Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Watching Television: Super P.I.s, Zombie Realtors & More


Hey, I'm still working to keep my New Year's resolution to watch MORE television.


How is that going?_____________________________________



A week ago, my wife Andrea and I finished up season 2 of Jessica Jones. Now we’re going back to season 1 for a re-watch for Andrea but a first time watch for me. Andrea only watched the first season because of her near fanatical need to watch stuff with David Tennant and Matt Smith. It was because of Matt that we wound up watching The Crown which we may continue to do even with the recasting due to aging that takes Matt out of the game as of season 3.

Back to Jessica Jones season 1, we’re only up to episode 3 and oh my God, David Tennant as Killgrave is a completely fucked up evil bastard. Andrea has assured me the worse is yet to come.


What makes Killgrave particularly evil is the casual way he exerts his mind control power over his victims. There's no dramatic force of effort, no straining while in pops a blood vessel in his nostril. He just calmly walks up to someone and calmly tells that person to do something and that person just as calmly does what they've been told to, even its to commit homicide. Or suicide. 


Oddly, it does seem Jessica does look less dour in season 1 than she did in season 2.
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This past weekend, I finished up season 1 of Santa Clarita Diet and now I’m ready to get to season 2 which just dropped a couple of months back. The story of Sheila Hammond (Drew Barrymore) as a normal workaday suburban mom turned flesh eating undead thing continues to be LOL funny. Just don’t do not watch this show while eating or right after you eat or right before you eat. It is seriously very, very, very, very gross.


A very funny part of the show is Timothy Olyphant as Joel Hammond who is desperately but not entirely very well trying to hang on in a life where his wife is an undead person who has to kill and eat people. Sheila's like, "Killing and eating people is what I do now." Sheila being undead makes her feel more alive than ever. Sheila being undead makes Joel feel varying degrees of frantic. 
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My daughter Randie and I have gotten into Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It’s not on Netflix, it’s on Hulu and quite frankly, there are only so many hours in a day I have for watching TV so I’m not going to spring for multiple streaming services. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine airs on TBS so we’ve been DVRing those episodes. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a comedy set in a New York police department precinct populated by eccentric characters who are more or less good at their jobs. It would be easy to come up with comedy based on the cops being incompetent. Mostly, the officers of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine are weird goofballs but they get the job done. 



Andy Samberg stars as Detective Jacob "Jake" Peralta who is a surprisingly effective police officer with a penchant for obscure and awkward pop culture references.  The centerpiece of the show is Jake's interactions with Captain  Holt; played by Andre Braugher, Holt is a literal minded by the book who has little patience for Jake's care free style.
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I started season 4 of Arrested Development, the season created for Netflix several years after Fox cancelled the show after 3 seasons. I just watched 2 episodes and it is a bit of an odd duck. Each episode covers the same time frame from different perspectives. Episode 1 follows Michael who has fallen a long way down from where we last left him at the end of season 3. He's rooming with his son George Michael in his son's dorm room. Unwillingly. And by "unwillingly", I'm refer to son George Michael who is desperate to get his father out of his dorm. Michael, as usual, thinks he and George Michael are having a ball.


Episode 2 follows George Sr who is working a con to hold on to land on the United States/Mexican border where he figures to score big when the government comes calling to build a border wall. And given that topic, I will remind you that the Season 4 dropped on Netflix on May 26, 2013, a few years before a certain bloated orange con man with small hands made a border wall the central piece of his presidential campaign.


The pacing is a bit odd, slow even. With the premise of focusing on one principal character per episode, the wild freewheeling interactions of the cast from the original run are missing here. Still, it is an interesting experiment in television that I'm quite curious to see unfold.  

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