Built to Spill is the disappointment of the young year, with My Morning Jacket second. I guess that's what I get for liking jam bands. Gotta accept a lower batting average for the viiiiiiiiiiibe
Braids is weirdly approachable---unnerving after their previous work and because it is emo as balls.
Jamie xx's album came and did not disappoint--a sponge bath for the brain.
I haven't seen many movies these last few months. Fury Road was the most fun I've had at the movies in years and Jurassic World felt like an alien reproduction the whole time, like there's an AP Meta narrative going on. But when you cast BDH, you've already sort of thrown in the towel on acting.
Community ended its sixth season without its trademark zippiness. With the extra six minutes Yahoo! affords it, we still got less laughs than the 22-minute Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of the past, but a good deal of expert pathos and character-building. The skits at the end of each episode were often the funniest and punchiest writing. If you stopped watching, at least give the penultimate wedding episode a try. It is the season's best-- funny, bold and Garrett.
Game of Thrones was 90% great and 10% shitty Dorne-storyline...making for their best season yet. The Americans continued their downhill slide in Season 3 and I think I'm hopping off. Inside Amy Schumer is pretty damn great, as was Silicon Valley. I didn't dig Veep quite as much--Patton Oswalt continues getting weird, distracting guest parts.
Wolf Hall was mesmerizing and Thomas Cromwell was played note-perfect. Mark Rylance deserves some serious hardware.
New on the podcast front (the only subject to which I have any expertise these days) is SPONTANEANATION with Paul F. Tompkins, which is astoundingly good long-form improv storytelling, showcasing The Notorious PFT in all his GODMODE glory and a rotating cast of brilliant improv vets.
WOMP It Up! is a spinoff podcast from Comedy Bang Bang and features the two greatest characters the show has ever created: Marissa Wompler (Jessica St. Clair) and Charlotte Listler (Lennon Parham) and it is absurdly fun.
The Adventure Zone continues to be the podcast I most look forward to and I am not ashamed.
ps Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is really good so far!
10 comments:
It's seriously all I can do to get through this season of Community. It's like thirteen episodes but it feels endless.
I actually thought Veep ticked up a bit this season. Seemed like they were really struggling last year to find a reason to keep the whole cast together in a clearly-established world where personal relationships mean nothing, and even when they DID jettison people, they sent them to the dumbest ends (Jonah starting a blog is the worst storyline on a still-great show I can remember). But this season they just went for it by actively kicking some very important people off the team, but not turning them into total absurdities as a result. Dan expectedly jumping at the chance to be a lobbyist, but not being very good at it, while Amy resists being a lobbyist but is unexpectedly great at it proved an especially canny turn. They also managed to bump up Selina's responsibility without either turning too seriously to the rather important issues a president faces, NOR outright denying them. Detained reporters and mass shootings received the same sort of blithe, amoral treatment as juggling campaign flubs. And really, is there anything better than Kent saying, "Catherine, I asked you in because...Catherine, America doesn't like you." It's still a show that maybe came out of the gate too strong with an ace first season, but I'd say this was their best since, maybe yet.
I can't remember, you don't watch Hannibal, do you? I've been catching up on that, and it's the only show that's made me seriously reconsider Mad Men as my yearly top pick. I still haven't started Season 3, but the first two are unbelievably great.
I have been getting excited to start Hannibal, mainly from your tweets. Speaking of which....BLACKHAT?
I think we fundamentally want different things from our comedies. At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems like you tend to enjoy the rapid-fire joke machines of Happy Endings, The New Girl, Veep, Marry Me, etc. I think I go for comedies that are more character-based, hence my love of Ed, Community, and Parks & Rec. We overlap on shows that manage to be fast, funny, and true to the characters like 30 Rock and Arrested Development.
Did you not like the Hugh Laurie edition? I thought it was exactly what the show needed and he made me laugh more than anybody except Mike, whom I will always watch the show for. He manages to make carrying Coke cans funny.
*addition
If indeed this is the Chris Hemsworth BLACKHAT, the Scott Nye vouch is enough to banish all leeriness and let me jump in with both feet.
Veep isn't as warm as any of the shows you mentioned, but it's very character-based and -driven. It just doesn't feel to need to continually make sure we, or the show, LIKES the characters. And yeah, Hugh Laurie rules hard.
As far as my general tastes go, I am a giant fan of Scrubs, maybe the sappiest modern sitcom we've had, but which often showed people quite lonely, alienated, disappointed, or regretful, and they didn't resolve those emotions by suddenly reversing everything that had happened, but by showing them move onto the next challenge. It could take years for people to form bonds, or re-form those that were broken. New Girl's pretty character-heavy, too. Been getting into Cheers over the past few years.
I was very into Community and Parks & Rec early on. They just stopped being funny, which is a big part of the agreement. And honestly, I think both betrayed their characters pretty hard in the effort to make their continued subject How Much We All Like Each Other. Community doesn't suffer from this as much, but this (totally understandable) urge kills any possibility for development and urges the show towards a central safe zone. Happy Endings, on the other hand, which could often be a Rube Goldberg machine into which archetypes were inserted, was perfectly content to leave conflicts unresolved. They recognized that even groups of close friends have fundamental differences in personality and goals, and didn't step aside every week to say "but we LOVE you for those differences." They were just different, and sometimes they disliked one another for that, but that's okay. And in my experience, that's a hell of a lot more honest way to depict people.
As for BLACKHAT, it rules pretty hard, but I know my vouches haven't always panned out for you in the past and this IS pretty widely disliked, and I totally get why many are so down on it. But it's probably the most romantic film of the year, in its own airy, surreal way. That or RESULTS...I think you'd really like RESULTS.
"How Much We All Like Each Other" is a perfect descriptor for something I should be way more skeptical of than I am. Probably the biggest, most gaping chink in whatever critical armor I might have. I do not agree that either P&R or Community betrayed their characters, unless you're talking about deviation from Season 1 P&R, which is sort of their gas-leak year. But I 100% agree with you that the way both shows had to resolve all conflict at the end of every episode is a major flaw. Point set match there.
SCRUBS is book-worthy--in so many ways it is a progenitor of the modern good sitcom and it does not get the kind of respect it deserves, most because of the fashionable disdain for Zach Braff. It was quick and dynamic and knew how to use its all-aces cast to their maximum effect. And you're right, it was daring enough to have loads of sad, pathetic characters who were bitter towards each other for seasons at a time.
I loved it as a teenager, but did eventually tire of JD's romantic misadventures with a carousel of gorgeous women, and the lessons he would learn and then discard, only learn a slight variation of it the next time. Do you remember back then on the net when people would quote the often trite end-of-episode monologues like they were scripture? It was indicative of a formula that was a lower-quality version of the "Winger speech," which it seems like you don't value all that much. So does it get a pass in SCRUBS because we were younger and less cynical?
I'm going to take your word on NEW GIRL, but you can't possibly tell me that MARRY ME has anything resembling good character development. I liked the Ken Marino and Casey Wilson dynamic, but every other character was the laziest 1-D sketch, and I made it through 8 eps of that with 1 out-loud laugh.
Veep characters I love, most to least: Mike>RICHARD JOHN SPLETT>Gary>Jonah>Catherine>Tom James>Amy>Selina>Sue>Ben>Dan>Kent>Bill Ericcson
I like the show when it is two or three interacting, trying to solve a problem, and get bored when everyone in the room is just spitting dark one-liners, especially since Ben/Dan/Kent/Bill are essentially the same character.
ps
I know a Scott-vouch means that at the very least BLACKHAT will be engaging and novel, which is plenty.
BLACKHAT was really good! I should have trusted Mann. Not sure why there was such a tidal wave of shade, perhaps people resent the suggestion that Chris Hemsworth can think and have muscles. Thanks!
The issue with SCRUBS you mention is one of those things where it's obviously a flaw of the show, but one which also informs a larger philosophical mindset I can support. Yeah, the cyclical lesson-learning-and-spouting was almost certainly because they were on year five or six or whatever, were falling back on familiar patterns, and couldn't or didn't want to find other ways to develop the character(s). ON THE OTHER HAND, isn't it incredibly common for people to have the same breakthrough again and again that urge what feel like life-altering changes, only to eventually fall back into the same habits that put them right back where they started? I could do without all the people quoting those things like gospel for sure, but artistically speaking, it's just about the most interesting and honest facet of life that a long-running TV show can explore? (P.S. this is also part of why Mad Men is so damn good, though they did it on purpose)
And I didn't actively defend MARRY ME above because it is largely indefensible. I love Marino and Wilson on that show, but yeah, everyone else is a shell, though the laugh ratio was significantly higher for me, especially towards the end. But that's just taste, I can't explain what makes it funny unless I just go back and rewatch the show and quote lines and you. Which would be a DELIGHT.
Glad you liked BLACKHAT. Yeah, a surprising amount of the criticism came back to Chris Hemsworth having muscles and computer skills, which, to me, just comes back to the same thing as J.D. constantly dating beautiful women on Scrubs - it's entertainment; people are allowed to be attractive.
*"Quote lines AT you", that should read. Blogger needs a way to edit comments.
Blogger ate a comment from a few weeks ago...
You're right, people are allowed to be attractive. I wish JD (and Jerry Seinfeld, for that matter) would have put in a little extra work to get woman comedians in those roles, not just heads of hair. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did awesome jobs of getting a gamut of really funny men to play their love interests, and it's too bad it's not much of a two-way street.
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