My wife Andrea and I are following the new NBC comedy co-created by Tina Fey called Mr. Mayor. Andrea was mostly interested in trying this show to follow Ted Danson who stars as the titular mayor. The show is amusing but after four episodes, I'm still not sure about it.
Mr. Mayor seems to be having trouble finding it's tone. Sometimes the show has a genuine earnestness. The reason retired businessman Neil Bremer (Danson) ran to become Mayor of Los Angeles was to earn his daughter’s respect. Awww!
Then Mayor Bremer spends an episode high on canabis having wacked out hallucinations which were very funny.
Mr. Mayor is having some trouble figuring out what kind of show it wants to be. Which to be fair is something that Tina Fey's 30 Rock struggled with in it's early episodes.
Speaking of which, apparently Mr. Mayor began life as a pitch for a 30 Rock spin off where Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) became mayor of New York City.
Ted Danson makes Mr.Mayor worth watching but Holly Hunter give him a run for his money as Arpi Meskimen, the deputy mayor of Los Angeles whose no-nonsense attitude plays well with Bremer's more relaxed style.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Call Me Kat starring Mayim Bialik. I mentioned that although Andrea is easily entertained, she was not entertained by the pilot episode of Call Me Kat. And neither was I.
Well, we both felt bad about that and decided to give the show another try with the 3rd episode.
About 5 minutes into the episode, Andrea said, "Hey, is Big Bang Theory on TBS?" I said yes and she said let's watch that instead.
I am so sorry, Mayim. We love you and respect your talent and we both wanted to like this show. But sorry, we've tried twice and it ain't happening.
One more thing about my previous post about Call Me Kat where I leveled some barbs about the appearance of actress Swoosie Kurtz as Kat's mom. On one hand, I am really sorry for judging someone on their appearance. On the other hand, Swoosie's near cadaverous look on Call Me Kat is still very distracting. I blamed this on plastic surgery run amuck. I hope she not sick or something.
About a month ago leading up to the Doctor Who special on January 1st, BBC America bombarded us with a ton of ads for it's new show The Watch. The family was intrigued and our daughter Randie was up to give it a try.
I know the show got some bad press because fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books were not happy with the hatchet job The Watch does on the source material. Having never read Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, we were prepared to accept The Watch on it's own merits.
The Watch is the law enforcement in the city of Ankh-Morpork on a planet where elements of fantasy (like trolls and dragons) are real. The Watch is a largely ineffective law enforcement force due to fact that most crime in Ankh-Morpork is legal. You can commit crime with impunity as long as you licensed to commit that crime and you leave a receipt.
The captain of the Watch is Sam Vines, a grizzled old man who has seen too much and has more than enough of this shit. Which is a most disappointing development to Constable Carrot, new in town and filled with lots of gung ho "justice for all" spirit that gets immediately challenged by the very dispirited Watch team and the lawless anarchy of Ankh-Morpork.
There's a lot of world building going here but we held on OK to the lay of the land (although having a handy dandy scorecard wouldn't hurt).
But after watching the first episode of The Watch, we are not collectively feeling a lot of inclination to keep following this series.
When pressed for time to continue to follow the watch or finally get a move on with season two of Star Trek Discovery, we elected to follow the gang on the Disco!
Right off the bat, there is a sense of Trekian optimism that season one lacked. And the giddy fan boy thrill of having Discovery cross paths with the Enterprise under Capt. Pike is hard to resist.
This weekend, Andrea and I caught up on season 3 of Duck Tales. David Tennant continues to rock as Scrooge McDuck. I really don't have much more to add than that. I watch Duck Tales and it doesn't suck. Duck Tales is more Andrea's jam than mine.
Last night was the season 2 premier of Snowpiercer. I'll have something to say about that in next week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down, would ya? I'm watchin' TV in here!
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