Recap and Preview for Season 2 of 'UnREAL'

 I'm very happy to report that the new season of UnREAL is getting fantastic reviews and apparently hasn't missed a beat from its nasty and delightfully dark first season. It premieres Monday night at 10pm on Lifetime. Can't wait. Check this out for a preview of the new season.

REVIEW: "The Flash" Season 2

The Flash was one of my favorite shows in its first season, and even ended up in my top ten for last year- that's how much I enjoyed the light, fuzzy, pure comic book tone that made it feel so bright and sunny and stand apart from the other superhero shows. This year, I'm sad to say it will not end up in my year end list (at least I doubt it- it'd have to be a pretty bad TV year for that to happen, which has not been the case of late). Unfortunately, it really seemed to suffer from a bit of a sophomore slump this season, in two easily identifiable (and hopefully fixable) ways. Oh well. I guess that's to be expected, especially with 23 episode seasons on a network like the CW.

Let's start with the story that turned out to be the biggest flop of the season- the Big Bad. The show takes its cues from the old Buffy formula of having one major villain per season, but you really need to get creative with that concept to justify it lasting all year long. Tom Cavanagh's Reverse Flash/Eobard Thawne/Harrison Wells of Season 1 was a far superior villain, carefully crafted to reveal his secrets at all the right moments to our hero Barry Allen and his friends, and the motivations behind his nefarious goals that connected him to Barry were never less than compelling, thanks to Cavanagh's delightfully sinister and downright gleeful performance.

This time around, the show basically decided to repeat the storyline full stop, by introducing another mentor figure in the form of Teddy Sears' Jay Garrick from Earth-2, along with the introduction of the multiverse as a yearlong theme. But Jay turned out to be a total drip who had less connection to Barry and more of a deadly dull, chemistry-free, sometime romance with Caitlin of all people (Danielle Panabaker, by far the weakest actress on the show), and though his real identity turned out to be someone else (Hunter Zolomon, aka the evil speedster Zoom from the Flash comics), his motivations and goals changed about a thousand times throughout the season, so that no one watching could ever explain to you what it was that Zoom really wanted, and introducing him to the team so early made it so that he kept coming and going at seemingly random intervals just to drag things out to the very end, which finally culminated in a fairly underwhelming and predictable finale.

Earth-2 Barry and Iris were one of the highlights of the season

So Zoom was a big miss (even though he was voiced by Candyman's Tony Todd, which was a cool effect before he was unmasked), but I can sort of forgive convoluted plot stuff, especially as it involves comic books and sci-fi and all that, as long as the characters and relationships remain strong and the actors sell their chemistry with each other in such a way that you just want to keep watching them hang out no matter what they're doing. This cast was particularly excellent in that regard, as I mentioned last year (Panabaker aside, but she's basically a background character much of the time), and for the most part that remains true, but for some strange reason the show decided (whether consciously or not, I'm unsure) to drop what was by far the reason I originally loved it so much, and that was the bright and sunny tone. It was the modern equivalent of the Christopher Reeve-era Superman movies, a show that proved you could do light and funny with superheroes for the modern age, and yet still have an enormous amount of real emotional connection to these characters, especially because Grant Gustin's Barry was a such a sweet, smiling puppy dog that you just wanted to take home with you.

This year the show made Barry down in the dumps from the start, in response to everything that happened at the end of the last season, and boy, oh boy was that a mistake. I praised Gustin to the high heavens last year because of his natural likability, but man, can he not do "brooding" well. Forcing Barry to be miserable and depressed made him whiny and annoying, which is the clear opposite of what he's good at, and it actually made him downright unappealing at times. In fact, the Barry that showed up on the hyped Supergirl/Flash crossover episode in March suddenly reminded Flash viewers what we'd been missing since Season 1- the smiling, funny sweetheart who loved and enjoyed every moment of being a superhero. I'm kind of shocked that the show forgot to maintain that tone this year in favor of darker, angstier, frankly Arrow-like misery for the most part, because it just isn't what the show does well. Perhaps the loss of co-creator, developer and writer Geoff Johns this season left a bigger impact behind the scenes than anticipated, but I'm telling you right now, they need to fix that and they need to fix it fast. And with the unnecessarily dark finale that saw the murder of Barry's dad Henry (John Wesley Shipp) and the startling cliffhanger that promises more of this dark avenue in the future, all I can do is cross my fingers and hope these guys are listening to some of the criticism about this less than stellar second season.

With that said, it wasn't all bad. The very weak first half that was mostly devoted to waste of time episodes dedicated to setting up spinoff show Legends of Tomorrow, along with the incredibly pointless subplot of Barry's throwaway two-second romance with Patty Spivot, designed to stall the inevitable union with soulmate Iris (which is hilariously practically stated on the show, as a reluctant Barry has to be pushed into this temporary relationship), at least gave way to some much better episodes in the second half once those obligatory storylines were jettisoned. The two-part sojourn to Earth-2 led to the best episode in the show's history, as we got see doppelgangers of every character in another world, and see Barry and Cisco interact with them in various, entertaining ways (even Panabaker improved a bit with her performance as Killer Frost, who at least isn't as painful to watch as Caitlin).

Killer Frost was a welcome relief from Caitlin

Iris got to be a kick-ass cop instead of a reporter, a profession the show clearly doesn't know how to integrate with the team, so I say make this occupation change for her permanent somehow. And the Kevin Smith directed episode "The Runaway Dinosaur," where Barry gets lost in the speedforce, was excellent and another contender for best in the show's history, as debut Flash writer Zack Stentz clearly knew exactly how to balance the humor, lightheartedness and emotion that made the first season so fun and really fueled that episode (not to mention gave our Earth-1 Iris the best role within the action and the team that she's ever gotten). Overall, the cast is still immensely fun to watch, with Cavanagh and Jesse L. Martin doing their parts as the veterans to the team of younger actors, Carlos Valdes is still superb as the scene-stealing Cisco, who happily remains not overused (unlike his character equivalent of Felicity over on Arrow, who was always a comic relief bit player and never should have been upgraded to female lead), and the improvement in Iris's character from the first season was hugely significant and showed that Candice Patton is clearly the best actress in a series that favors the men for some reason (use her more, guys, she's good).

As always, I'm a big hater of any kind of "will they, won't they" subplot (in my opinion, that trope is decades out of date by now), so as far as I'm concerned, Barry and Iris need to be together yesterday, and the really irritating romance stalling is getting on my nerves to the nth degree at this point. It's a superhero show, guys, and this couple was supposed to be permanently married anyway, so what are you waiting for? Pull the trigger already and just keep 'em together, for god's sake. Waiting around for that (for absolutely no credible reason) annoys me and makes me angry more than it does anything else, so I'd like to tell them to just get on with it. Finally, the introductions of Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) and Jesse Quick (Violett Beane) actually turned out to be fairly well-executed, as Wally's initial "angry rebel" addition to the family as Joe's long lost son seemed eye-roll worthy at first, but by season's end, he actually turned out to be a pretty good dude who I'm now looking forward to see get his own powers and become Barry's sidekick, as the West-Allen blended family remains the strongest element of the show, essentially its beating heart, and that it never lost.

So as you can tell, my investment in this show and these characters remains strong, despite all the things I can nitpick and complain about in regards to this season. Not the least of which is that ridiculous cliffhanger that seemed to negate any character development on Barry's part at all this year in favor of introducing a famous comics storyline (Flashpoint Paradox) that readers may be excited to see happen, but I remain deeply skeptical of, since it would appear to involve erasing both seasons of the entire show so far. Yeah, not feeling good about that, but if it's quickly dispensed with it could theoretically be used to restore Barry's happy, cheery, Season 1/Supergirl self. And that's my biggest wish for next season, one that I really hope the writers adhere to. I loved The Flash it because it was fun and warm and fuzzy. Cisco shouldn't suddenly be (and wasn't last year) the only person allowed to be funny on the show. Please bring that back and don't make Barry a miserable mess anymore, despite whatever plot machinations take place. That's all I ask. But I'll keep watching anyway, because, well...frankly, I'm hooked no matter what at this point.

Grade: C+

Mopey Barry needs a Season 3 attitude adjustment, stat- where's the dorky goofball of Season 1??

New Look at Cameron Crowe's 'Roadies'

I was mildly intrigued by the first trailer for this Showtime series starting June 26th, but even more so with this new one. The cast looks great and if I don't quite trust Cameron Crowe's recent output, J.J. Abrams and Winnie Holzman (creator of My So-Called Life) as producers are a good sign. So I'm really crossing my fingers for this one, but will wait for reviews to land before checking it out.

Conan Plays Overwatch with 'Game of Thrones's Tyrian and Cersei

Okay, so these Clueless Gamer bits Conan does have started to get more attention recently due to his bringing celebrities in to play along. I kinda blame the insanely popular Carpool Karaoke segments from James Corden for this (I have to duck and admit to liking those), and I guess the games that Jimmy Fallon does with nearly every celebrity guest as well- mostly the lip synch stuff, which has now spawned its own TV show. People just cannot get enough of celebs goofing around, can they? I can't stand Fallon and refuse to watch just about anything he does, but my beloved Conan always cracks me up, and so do Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey here as well. Crap. I think I've been hooked.

RECAP: SNL 5/21 "Fred Armisen"

Whew. The return of Fred Armisen fortunately leads to a pretty decent episode, which stands in stark contrast to the dreadful run the show's had since March. At least now they can go out on a relative high note, so kudos to Fred for bringing it to a finish.

COLD OPEN: A great opening tonight, as Kate's Hillary trades barbs with Larry David's Bernie in a bar, as they roast each other about the primary contest winding down, despite the fact that Bernie refuses to drop out. They end up dancing through the studio, as Hillary tosses him into an elevator at the end. You have to notice how ironic it is that the show's Hillary and Bernie skits ended up so much funnier than their Trump ones this season. You'd have thought it'd be the other way around.

MONOLOGUE: Fred Armisen comes back to do his "one man show" parody of his SNL audition. It goes on a little too long, although I know that's part of the joke, since Fred hates one man shows. I wouldn't say it's wildly funny, but I get it.

LEWIS & CLARK THEATRE: Fred, Kyle and Cecily do a Lewis & Clark skit in front of a high school class that ends up with Lewis trying to trick Clark into having sex with him while Sacajewea watches. I thought this bit was going to be painful at first, but where it winds up going makes me giggle a little bit, so it's okay.

DIGITAL SHORT: Andy's back! I knew Fred would bring some cast members of his era along with him, and Andy Samberg's the first, who of course pops up with a home run digital short, that has him rapping about a girl (Vanessa) who wants him to fuck her like the "US fucked Bin Laden." It's great!

DINNER PARTY: And another one, as Jason Sudeikis brings new girlfriend Regine (Fred) to a dinner party and she freaks out the guests with her crazy reactions to Jason touching her in random places. It's one of those weird characters, but it's actually funny because several people break in this sketch, including Vanessa, who I don't think I've EVER seen break before, so that's pretty fun to watch.

FAREWELL, MR. BUNTING: Okay, so, for the first time in a long time, I think SNL actually produced an instant classic sketch here. It's a pre-recorded bit, but it starts out as a really straight spoof of the final scene in Dead Poet's Society, only to lead up to a completely unexpected payoff that turns out to be totally worth the wait. See it for yourselves. Bravo, guys. I have to wonder who came up with this.

UPDATE: The final Update of the season includes the last (for a while anyway) of the Trump jokes, which mock the NRA and Hillary, and an appearance by Maya Rudolph as the ousted president of Brazil, but that goes on way too long. Then Jost and Che do their annual "jokes that didn't make it to air" and we end with a final appearance by Kenan's Willie, talking about "fun" in the summertime. You know, I actually thought this was Kenan's last season, but it doesn't appear to be, so I guess he really wants to break that record of longest running cast member.

ANDROMEDA GALAXY: A space sketch with Fred as the designated survivor whose seemingly first class flight in an escape pod annoys his sacrificial crewmates, especially when he picks out City Slickers 2 as the in flight movie, and Korean chicken as dinner. Good for a couple chuckles, but it's too short to leave much impact.

STUDENT THEATRE SHOWCASE: Okay, I think we've seen this sketch too many times now. It's the same old thing, with the annoying artsy kids doing their wacky, politically correct message show. There's nothing new in it, and like I said, I think we got it by now.

HARKIN BROTHERS BAND: Not really a sketch, but Fred leads the entire cast dressed up as a 70's style hippie band as they sing about fun in the summertime. It's a nice final moment to close out the finale.

Well, I think this one was overall pretty solid, like I said earlier. I wouldn't call it hysterical, but hey, that Bernie/Hillary opening, the Bin Laden digital short, and the Mr. Bunting sketch qualify this one for at least a B+, while the rest of it didn't overtly offend, so thank you to Fred for bringing this season in for a landing. When it comes back it's going to be right in the thick of election time, which is always when SNL is most relevant, so I'll see you guys back here for what's bound to be a crazy fall. In the meantime, have a great summer everybody!

Trailer for Season 2 of Hulu's 'Casual'

Casual was one of the new shows I really liked last year, and the second season is premiering in June, so look out for it if you can. It's kind of in the Transparent vein of family comedy/drama. Even though I'm usually a big defender of shows like Transparent and Orange is the New Black qualifying for that comedy category, because to me dark comedy IS comedy, this is actually one that I would go ahead and label a drama, even though no one else will simply because it's a half hour show. But it's not nearly as comedic as those others can often be, and it dwells purely in the real world, with no cartoon-y or surreal-like elements.

'24' is Rebooted Without Jack Bauer in '24: Legacy' Trailer

I honestly don't know what the appeal of doing a 24 reboot sans Jack Bauer is. I mean, Kiefer Sutherland WAS the show, wasn't he? But Fox is going to go ahead and try it with Straight Outta Compton's Corey Hawkins in the lead, with this 12-episode series premiering after the Super Bowl next February. We'll see how it goes, I guess. One thing I can say about this trailer is that it does look exactly like 24, just...without Jack. Do people want to watch that? Who knows.

Chaos Reigns in New Trailer for 'Mr. Robot' Season 2

Finally, we get a look at the much anticipated second season of the critically buzzed Mr. Robot, which is starting on July 13th. I gotta say, this is a pretty impressive trailer, especially for TV. Doesn't give away too much, yet the intensity and mystery, which is everything on this show, is clear from the get go. And hey, they got Obama in there too!

RECAP: SNL 5/14 "Drake"

Even thought Drake made his big return tonight as an overall excellent host, SNL was once again mediocre, letting down one of their great hosts with subpar writing and just plain bad material. I am SO ready for this season to be over, guys. It had on okay middle, but this final run has just sucked the life out of me at this point.

COLD OPEN: A Trump opening, with Darrell in Trump's office, pretending to be his own publicist on the phone and going over potential VP candidates, with Bobby's pathetic Chris Christie and Jay's Ben Carson making appearances. I don't know why this show has so utterly failed to come up with an angle on Trump for these opening skits. Is he just too much of a parody of himself already? That sure didn't stop those Sarah Palin sketches from being funny. Yeah, I don't get why, but these are so flat every single time. It's weird.

MONOLOGUE: The return of Drake, the surprise fantastic host from a few years back, as he comes onstage and raps about all those internet memes made about him. It's only okay. What's actually funny are the memes, to be honest.

RENT-A-CAR: Awkward bit where Beck and Vanessa are a married couple trying to rent a car and Drake is an irritating worker at the rent-a-car place and Jay is his even more irritating manager. The bit is the creation of the characters I guess. Drake gives it his all and this is obviously Jay's character, but it just isn't that funny. Maybe there's some potential in here, with some fine-tuning though. And some funnier dialogue.

AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR: A spoof of the NBC competition show with Beck and Drake as the hosts and Bobby as a contestant who fails instantly on the first challenge. They mock him by replaying in slow-mo and rubbing salt in the wounds. It's kinda funny, I guess, because it's a pretty straight on parody of the show.

SEXY EVENING: Okay, so, I don't really know what this was, but it appeared to be some kind of send-up of a fake 70's variety show with Drake as a supersexy R&B singer and his back-up dancers Kate and Cecily. The joke is that there's a lot of technical glitches in the show and he keeps screwing up his bit and undercutting the "sexiness." The whole thing falls totally flat, but again, Drake is super committed to this, totally in character, and really the center of the sketch- it's just too bad it's nothing to work with.

BABY BOSS: Oh, god. One of my most hated skits is back. Drake is a congressman talking to Paul Ryan about using the baby man as a possible third party candidate against Trump. You know the rest- Beck comes in and does his thing. I don't really know what to say about this. If you find his baby man schtick funny, then it's funny. I don't and never have, so...yeah. Ugh. I hate this character so much.

UPDATE: Che and Jost do a lot of jokes about the Trump fake publicist thing and then Kate comes on as her Russian peasant woman who jokes that Trump snatched up Melania from her village. Leslie then comes in with a bit about achieving your dreams at any age (it's actually one of her less annoying spiels), and finally Jay arrives with another roll of impressions, this time at the secret rapper's meeting to give Jay-Z advice on Beyonce. It's pretty funny, but I liked his comedians one better.

BLACK JEOPARDY: This boring skit is back with Drake as the world's only black Canadian who doesn't know any of the answers- he does a good job with the funny accent and all, but this whole sketch just doesn't have enough punchlines in it and never has, so whatever.

DRAKE'S BEEF: Yes! Something actually, genuinely funny! And of course, this appears to have been entirely Drake's thing, A video of him backstage, being silently offended by perceived slights from the cast and then drifting into his own head to rap about each of them insulting him. This was good! Drake himself is pretty hilarious, you have to admit.

HIGH SCHOOL DANCE: A totally unfunny bit that Drake is 100% committed to as he does a Hulk Hogan-esque character who chaperones a high school dance and accosts students with weird lectures about him chasing famous criminals from 15 years ago. I really don't get what the joke of this was- it was totally lost on me, whatever the point was here, but hey, Drake once again is spot on with the character. Weird though.

So that's it. Drake was on, but the show was eh. I loved his beef video, and Jay's rapper impressions were good. The rest? Pretty bleh, despite the host's efforts. I give it a C (could have been worse, and the recent previous ones were). I have no expectations that these guys are going to step it up for the finale next week, but with Fred Armisen hosting, I expect other former cast members of his era to pop up as well (maybe Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig for the inevitable Californians sketch?). And then we'll be mercifully done with this season. See you guys then!

'Supergirl' Flies to the CW

Well, this is a surprise. Networks announced major cancellations today, and there were actually quite a bit of shows that got the axe (farewell Muppets, Grinder, Grandfathered, Castle and Agent Carter), but the more interesting news for me was that Supergirl was renewed for Season 2, but will be moving over to the CW and transferring production from LA to Vancouver, which will of course involve major budget cuts. CBS evidently decided that the meager (for their network) ratings didn't justify a second season, and since a lot of people thought this show should have launched on its kid sister network in the first place, I guess it makes sense for them to pick it up. The CW is the home of fellow DC shows The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow after all, so it looks like Superman's cousin will be joining the mini-Justice League they've got going on over there. As a Flash devotee, I'll be watching the inevitable crossovers this will entail (bound to be a bunch, especially after the well-received one back in March that saw Flash star Grant Gustin hop earths to join Kara in National City for a day), but I quit watching this show regularly after the first few episodes. It just wasn't good enough to hold my attention, despite Melissa Benoist being a great lead. Maybe I ought to give it another shot now though. I just hope the CW doesn't have to slash budgets on its other shows in order to pay Calista Flockhart's considerable salary.