REVIEW: "The End of the F***ing World" Season 1

It’s hard to explain the feeling of falling in love with a show or a movie when seeing it for the first time. You know when it happens to you, and usually before it ends- the movie or in the case of television, the season in question. As much TV as I watch and enjoy, that particular feeling is still a rare thing to come by- I’d say the last time it happened for me might have been the first season of Outlander. But I’m happy to say that it’s happened once again with the absolutely perfect black comedy gem, The End of the F***ing World.

This eight episode show, a co-production for Channel 4 in the UK and Netflix, plays less like a series and more like a movie, in large part due to all eight episodes being written by the same woman, Charlie Covell, and quite artfully directed by the same duo, Jonathan Entwistle (also series creator) and Lucy Tcherniak, who keep the tone entirely consistent and the story entirely self-contained. It also helps that each episode is just twenty minutes, ensuring that you can watch this whole thing in under three hours.

Game of Thrones fans will recognize Gemma Whelan here as a lesbian cop

Based on a graphic novel of the same name, the show stars Alex Lawther (who I’m starting to become a big fan of, after his Black Mirror episode “Shut Up and Dance,” Howards End and now this), and Jessica Barden as two damaged, miserably outcast teens who find each other almost in spite of themselves and embark on a wild road trip that turns in parts thrilling, joyful and violent. There’s a dark, surreal element from the very beginning, as the isolated and traumatized James (Lawther) fancies himself a psychopath whose primary attraction to Alyssa (Barden) is as a potential murder victim, and Alyssa is a neglected, angry rebel already prone to break the law and drawn to James on account of his seemingly non-threatening, baby-faced innocence. 

The gruesome black humor of the show steals laughs from the two teens who narrate their own stories in their heads simultaneously, as their adolescent moods swing back and forth while they experience one horrific incident after another and grow more and more attached to each other as a result, somehow becoming more open and lovable in comparison to the jaded anger and cynicism they feel towards the world and themselves at the beginning. The supporting cast of perplexed parents and two female detectives (Gemma Whelan and Wunmi Mosaku) assigned to their case gives the plot a familiar framing structure but it all pales in comparison to the budding romance of these delightful oddballs at the center. By the end of the story, I was conflicted about a second season, which has just been greenlit by Netflix, seeing how this one ends on such a perfect note and covered the whole of the graphic novel, yet I can’t deny my biggest wish was only that there were more episodes to watch. Now there will be, and though it’s hard to see where it goes from here and likely that it can’t match the top to bottom greatness that was Season 1, I can’t help but be excited about seeing these two crazy kids again. I can’t wait.

Grade: A+

James and Alyssa are a perfectly mismatched match

REVIEW: "Casual" Season 4

The final season of Casual is a lovely coda to the character’s journeys over four seasons, and it does feel like one, since the writers decided to do something a bit different this time and orchestrated a time jump of at least a few years. Since the show always took place in a very present day Los Angeles, that puts us in the future, and sets up jokes about a world where driverless cabs and other futuristic tech have more or less taken over people’s lives.

That touch is a little odd (though it does give us a funny joke about Scott “remember him?” Pruitt being shot dead in Ukraine), since the jokes about a world where the NFL has officially been disbanded and people are celebrating the “last Super Bowl” gives the show a feeling that it never had before and kind of places it in the realm of sci-fi (if only very mildly), but thankfully the relationships between the characters are still the focus of this highly character driven dramedy. 

In the few years since we last saw them, Alex and his roommate Rae have had a child (an adorable little girl named Carrie) and are co-parenting and living together platonically, at least for now. Laura has spent the last two years traveling around Europe and has now come home with a new, worldly girlfriend in Tatiana, and Val has mostly been running in place, with not a lot having changed, except her newfound comfort with herself as a single woman who doesn’t necessarily need to have a man in her life (besides her brother of course). Alex and Valerie, the co-dependent siblings, remain the heart of the show, but a surprising amount of focus is given to supporting lovebirds Leon and Lea this season, as they decide whether they should have a baby, and Laura’s ups and downs with Tatiana and her new career as a burgeoning chef.

Alex has a new family of his own now

As always, the Laura stuff doesn’t quite work, as I never found that the show ever really knew exactly what to do with her, and it’s near impossible to care about her relationship with the new girlfriend. She finds it in herself to want to commit at last, which is growth for her, but her inherent smugness remains annoying and unpleasant. However, Michaela Watkins and Tommy Dewey bring it for the final eight episodes, with Alex and Valerie as close as ever, supporting each other while Val decides to quit her job and open a wine store, and Alex veers into the world of virtual reality dating before realizing he might be in love with Rae after all. The best episode of the season sees the original trio in Alex, Valerie and Laura heading out on an aborted road trip to see the ever flighty and awful grandma Dawn (Frances Conroy), and another highlight is the funeral of said Dawn, where the siblings can’t help but skewer it in their contagious hysterics. The finale is a love letter to the brother-sister duo, who devolve into sobbing messes at the thought of their coming separation, that after all these years, has a gut punching impact as Dewey and Watkins’ real life closeness and camaraderie bleed off the screen. 

Although I think the show peaked with the transcendent third season, a perfect series finale counts for quite a lot, as what I will remember from this season is Alex and Valerie’s last successful double date and searing final scenes together. Casual was the rare show that celebrated an adult brother-sister relationship in ways not often seen onscreen, it was funny and moving and often sparklingly insightful, and for that it will live on fondly in my memory.

Grade: B+

The original makeshift family says goodbye

REVIEW: "Cloak & Dagger" Season 1

Superhero shows are a dime a dozen these days and ever multiplying in the near future, so it’s nice to see Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, which is one of the more intriguing superhero origin stories, taking a different kind of approach. It airs on Freeform, so it’s a little more teen oriented than usual, and while that involves some sillier elements (this show probably has the most obvious soundtrack in terms of lyrics describing feelings and plot as it’s occurring onscreen that I’ve ever seen), it mostly wants to be far more character driven than action, which is a nice change. And yet, the ten episode first season still feels like it has more potential to evolve into something great than it’s delivered so far, as the series showed signs only in the last few episodes of really finding itself as its main duo took center stage as a duo.

Cloak & Dagger is a beloved, but a bit more obscure comic book property, created in the 1980’s by Bill Mantio and Ed Hannigan, centering on two teenage runaways, Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen, a black male and a white female, as they were kidnapped and experimented on, resulting in the discovery of superpowers that bound them together physically. The show tweaks this origin story a bit, to dispel with any problematic stereotypes (in the comics, Tyrone was a homeless street teen while Tandy came from a rich family- that’s gender flipped here for obvious reasons), and in order to really delve into issues of racial justice which lie at the heart of Tandy and Tyrone’s pairing.

The two were thrown together as children after an accident

The premise hands the show a strong foundation, but the execution is a little clumsy at times, mostly because the show’s insistence on a slow burn origin story keeps Tandy (Olivia Holt) and Ty (Aubrey Joseph) apart for the majority of the first half of the season, as each of them embark on their own separate quests for justice. The pilot episode establishes Tandy and Ty as having gotten their powers due to the explosion of an oil rig when both were eight years old- they ended up in the water at the same time following tragedies that befell each of them at the same moment, and now as teenagers, are just waking up to their powers when meeting again for the first time. But Tandy is preoccupied with seeking vengeance for the corporate malfeasance that killed her father, while Ty wants justice for a dirty cop who murdered his older brother the night of the explosion.

This leads to some plodding scenes as each goes about their business, with the majority of intrigue coming from the discovery of their powers, which are kind of all over the place. First off, Tandy creates literal daggers of light from her hands which can kill people, while Ty has the ability to teleport, but that’s not all. When Tandy touches someone, she’s transported into the world of their greatest hopes, and when Ty does, he takes the person into their greatest fears. When they combine these powers, well…it’s vague, but it appears to be all knowing, mystical and somewhat unlimited. We’re talking mind warps, dreams, etc.- who knows what they could use these powers for?

The show has a lot of components to explore here, because Cloak & Dagger’s telepathic powers are largely undefined, especially the visions and mind control. That can lead to visual interpretation of basically whatever you want, I mean you can send these two into multi-dimensional travel if the desire arose. Luckily, the two young actors cast as the leads have a natural chemistry and the show comes alive in their scenes together. In the back half of the season when they finally start to pair up, the difference in momentum is immediate. So much so that when it drifts into their separate lives again, it deflates a bit. I understand the value of not wanting to burn story out, but in this case, the show is absolutely the two of them working as a pair, and I hope the writers have figured that out by now. It’s a show with a slower pacing and less superhero action overall, preferring to explore character’s feelings through the spiritual nature of Ty and Tandy’s powers, but seeing as how the best scenes in the entire season involve the two kids themselves, I’d say play that up next time, put them on adventures together every episode and we’ve got ourselves a show. There’s no sign of a love story yet, but since it’s comics canon, I’d expect that to happen eventually and I’d advise them not to be afraid to go there either, since romance has been jettisoned in a lot of superhero properties these days, and these two could be one of the strongest. The show left a lot of untapped wells in the first season, but it’s all there waiting to be explored, leaving next spring’s upcoming Season 2 one of my most anticipated shows. 

Grade: B

Cloak & Dagger enter the mind of a comatose man- just one of the many things their mindpowers can do

'The Americans' Wins Big at the TCA Awards

The TCA may have gone a little overboard on The Americans love tonight. I know it was the final season and it's in the pantheon of great shows now, but for Keri Russell to beat out all those nominees for achievement in drama- Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Darren Criss, Elisabeth Moss and her own co-star Matthew Rhys, it's just...really? I'm as big an Americans fan as anyone, but the truth is I always thought Rhys took the cake over Russell pretty easily. And for this season I probably would have picked Jodie Comer over both of them

2018 TCA Winners:

Program of the Year - The Americans
Achievement in Comedy - The Good Place 
Achievement in Drama - The Americans 
Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials - The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
New Program - Killing Eve
Individual Achievement in Comedy - Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Individual Achievement in Drama - Keri Russell, The Americans
Achievement in News and Information - Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown 
Achievement in Sketch/Variety Shows - Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Achievement in Reality Programming - Queer Eye
Achievement in Youth Programming - Sesame Street
Heritage Award - Friends 
Career Achievement Award - Rita Moreno

'Killing Eve' gets best new program

REVIEW: "A Very English Scandal"

Hugh Grant is having something of a career comeback, after his hilarious turn in Paddington 2 and now his darkly funny and sharp edged performance as Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal, a superb BBC miniseries concerning one of the most astonishing political scandals in British history. 

Director Stephen Frears also does some of his best work here, as the three brisk hours it takes to relay this insane series of events absolutely fly by, never a dull moment or dry line of dialogue spoken as we’re swept back into the past and placed in the minds of Liberal MP Thorpe and his twenty-something lover Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw), whom he eventually conspired to have murdered (really). Grant inhabits the perfect amount of perverse cheekiness as he seduces the young man in 1962, brazenly bringing him to his mother’s house and putting him up in a hotel room for a period of years (at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain), before tiring of him and attempting to send him away as he aspired to climb the political ladder, even becoming Leader of the Liberal Party in 1967.

Attempted murder gone wrong

But Norman Scott wouldn’t vanish so easily, and Whishaw plays him as an openly gay man who freely drifts his way through life, attaching himself to people (men and women) who momentarily give him some direction before always coming back to blaming his misfortunes on the ill-fated affair with Thorpe. For his part, Thorpe also blames Norman for anything that goes wrong in his own life, from his wife’s death to the allegations against him that he has squashed by the police over a number of years in the 1960’s. Eventually Thorpe fixates on having Norman killed, which leads to an extremely bungled assassination attempt in the mid-1970’s, the aftermath of which reveals the depth of the scandal to the public and plays out in the press in sensational fashion.

If you didn’t know anything about this historical episode (I didn’t), the show is especially fascinating and enormously entertaining, playing out as a playfully dark comedy, all the more stunning given the truth of the details. In some ways it’s the English equivalent of I, Tonya, involving incompetent hitmen, clumsy blackmail attempts, and Thorpe's increasingly desperate moves to cover his tracks and deal with the oblivious and naive, yet determined Norman. And still there’s a core sadness to this affair, as the deeply closeted and self-loathing Thorpe envies the freedom Norman possesses to accept himself, while the system’s unbending and predictable outcome in delivering justice to the oppressed is a stark reminder of the way the powerful never fail to close ranks and protect each other even in the face of all evidence and hypocrisies. Grant and Whishaw are fantastic as the two leads, deft at carrying the tone through the three hour-length episodes, and are ably supported by an ensemble of actors including standouts Alex Jennings, Eve Myles and Blake Harrison. Check this one out, people- it’s well worth your time and one of the best shows of the year.

Grade: A

Jamie and Claire Are Back in 'Outlander' Season 4

YES!!! Outlander returns in November and we now have the first look at Season 4, where the Frasers are new residents of colonial America. As a newly converted book reader, I now have the pleasure of knowing what's going to happen, but I'm hoping they decide to be more liberal with the changes to this season in particular (Drums of Autumn had quite a bit of Roger/Bree stuff that doesn't necessarily need to make it to the screen, let's just say). Even seeing a hint of the show again makes me excited though- I can't wait!

REVIEW: "Killing Eve" Season 1

Shows and movies about assassins are a dime a dozen, and you’d think most of the great stories to be wrangled out of this concept have more than been told by now, but this year two new shows managed to spin gold out of some very old straw. The first was HBO’s Barry, and the second is BBC America’s Killing Eve, an absolutely delightful cat and mouse game that relishes not necessarily the chase but the characters and the flat out wackiness, giving us yet another story about an assassin, but one that we miraculously have not seen before.

There’s a little bit of La Femme Nikita in here, as a deadly Russian hit woman is tracked all over the globe by an intrepid female government agent, but as always, the devil is in the details, and the details involved in this one savor of wicked deliciousness. Sandra Oh stars as Agent Eve Polastri, raised in America but living in London and working for MI:5, who becomes obsessed with tracking down a killer who’s getting arrogant and lavishly leaving traces of her work behind at murder scenes. Oh is terrific, her usual frazzled self, but smart and funny and effortlessly good at her job (at first), making quick work of discovering a conspiracy and tracking down the identity of the mysterious “Villanelle,” (the killer’s codename). The show feels at home with itself instantly, combining a thrilling mix of comedy and violence, veering back and forth between Eve’s work and her quippy asides to friends and coworkers, never once straining for effect, as creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s comedic background is fully on display even in the guise of a thriller.

A deadly face to face

The series alternates between Eve’s pursuit and Villanelle’s havoc wreaking chaos kills, and as solid and capable as Oh is in carrying the show, it would in no way be as enticing and fun and scary and addictive as it is without the stellar performance of Jodie Comer as the killer. She creates an unforgettable character in Villanelle, the sociopathic villainess who loves being bad, loves her job, and loves toying with and reveling in her power. Comer is captivating in this role, somehow turning a crazy, brutal murderer into a partially lovable anti-heroine as you find yourself rooting for her in some kind of twisted way, maybe so you can continue to watch her tear up the screen as the most entertaining TV villain in years. There's something empowering about watching these two women circle each other, finding their way into and out of each other’s lives in the least expected moments, the absurdist tone lending every episode a rather unpredictable feel, especially as the action ramps up towards the finale.

An excellent supporting cast rounds out the ensemble (especially an ebullient Fiona Shaw as Eve’s boss), but the show belongs to Eve and Villanelle, as you won’t be able to quite see what’s coming next, even if you think you can. Every familiar trope plays out with some kind of twist, and Comer’s performance lends a mesmerizing tension and heightened suspense to her every scene. You feel she’s just as likely to kiss you as kill you and you have no clue what could set her off in which direction. The constant balance of action, comedy, violence and cliffhanging chase scenes makes one wonder how this kind of thing can sustain itself for too long (I wouldn’t think a show like this could go more than few seasons max), but I’m going to enjoy the ride while it lasts. 

Grade: A

Jodie Comer as the playfully evil Villanelle

Season 4 of 'Better Call Saul' Premieres August 6th

Having recently caught up with Better Call Saul, I can attest that the show really is pretty great, just as intriguing as Breaking Bad, but separate from it in its own way. Even more character driven. After a longer delay between seasons 3 and 4, you can see that the two worlds (the Breaking Bad world of Jonathan Banks's Mike and the legal drama world of Jimmy McGill) are probably going to start merging pretty quickly now. More BB characters started to show up last season (Gus, Lydia) and now that Jimmy can't be a lawyer for ten months, his Saul persona is going to start coming out in the interim, I bet. Have a bad feeling about non-BB character Kim (Rhea Seehorn) though, who must necessarily be doomed, right? But doomed how, from death or separation? That's kinda the biggest question of the prequel series for me.

Final Season of 'Casual' Drops on July 31st

Hulu's Casual was a great, highly underrated show that very few people watched, but oh well. I'll remember it fondly, as the fourth and final season comes out all at once on July 31st, giving us eight episodes to say goodbye to the unconventional family unit of Alex, Valerie and Laura. I will say I was expecting it'd pick up where it left off, so the two year time jump is somewhat of a surprise. Sometimes those work, other times they're annoying. I'm glad it gets a chance to finish its story though, and I hope it goes out on a high note.

REVIEW: "GLOW" Season 2

Fans of GLOW can be delighted by the verdict that the second season is even better than the first, with the emotions focused in just the right places and the whole venture just as much fun (probably even more so) than the first season.

Unlike Season 1, which I thought took a couple of episodes to settle in, we pick up this time with all the women of the 1980’s TV wrestling series (GLOW aka The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) excited about their pilot and ready to film the first season, which will tape weekly in front of a live audience for twenty weeks, with the ladies still holed up in their hotel for training and seclusion. But Alison Brie’s Ruth can’t help but want to be a director as per usual, and with Sam (the fantastic Marc Maron) and producer Bash (Chris Lowell) distracted with network difficulties, she tries her hand at taping an opening credits sequence, risking (and experiencing) Sam’s wrath in a big way.

Elsewhere, Debbie (Betty Gilpin) is preoccupied with the emotional toll her divorce is taking on her, which leads her to take her anger out on continued frenemy Ruth, who gets it from all sides this season, causing what was once a vaguely unlikable character last year to take on more of an underdog status as a figure of pity and remorse this time around. Even though the three main characters (Ruth, Debbie and Sam) remain so this season and are given the meatiest storylines (Sam goes from grumpy malcontent to semi-perceptive and caring if unorthodox and occasionally inappropriate dad as he takes in his long lost teen daughter Justine), all the ladies get their chance to shine, which is really quite a feat for a ten episode season featuring a huge ensemble cast with roughly thirty minute episodes (the last few are stretched longer).

Debbie seizes her power and makes herself a producer this season

Every arc works though, whether seasonal or episodic, from the struggles to maintain the show on television, leading to an extremely timely but also sadly timeless #MeToo moment for Ruth with the network boss, to Bash’s latent struggles with his sexuality when he discovers the truth about his lifelong friend and butler Florian. Excellent singular episodes include the memorable and heartbreaking Tamme (real life wrestler Kia Stevens) dealing with her adult son discovering what kind of job pays her bills, and the show within a show that gives us what an episode of GLOW actually looks like (lots of sketch comedy and minimal wrestling, apparently).

Despite the hard-hitting emotional moments, the show is always funny and most importantly fun. It’s scored by a hair banging 80’s soundtrack that punctures the action at just the right moments, the misfits forming a makeshift family that warms your heart in their genuine love for and empowerment by what they’re creating. The parody GLOW episode makes you want to look up what the real life 1980’s series actually looked like, and the climactic season finale taping throws everything at the wall in an attempt to go out in style, from a green card marriage to a wild goat to a match with women fighting men in the ring as the girls give it everything they’ve got. It’s not absolute perfection, as I find myself wanting to screech at the writers not to go “there” with Ruth and Sam, especially given the kind of emotionally abusive nature of the relationship between the two, but when it gets to the point where I’m wanting to steer minor plot points in a different direction creatively, it’s a sign of how enthusiastic and invested I am in the storytelling. GLOW is pure joy.

Grade: A

Every woman gets a chance to shine this year