This is actually one of the shows I decided to dump this year, despite giving a semi-decent review to the first season. The problem for me was that it had no staying power. I realized about a month after I finished it that I had completely forgotten everything that happened. That's not a good thing. The last thing I want to do is get sucked into another House of Cards or Agents of SHIELD, shows that I had reservations about from the start, and which never improved on any of them, but for some reason I kept watching too long anyway. So for me it's so long, Bloodline. But for those who are interested in this family psychodrama, here's a look at the upcoming season dropping in May.
Tyrian Faces the Dragons in New 'Game of Thrones' Trailer
So yeah- the dead are coming, Bran's returning, Sansa wants revenge (please let her get it, that rapist guy is the most repulsive and near unwatchable character on the show at this point, much worse than King Joffrey was), and Tyrian is in charge and facing the dragons in Khaleesi's absence. Looks like Cersei's back on top again too, which is kinda surprising. I thought George R.R. Martin would have killed her off by now, but my guess is the show has turned her into that character you love to hate and can't get rid of, at least until the series finale. All the Lannisters will probably survive until then. But it was just officially confirmed finally, that Jon Snow really is dead, for those who were tormented by that for the last ten months. I myself couldn't care that much- he was never one of my favorites and I always kinda hated the stuff going on at the Wall. Also, if Khaleesi is separated from her people this entire season, I call bullshit, given that it took all this time to let her and Tyrian meet and then they only get like three scenes together in total? Yeah, that's a gyp.
RECAP: SNL 4/09 "Russell Crowe"
Wow. And I thought this one might be better than last week's. Russell Crowe hosted a truly dismal episode tonight, and even though I wouldn't blame it entirely on him, let's just say he wasn't one of the more dynamic hosts. Blech.
COLD OPEN: A fairly boring open with Kate's Hillary opining her recent losses and pandering to New Yorkers in her typical Hillary-esque way. The best bit is mocking her being unable to use the metro card on the subway, but there's no good lines here or anything.
MONOLOGUE: Russell comes out and briefly pokes fun at his "hilarious" filmography, but it seriously lasts like two minutes, making it the second week in a row where they clearly had no ideas for the host's monologue.
PREP H: A lame ad for Preparation H, where Beck is a guy who loudly keeps calling Taran out on his problem in public, but it's a pretty bleh delivery of this obvious joke here.
POLITICS NATION: Kenan does his Al Sharpton impression in front of the real Al Sharpton as a guest, who pokes fun at his weight gain, seeing as obviously Sharpton looks nothing like that anymore. Sometimes Kenan's funny with this, but for some reason this one fell flat, although I did like the joke about Trump's -1,048 approval rating among black voters.
HENRY VIII: Russell is a hologram of King Henry VIII at a museum who keeps insulting patrons and harassing women. Doesn't work.
MATCH FINDERS: Dating show where Russell is one of the bachelors as a pervy old man who keeps making gross sexual remarks to Cecily's contestant. Eh. Russell is trying and he's the center of the joke, but the whole thing just isn't taking off.
UPDATE: A bunch of election jokes from Jost and Che, then Kate comes on as the TV viewer Deenie, and her best bit is that she's actually eating all these brussell sprouts in her plastic container. Then Kyle comes out as the failed stand-up comic Bruce Chandling, and god this whole character is so awful that the audience has no idea how to respond to him. I know his schtick is that he's a bad comedian, but when it's actually truly bombing in front of the live audience it's really uncomfortable to watch. I wanted to cover my eyes for this, it was so bad.
SURVIVOR: The reality show spoof where people's relatives are brought on as a surprise, but Russell is brought out as Pete's uncle's friend Terry, to his befuddlement. Russell goes for it again, but there's just no good jokes in any of these premises tonight.
PORGIE'S PEPPERONIS: A taped Beck and Kyle bit where they're overgrown weirdos excited to work at a Chuck E Cheese style kid's place, so much so that they freak out at everything and eventually, literally explode. And once again, I did not laugh once. Now this episode is starting to feel a thousand years long and I'm getting kinda pissed off while watching it.
NINJA: A horrible skit where Leslie is a ninja saving people from mobsters or something. Oh my god, this sucks SO bad now. When will this episode end???
OPRAH WINFREY: A LIFE OF LOVE: One of those random Mike O'Brien videos that pop up every once in a while, where this time he plays Oprah in a biopic but as himself. That's the joke. Is this over yet?
Yes, finally it ends. My god, this episode was terrible. Not a single thing made me even giggle tonight. I feel like I shouldn't give it an F though, because I've actually seen worse (January Jones will always be the gold standard for worst SNL host of all time, for example). Weirdly, Russell Crowe actually participated in just four skits. Four. None of the pre-taped stuff, and not the Al Sharpton one either. Hmm, I wonder if he was hard to work with behind the scenes, despite his seeming to be putting forth effort in the ones he did do. Anyway, I give it a D- and write this one off as worst of the season. Next week it's Julia Louis-Dreyfus, so hopefully she can bring some life back into this show as it ends the April run. See you then.
First Trailer for 'OJ: Made in America' Documentary
This 10 hour documentary on OJ Simpson premiered at Sundance in January, and will now be premiering on ABC in June, and the subsequent parts on ESPN over four nights. For those who can't get enough of the topic and for whom the FX miniseries wasn't enough, you should probably check this one out, since it got phenomenal reviews, and they will be trying to get it eligible for next year's Oscars, despite the fact that it's airing on television first. Sounds like it's definitely worth watching.
RECAP: SNL 4/02 "Peter Dinklage"
Oof. My hopes were high for a decent episode tonight with Peter Dinklage hosting for the first time, but alas, it was not to be. Dinklage did fine, but the skits were abysmal, leading to one of the worst episodes of the season, for sure. SNL often comes back from a break with subpar material for some reason, and this was another example of that.
COLD OPEN: We open with Kate interviewing Cecily as a crazy Trump supporter, trying to defend his offensive comments, this time towards women. It's all kinda meh, except for a couple of cutaways to Darrell's Trump punching a supporter in the face. Not too inspired.
MONOLOGUE: Ha. And speaking of not inspired, Peter Dinklage comes out for a two minute bit where he talks to Bobby dressed up as George R.R. Martin in the audience, and then the whole thing just ends. So, I guess there were zero ideas for the opening this week, huh?
WINNIE THE POOH: Oh boy. Peter is Pooh Bear and Jay is "Denny the Real," who comes in and tries to insult Pooh and his pals, and makes yet another Revenant bear joke. Ugh. This was so awful I'm shocked it was the opening sketch.
NAKED & AFRAID: CELEBRITY EDITION: Peter teams up with Leslie for the reality survival show, and though this should have been funny, Leslie is just is too annoying and her usual screaming self, so it doesn't really do anything for me. Another miss.
SPACE PANTS: A weird one where a couple of muscle men in a lounge try to intimidate Jon and Pete, who owe money, but keep getting distracted by Peter, who shows up onstage wearing a space outfit and singing a bizarre song about his space pants. It's so random that it seems like something that should have been the 11:55 slot, and I can't say it's funny either, although Peter goes for it, and Gwen Stefani even joins in at the end. Weird.
GLORY HOLE: Peter and Aidy are a couple who invite Vanessa and Beck out to join them at a restaurant that serves bread through a glory hole in the wall that they of course, have to eat hands free. It's one joke, and it's a lazy one, but Peter does go for it again, so I give him that. I didn't care about this one either though.
HBO FIRST LOOK: A behind the scenes look at Game of Thrones' upcoming season with the joke being on Bobby the motion capture guy who stands in for the dragons. This isn't funny though, it's just kinda there. They could have come up with a better angle for a GOT joke, although they've actually been doing these since the show first started, so maybe they were just out of ideas?
UPDATE: Jost and Che's newfound amusement with each other's jokes continues, as they seem to think that's the approach that people want to see from them, but it still does absolutely nothing for me. Some knocks on Trump and a defense of Obama as our pres from Che, before Pete comes on to ramble about Hulk Hogan's sex tape settlement from Gawker, and Kenan then arrives as David Ortiz for the opening of baseball season. Kenan is actually kinda funny, and his "Big Papi" is the first thing that's made me laugh all night, so I'm grateful.
DEAD BODY: Peter is a hotel concierge who shows Cecily and Beck the "underwater" honeymoon suite, which has an aquarium view, only for them to freak out as Taran's corpse comes floating into the frame and hitting against the glass. This one is actually is kind of amusing, as Taran works that dead body physicality, so it's the first skit with anything in it that made me chuckle tonight.
VACATION NIGHTMARES: Peter hosts a show that has Cecily and Taran narrating one of those bad re-enactments of the time they were jumped in an alleyway in Denmark, but Kate and Aidy play the bad actors cast in the re-enactment video. It's not too funny, and would have been better if half the joke didn't depend on everyone pointing out how bad Kate and Aidy are in the video.
COMPANY RETREAT: Last one of the night has Taran doing a magic show for company employees and getting under Peter's skin as the boss who can't take a joke. Peter's increasing anger and inability to accept getting smelly underwear jokes made about him kinda sells it actually.
So that's it everybody. Not a good episode, although Peter wasn't a bad host. The material just sucked all around. I have to give this one a D, salvaged only by Peter's attempts and Kenan's Big Papi. Next week it's Russell Crowe, who should be interesting (I can't remember if he's ever hosted before), so see you all then.
Kimmy Schmidt Asks You to 'Kimmy-fy' Your World in New Teaser
Another cute teaser in the lead-up to Season 2, coming April 15th. There's so many shows coming back this month, it looks like I'm going to be overloaded even after dropping the ones I'm no longer into. We got The Americans, Outlander, Kimmy Schmidt, Game of Thrones, Orphan Black, Silicon Valley...it's going to be quite the couch potato spring for me. I can't wait.
Bran is Back in New Promo for 'Game of Thrones' Season 6
Some cool new footage for the new season of GOT coming up on April 24th, although I can't say I'm that excited about Bran coming back. He wasn't on at all last year and frankly, he was not missed. But this is the first time the show is passing what's written in the books, so that might be interesting, although it's hard to say if it will really make a huge difference or not.
Garry Shandling 1949-2016
Some sad news today, as comedian and TV star Garry Shandling died suddenly at the age of 66. His death appears to have been quite sudden indeed, as he was suffering from no known illness and was hospitalized just this morning in an apparent emergency medical situation. Shandling began his long career in television writing for sitcoms Sanford and Son and Welcome Back Kotter, and was a frequent guest host on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show before then starring in his own influential shows It's Garry Shandling's Show and then of course, the groundbreaking The Larry Sanders Show, which ran from 1992-98 on HBO and wracked up 18 Emmy nominations over its run.
New Featurette for 'Outlander' Season 2
It's getting closer by the minute. This one I am truly excited for and this new behind the scenes look shows off all the new French sets and costumes, for which they seem to have a cinematic level budget meant to accommodate them. I can't WAIT. April 9th, people.
The Gang is Back in New Trailer for 'Veep' Season 5
This year I've been resolved to quit watching shows that I'm only halfheartedly into, and I've successfully followed through with dropping Agents of SHIELD, House of Cards, and Bloodline. I never picked up Better Call Saul again either, which is much better than those shows, but for some reason I myself am just not as into it. And this is another one that I'm teetering on the brink of dropping, especially because this is the first season without creator and showrunner Armando Ianucci, so it's the perfect excuse. But for those who are still into it, here's a look at the new season- right now I'm about 90 percent sure I'm out, but who knows if I'll change my mind.
