who plans to rob the other people in the lodge and pin the blame on Don. Don goes to a veteran's fundraiser where he hangs out with several other war vets, and ends up confessing the story of how he murdered his CO in Korea so he could go home. The camaraderie doesn't last long though, as several of the vets attack him later in his room, convinced he stole the money they raised that night. Don knows who it was though, and coolly intimidates the guy into handing him the cash so he can give it back, which he does and then takes the poor sap to the bus stop. But then Don unexpectedly hands the con man over his car, and gets out at the stop himself. The guy drives off while Don sits back, having shed yet another part of his identity.
Notes:
-How exactly is it that Betty had not exhibited any symptoms of advanced lung cancer except exhaustion climbing up stairs? Shouldn't she be, you know, coughing up blood by now?
-My big question about Betty's death (we can be sure that the finale will involve a significant time jump, so I'm pretty positive this is the last time we ever see Betty), is whether this is it- the thing that finally gives Don a sense of real direction. He has three kids that now need him, and he's all they'll have left. If that's where this is going, I'm totally on board, and it seems like maybe the most appropriate ending Don Draper could ever have. With the death of his ex-wife, his children of all things are now all his, and he has a real reason and a purpose to go on. It's almost poetic. And I can't believe that next week is the series finale, guys. I'm tearing up already.
RECAP: SNL 5/09 "Reese Witherspoon"
So, Reese Witherspoon comes back to host a pretty middling episode of SNL tonight, apart from a couple of cute bits involving the cast's real moms for Mother's Day (but I mean come on, how can that not be cute, right?). Otherwise, bleh.
COLD OPEN: Cecily deejays the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which makes fun of all the GOP candidates who announced in the last week. There's no joke here, so I don't even know why they thought this was a good idea. Moving on.
MONOLOGUE: Reese takes the stage to do a long Mother's Day bit that has the entire cast come up with their actual mothers, to apologize for real life stuff they did as kids. It's sweet, but mostly just because it's genuine- not all that funny, but who am I to complain about honoring your mom? It's actually one of the highlights of the night.
BE SCENE IN L.A.: A totally pointless talk show skit with Cecily and Reese hosting some show as California bimbos- again, no real jokes here, and it's utterly forgettable. Which of course means they'll probably be bringing it back, right? Knowing them.
PICTURE PERFECT: This one's a little better. Taran hosts a drawing contest, and Kenan and Bobby are stumped when asked to draw The Prophet Muhammad. Then Reese guesses it correctly, which is kind of funny I guess. Still slight though.
MR. WESTERBERG: This one made me laugh, actually. A pre-taped bit of Hallmark workers doing Mother's Day cards while mocking their boss's sayings, but Beck goes overboard with the sexual harassment he's been getting from him. For some reason, Beck's delivery here makes it funny to me.
WEEKEND UPDATE: A very lackluster Update tonight, with some lame Hillary, GOP and NFL jokes, and then Colin and Michael read jokes texted to them by their moms. Again, that's only cute, but not actually funny. The guests are lame, with Leslie coming on as her relationship expert (I've never liked that one), Cecily and Reese as two girls you wish you didn't talk to at a party (oy), and finally Kenan as homeless Willie, who's always good for at least one chuckle, but it's mostly lame overall.
STUDENT THEATRE: The weird artsy students are back for their "socially conscious" performance art, but this is exactly the same thing as last time, except longer. And it's still just there, not particularly biting or anything.
LADIES WINE CLUB: The women sit around drinking and whining about weird problems, but this one is so irrelevant and pointless that it's another one I totally forget in about five seconds. No good jokes or moments at all- how does someone come up with something so bland?
WATER SLIDE: Kyle and Beck are weird life guards at a water park, and Reese is the girl one. I don't even know what this was about, but it sucked. Awful, worst of the night maybe, because I don't even see what was supposed to be funny about this.
WHISKERS R WE: Kate's cat sketch is the final one, and hey- it's actually really funny. This bit is usually very reliable, because Kate is so wonderful at the crotchety cat lady, and Reese is good too as her latest conquest. It's nice to end on a high note, because most of the skits tonight were terrible.
So, Reese was a competent but unmemorable host, and there were maybe three semi-funny bits plus the cute mom stuff, so I guess on balance I give this one a C-. But yeah, it's not a great night, so with one episode left, maybe Louis C.K. can bring back some of that mid-season strength the show had for a while before returning to business as usual. See you guys next week for the finale!
REVIEW: "Broadchurch" Season 2
Wow. It's been a long time since a show I loved so much in the first season took this big a nosedive in its sophomore effort, but I guess not every good show can hit it out of the park twice. Thankfully, the fault here lies not with the actors or even the characters, but purely in the plot itself, which was a huge misfire from the very start. All the show needed was a decent second season mystery, and the one they went with was such a sloppy mess that I can't imagine it being repeated for Season 3, so for that reason, I'll still be back next year. The cast is so terrific that they even made this bad storyline watchable, but only in a glorious mess kind of way, which is the opposite of what the show was in its first efficient, tightly written season.
So, what went wrong here exactly? Well, it's tempting to say everything and toss the season out, but let's just go ahead and explain the most obvious blunder. Our two leads, detectives Alec Hardy and Ellie Miller are back, again played by the invaluable David Tennant and Olivia Williams, and their chemistry and rapport once again carries the series, as you could quite easily watch these two bicker and playfully needle each over every little detail for hours, from the way she drives to his heart attack and how they're forced to spend the night in the same bed on the road...anything they do and say to each other is gold and a show of them doing nothing but hanging out would in fact have made for a much better season than what we actually got. Which was them coming together to solve a cold case murder that originally brought Hardy to Broadchurch in the first place, and boy what a dud this mystery turned out to be. It involves two disappeared girls and a Bonnie and Clyde-esque couple who may or may not have been involved (played thanklessly by James D'Arcy and Eve Myles), and by the time the whole story finally reveals itself it makes literally no sense, the actions of everyone involved are mystifying, and what's worse is that you still don't even care about it to begin with. The stakes don't seem very high for the characters we do know, who are only Hardy and Miller, and there is so little emotional investment in the saga of Claire Ripley and her husband Lee Ashworth that whenever this storyline rears its ugly head, it has you begging to get back the B-plot of the season, which is really amazing because that one was arguably worse.
What the main murder mystery lacked in intrigue, the secondary story made up for in irrelevance, but at least it involved the characters from the first season that we're familiar with. Yes, the season long subplot this time around was the murder trial of Joe Miller, which pitted attorneys Sharon Bishop (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Jocelyn Knight (Charlotte Rampling) against each other in the courtroom as they rehashed literally everything from last year that we already saw play out onscreen. Joe Miller pleads not guilty even after confessing to the crime, so that subjects us to a literal re-telling from every character as they get into the witness box to spell out what happened to them last year. Which, again, are things we already saw. I'm sorry, but how did anyone not see the blatantly obvious problem with this situation? You may have noticed the names of those veteran actresses who play the lawyers, and yes, they are fantastic in these roles and watching them go at each other is the definitive highlight of what was going on here, but again, the actual content of this trial? We already saw this play out. We know what happened- what's the point of going through it all over again, bit by bit? With zero new information revealed? The ultimate verdict is patently ridiculous, but once again, the cast comes to the rescue, as the Latimer family brings the goods with the devastation they have felt over what Danny Latimer's murder has done to them (Jodie Whittaker is MVP once more as the mournful but ferocious mom Beth), but all the time wasted on verbally telling a story the entire audience already saw was a major misstep to build a season around.
So, the bright spots here lie with the actors- Hardy and Miller's relationship is the only thing that makes the murder case bearable, and Baptiste and Rampling as the battling attorneys lend some performance value to the endless trial, but both the case and the trial were awful ideas to write a show for to begin with. There's going to be a third season, and the truth is I love and adore these characters too much not to follow them back to Broadchurch again, and now that both storylines are over, I'm hoping that the new case can be something worth spending time on, because the first season was so compelling on every level, that it's hard to believe an original concept that was at first so well written and structured could falter this badly. But I guess everyone has a couple of doozies in them, right? Broadchurch Season 2 was Chris Chibnall's.
Grade: D+
'Bride of Hannibal' Makes Her First Appearance
Gillian Anderson has joined the cast of Hannibal full time for Season 3, which premieres June 12th, and I can't wait!! The new promo showcases her cool, calm, collected awesomeness in all its glory, as she pretends (?) to be Hannibal's wife as the two make their way through Europe. Can't start soon enough.
Critics Choice TV Nominations Like 'Justified,' 'The Americans,' 'Broad City'
Well, with the official TV season coming to an end, the Critics Choice TV noms are here and they read like a who's who of who won't be nominated at the Emmys. Which of course, make them much better, as they chose to recognize several undervalued longrunning shows like Justified and The Americans, so they pretty much make my day. I also like that they remembered things like 24: Live Another Day from last summer. But these have close to zero effect on the major TV awards, so all you can hope is that those who never get any love are able to squeeze out some recognition from somewhere. I am surprised they couldn't find room to nominate Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for anything besides Titus Burgess though. I mean, no Ellie Kemper? Really?
BEST COMEDY SERIES
"Broad City"
"Jane the Virgin"
"Mom"
"Silicon Valley"
"Transparent"
"Veep"
"You're the Worst"
BEST COMEDY ACTOR
Anthony Anderson, "Blackish"
Will Forte, "The Last Man on Earth"
Johnny Galecki, "The Big Bang Theory"
Chris Messina, "The Mindy Project"
Thomas Middleditch, "Silicon Valley"
Jeffrey Tambor, "Transparent"
BEST COMEDY ACTRESS
Ilana Glazer, "Broad City"
Lisa Kudrow, "The Comeback"
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, "Veep"
Gina Rodriguez, "Jane the Virgin"
Amy Schumer, "Inside Amy Schumer"
Constance Wu, "Fresh Off the Boat"
BEST COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTOR
Tituss Burgess, "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt"
Jaime Camil, "Jane the Virgin"
Adam Driver, "Girls"
Tony Hale, "Veep"
T.J. Miller, "Silicon Valley"
Cameron Monaghan, "Shameless"
BEST COMEDY SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Mayim Bialik, "The Big Bang Theory"
Carrie Brownstein, "Portlandia"
Allison Janney, "Mom"
Judith Light, "Transparent"
Melanie Lynskey, "Togetherness"
Eden Sher, "The Middle"
BEST COMEDY GUEST PERFORMER
Becky Ann Baker, "Girls"
Josh Charles, "Inside Amy Schumer"
Susie Essman, "Broad City"
Peter Gallagher, "Togetherness"
Laurie Metcalf, "The Big Bang Theory"
Bradley Whitford, "Transparent"
BEST DRAMA SERIES
"The Americans"
"Empire"
"Game of Thrones"
"The Good Wife"
"Homeland"
"Justified"
"Orange is the New Black"
BEST DRAMA ACTOR
Freddie Highmore, "Bates Motel"
Charlie Hunnam, "Sons of Anarchy"
Bob Odenkirk, "Better Call Saul"
Timothy Olyphant, "Justified"
Matthew Rhys, "The Americans"
Aden Young, "Rectify"
BEST DRAMA ACTRESS
Viola Davis, "How to Get Away with Murder"
Vera Farmiga, "Bates Motel"
Eva Green, "Penny Dreadful"
Taraji P. Henson, "Empire"
Julianna Margulies, "The Good Wife"
Keri Russell, "The Americans"
BEST DRAMA SUPPORTING ACTOR
Jonathan Banks, "Better Call Saul"
Christopher Eccleston, "The Leftovers"
Walton Goggins, "Justified"
Ben Mendelsohn, "Bloodline"
Craig T. Nelson, "Parenthood"
Mandy Patinkin, "Homeland"
BEST DRAMA SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Christine Baranski, "The Good Wife"
Joelle Carter, "Justified"
Carrie Coon, "The Leftovers"
Lorraine Toussaint, "Orange is the New Black"
Mae Whitman, "Parenthood"
Katheryn Winnick, "Vikings"
BEST DRAMA GUEST PERFORMER
Sam Elliott, "Justified"
Walton Goggins, "Sons of Anarchy"
Linda Lavin, "The Good Wife"
Julianne Nicholson, "Masters of Sex"
Lois Smith, "The Americans"
Cicely Tyson, "How to Get Away with Murder"
BEST TV MOVIE
"Bessie"
"Killing Jesus"
"Nightingale"
"A Poet in New York"
"Stockholm, Pennsylvania"
BEST LIMITED SERIES
"American Crime"
"The Book of Negroes"
"The Honorable Woman"
"Olive Kitteridge"
"24: Live Another Day"
"Wolf Hall"
BEST MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES ACTOR
Michael Gambon, "The Casual Vacancy"
Richard Jenkins, "Olive Kitteridge"
James Nesbitt, "The Missing"
David Oyelowo, "Nightingale"
Mark Rylance, "Wolf Hall"
Kiefer Sutherland, "24: Live Another Day"
BEST MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES ACTRESS
Aunjanue Ellis, "The Book of Negroes"
Maggie Gyllenhaal, "The Honorable Woman"
Felicity Huffman, "American Crime"
Jessica Lange, "American Horror Story: Freak Show"
Queen Latifah, "Bessie"
Frances McDormand, "Olive Kitteridge"
BEST MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES SUPPORTING ACTOR
Jason Isaacs, "Stockholm, Pennsylvania"
Bill Murray, "Olive Kitteridge"
Elvis Nolasco, "American Crime"
Jonathan Pryce, "Wolf Hall"
Cory Michael Smith, "Olive Kitteridge"
Finn Wittrock, "American Horror Story: Freak Show"
BEST MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Khandi Alexander, "Bessie"
Claire Foy, "Wolf Hall"
Janet McTeer, "The Honorable Woman"
Mo'Nique, "Bessie"
Cynthia Nixon, "Stockholm, Pennsylvania"
Sarah Paulson, "American Horror Story: Freak Show"
BEST REALITY SERIES
"Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown"
"Deadliest Catch"
"Married at First Sight"
"MythBusters"
"Shark Tank"
"Undercover Boss"
BEST REALITY COMPETITION SERIES
"The Amazing Race"
"America's Got Talent"
"Dancing with the Stars"
"Face Off"
"Master Chef Junior"
"The Voice"
BEST REALITY HOST
Tom Bergeron, "Dancing with the Stars"
Anthony Bourdain, "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown"
Cat Deeley, "So You Think You Can Dance"
Phil Keoghan, "The Amazing Race"
James Lipton, "Inside the Actors Studio"
Betty White, "Betty White's Off Their Rockers"
BEST ANIMATED SERIES
"Archer"
"Bob's Burgers"
"Gravity Falls"
"The Simpsons"
"South Park"
"Star Wars Rebels"
BEST TALK SHOW
"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"
"The Graham Norton Show"
"Jimmy Kimmel Live"
"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver"
"The Late Late Show with James Corden"
"The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon"
RECAP: Mad Men 7x12 "Lost Horizon"
It's transition time for SC&P, with the whole crowd moving over to the enormous McCann offices, and the various members of the Mad Men cast finding it difficult, if not impossible, to adapt. We'll start with the person who has the most horrendous, and ultimately aborted experience moving over, which is Joan, who was right last week that she was going to be cast aside, despite Pete's optimism (and his halfhearted attempt to include her on an account in this episode). At the new place, she's forced to work with Dennis the asshole, who's rude to her clients and when Joan tries to scold him, reacts very badly and doesn't like being reprimanded, or really told anything at all, by a woman. Joan tries to go to Ferg Donnelly for help (he's the lackey who brought the guys over last week), and at first he seems like he'll help her out by taking Dennis off her accounts and taking his place himself...but only if Joan will agree to occasionally sleep with him. Gross. Joan goes to her boyfriend Bruce Greenwood for advice, who tells her the two ways to deal with people are to get lawyers involved or "call a guy," (what, like a mobster?) and Joan bravely attempts the first, by confronting Jim Hobart himself.
But this goes even worse than with the other men, as Hobart flatly tells her he does not respect her, her partnership, or her job, and when Joan demands that she be bought out for the half a million she's owed, he refuses, telling her she'll get .50 cents on the dollar or nothing. Joan tries her best, threatening to bring in lawyers and the women's rights protesters, but it's still a bit early on that front, and Hobart orders her to get out and doesn't care about a thing she says. It's finally Roger who convinced her to take the half, since it's the best she'll ever do. Joan sadly accepts the deal and walks out, and I have a melancholy feeling that this is the last we see of her- but at least she gets her nice millionaire and will probably go on to have a reasonably happy life. If it had only been ten years later or so- she may have been able to fight for what was hers.
Speaking of Roger, he spends the episode hanging out at the now abandoned SC&P building, where Peggy is as well, since she too is already being shabbily treated by McCann, where they never brought her furniture over or gave her an office, and mistook her for one of the new secretaries. Peggy's pissed about all of it, and refuses to show up until she at least has an office, meaning she hangs out in the empty building where the lights are shut off and she's surprised and spooked by Roger playing weird organ music in the hallway. That's not the only funny moment the two of them share, as they get drunk together, reminisce and worry about what their respective futures hold, as Roger bemoans that he's been placed on a floor with other useless old people, while Peggy will have to claw her way up (if she's even given the chance). It's all worth if for the last shot of them as Roger grinds away on his organ while Peggy roller skates around the empty halls, and a defiant Peggy finally shows up at McCann three days late, strolling in with sunglasses on, a cigarette in her mouth, and Cooper's naughty painting of an "octopus pleasuring a lady," that Roger told her to take and hang on the wall. That's pretty awesome. I just wonder how long she will last here.
Finally, we get to Don, who at first comes over to the McCann offices ready to get to work, as Jim and Ferg butter him up and make him feel like he's being courted by them (Hobart insists they've wanted him for ten years), and Meredith has everything planned exactly as he needs it...but our Don, he's never satisfied. As he walks into a Miller meeting he realizes that he's only one of many others, and while colleague Ted is happy to be anonymous in the crowd, Don stares out the window at a passing plane and suddenly walks out of not just the meeting, but the office and then the state. He starts driving aimlessly, hallucinating visions of Bert Cooper asking him what he's doing, and winds up in Wisconsin, looking for Diana the waitress. Are you kidding, Don? Really? He actually poses as a collection agent who asks Diana's ex-husband where she is, but the guy's too smart for that and threatens to call the police on him (as well he should- Don's acting like a lunatic here). But then Bauer tells Don he's not the first guy to come looking for her, and the truth is Diana can't be saved, which sends Don on his way, but not back to New York. No, he heads out further west, picking up a hippie hitch-hiker on route, not knowing where he's going (but I'm betting on California, since he always winds up there eventually).
Notes:
-Betty gets one scene tonight, as Don shows up there before his journey to pick up Sally, who already went back to school, and the two are friendly and warm with each other, as Don wishes her luck with school- and for some reason I have the feeling this will be the last scene these two share as well. Which is for the best and all, but things are inevitably starting to feel like wrapping up.
-Don and Joan have a nice moment in the elevator at McCann, and even though we never saw them make up from their ugly spat a season and a half ago, apparently they did, because they're fun and flirty friends again, who agree to have lunch together soon, and of course now I'm realizing that scene was probably included because that's that for the two of them as well. Sniff.
-Pete seems to be happy enough at McCann, along with underlings like Harry and Stan, but all of them are on separate floors now, as the old crew really does split up for good. Next week's previews showed some split Pete, Betty, and Sally fragments, so my guess is it's time for their swan songs now before the final episode will give us mostly Don, and probably Peggy too, right? Even though tonight's final Peggy shot could very well be her last (it was a good one for her), I can't imagine the show signing off for good without one more Don/Peggy moment, since they've had so little this year. Even if it's over the phone or something, I bet we'll see her one more time.
RECAP: SNL 5/02 "Scarlett Johansson"
Well, that was a sucky experience. Scarlett Johansson does her best, but she's not a "showcase" kind of host, and tonight was hampered by some really weak material, including some of their more painful skits in quite a while. Ugh. I wonder if tonight's SNL or the Pacquio-Mayweather fight ended up being more of a let down.
COLD OPEN: The show does spoof the fact that everyone's watching the big fight tonight (except me, who couldn't care less about boxing), and has Aidy and Jay in the ring as the fighters, but it's pretty painfully unfunny right off the bat. Not a good sign.
MONOLOGUE: ScarJo comes out for the fourth time hosting and does a sexy song and dance to "Love to Love You Baby," that she says she sings for her new baby daughter, but it's just kind of boring. I'm getting tired of all the singing monologues, actually. Starting to scream of lazy writing- hey, let's just have the non-comedian host sing!
RIGHT SIDE OF THE BED: Umm, whaa? Who the hell wanted this sketch back? Talk about lazy. Taran and Cecily reprise their morning show hosts as an overcompensating closeted gay guy and his idiot wife, while Scarlett is an annoying woman from New Jersey. It sucks from start to finish. Please don't ever bring this back again, guys.
ORIOLES GAME: Kenan and Taran (both getting a lot of play tonight, and funnily enough, the two have rarely been paired together before), do the commentary for the empty Orioles game that had to be played during the Baltimore riots. They could have done more with this, but SNL is cowardly about racial material as always, so it comes across as more pointless than anything else.
BLACK WIDOW AGE OF ME: A trailer for the Marvel "girl superhero" movie, which is turned into a romantic comedy starring Black Widow looking for love. This also should have been funnier and shorter. I guess it's a decent jab at Marvel for still not having or knowing how to write a female superhero movie (as if it has to be different from any of the others to make the kind of cash they're practically pulling off a printing press at this point).
GIRLFRIENDS TALK SHOW: Gaahh! WHY? Why is this show trying to torture me tonight by bringing back nightmare sketches? I refuse to believe there's a single fan of this skit out there. It's no better tonight than it's ever been. Everyone sucks in it, and I hate it.
UPDATE: Michael and Colin give us some Baltimore riots jokes, gay marriage at the Supreme Court jokes, and are way too cowardly to even make any Bruce Jenner jokes at all, which IS the joke here, but I find their terror at being perceived as the slightest bit politically incorrect to be annoying. There are other comedians who had no trouble at all joking about Bruce Jenner this week- their fear speaks volumes about how weak these two are. Kate comes on as Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Bobby and Vanessa as unattractive/dirty Game of Thrones couple Sam and Gilly, and Kenan and Jay as Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal, who break on the air, so at least that's amusing. It's an uneven set this week.
DINO MUSEUM: ScarJo and Cecily are weirdos on a dinosaur tour at the museum- this is awful and excruciatingly painful to watch, even though Cecily is probably doing her usual thing where she makes fun of young hipster girls she sees in real life (that's my theory about how she comes up with her characters- there's a definite pattern).
BLAZER: This is actually kinda funny- it seems like an old commercial for a 70's cop show starring Taran trying to make himself look good..until you realize he's only beating up black people in "the streets." They go on to make a pointed cops are racist joke at the end. One of the better bits of the night.
VIRGIN ATLANTIC: A new plane with bionic flight attendants Vanessa and Scarlett in first class, but the two of them have kinks in their systems. This is not a bad idea, and Taran plays a great pilot who makes all the wrong announcements to the passengers, but there's not enough good jokes here. It's too bad, because ScarJo plays the perfect robot (as always) and Vanessa's good here too- it's something that had potential and could have really used more than halfhearted writing, which has plagued every single sketch this week.
JINGLE WRITERS: It ends on a down note, with Aidy and Scarlett as hippie jingle writers pitching bad jingles for Pampers. This is so awful I forgot it existed about ten seconds after I watched it.
So, that's it for tonight. A terrible episode, even though Scarlett Johansson wasn't bad herself, but she can't save the material. I give it a D (some of the Update stuff was okay and I liked Blazer, but that's a rotten batting average). Let's just move on and put this one behind us, okay? Next up it's Reese Witherspoon, and there's just two episodes left of the season, so I really hope we don't end this year in as much misery as we did last year. Get it together people.
REVIEW: "Daredevil" Season 1
I complain an awful lot about the explosion of superhero movies in the last few years, and about how virtually generic and same-y they're starting to become, but you may have noticed I have not made the same complaint about superheroes on TV, and that's because I genuinely believe the serialized nature of comic books and these stories in general has always lent itself perfectly to the medium of television. These stories were meant to be on TV, just like how they were originally played as serials that would play before films, way back in the pre-television days of the 1930's and '40s. That's where this material belongs and always will, at least in my opinion, because that's where they have the most opportunity to get it right.
Nowhere is this more readily proven than in the new Netflix Daredevil television series, created by Drew Goddard (fanboy extraordinaire and Buffy alum), which fully embraces the lack of content restrictions on its network to give us what is, in my opinion, having watched all of these things to date, by far the best filmed superhero story (movie or TV) Marvel has produced since the dawn of the new studio back in the mid-2000's. This is exciting, well-acted, action packed and perfectly serialized storytelling that takes full advantage of the medium it's been made for, and embraces the dark, Frank Miller-ized version of the Daredevil character to give us a gritty, brutal, made for adults (that's right folks) comic book series that will have fans eagerly binge-ing every episode until it's all over, and you have to wait a whole year for a new season.
The plan Marvel and Netflix came up with was to create four different superhero shows, and then team the characters together for a limited event miniseries called The Defenders, an extension of the MCU for the TV world. But Marvel's other attempts at television so far, Agents of Shield and Agent Carter, have turned in product that next to Daredevil seems fraught with mediocrity and Saturday morning cartoon adventures (and that's from someone who liked Agent Carter and thinks Shield has drastically improved since its first season). Daredevil is in another league though- this series takes a dark Batman-esque character and gives him a gritty Hell's Kitchen filled with scumbag, real world criminals to face down. Daredevil comes up against human traffickers, rapists and child molesters and spares no one in his viligante quest to rid his city of the rot that's infested it.
The show treats its audience like adults who can pay attention to detail, showing rather than telling us Matt Murdoch's abilities, which of course involve his heightened senses and martial arts training in the wake of the childhood accident that blinded him when he was nine. The backstory on Matt unfolds in fragments over the course of the entire first season, occasionally out of order but never out of place, as we see the adult Matt in the early days of his nighttime viligante activities (no red suit yet- it's more of a black ninja style getup, which is a lot more practical if you think about it, but the payoff to the costume is a thrill in the final episode). Matt's played by Charlie Cox, who gives us a sensitive, noble, brooding and conflicted Matt Murdoch, who takes his quest seriously, and embraces torture readily as a means of confession, yet agonizes over how close he really is to becoming the people he is fighting against. Unlike other superheroes, Matt is devoutly religious, a practicing Catholic whose frequent confessions at Church explore yet another angle on the superhero not seen very much, if ever, in these depictions.
A defense attorney by day, Matt Murdoch's secret identity, also unlike other heroes, is one that actually matters, as occasional episodes show us a procedural where Matt, his partner Foggy Nelson (a very funny and likable Elden Henson) and secretary Karen Paige (Deborah Ann Woll) attempt to take on criminals through the legal system, which is a setup that could even serve as its own separate series. Finally, the last element that makes this show the best thing Marvel's ever done is the establishing of a truly great and compelling villain in Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, as he's known to comics fans everywhere (although he's not yet referred to as that by name here). Vincent D'onofrio plays Fisk, and he makes a conscious choice to play him exactly the opposite of what you'd expect. His Fisk seems constantly in pain, socially awkward and almost oddly sympathetic in what he explains are his own plans for rebuilding Hell's Kitchen that conflict with Daredevil's, yet his murderous monstrous side comes out when it needs to, just to remind us that this guy really is the supervillain you've been wanting to see- but a complicated, more interesting one than you thought.
Not every episode is perfect- in the middle of the season there are some storylines that are clearly introduced in order to set up the obligatory upcoming Defenders team up, and every time there's a reference to the actual Avengers, which are supposed to exist in the same universe as this one, you're taken out of the show a bit, because trust me, there's no way you can imagine the goofiness of Thor, Captain America and the Incredible Hulk in this dark, dangerous, reality-based city where heads are bashed in, brains are splattered and Matt takes graphic, brutal beatings that genuinely almost kill him on a weekly basis. In this show we get to see that he's not Batman, and though quick and abnormally alert, his humanness is put to the test each and every night as he's sliced apart and pummeled nearly to death, requiring constant care and stitching up (courtesy of Rosario Dawson, a friendly nurse who also seems bound to connect the Defenders in the future).
There are constant nods and Easter eggs for comics fans in this series- as much as the content is dark, adult and catered to a more mature demographic than the movies seem interested in reaching, there are plenty of hints and clues about what's to come for Daredevil lovers themselves. This is a show that was obviously made by those with affection and appreciation for the character who wanted to see him done right (and make good on the not so good 2003 Ben Affleck movie, which also attempted to go dark, but looks downright cartoonish next to this). The action scenes are spectacularly and even cinematically filmed, showing us just how much you can do without a gigantic budget for CGI effects (the answer is quite a lot- look out for a thrilling, Oldboy style fight sequence at the end of the second episode that will leave you slackjawed). At this point, Daredevil ends on such a note that I'd rather see a Season 2 of this show than I would any of the other, more obscure characters that are slated for the next two years- I only hope that Netflix takes heed and decides they feel the same way.
Grade: A-
Motion Posters for New Season of 'True Detective'
We were promised a season all about the corruption of the United States highway system, and these new posters seem to hint that that may be the case. Doesn't exactly sound like a well of fascinating material but maybe there's a whole, hidden scandal there that I'm unaware of. True Detective's new eight episode season starts June 21st.
