Funnily enough, the only things I’m currently watching weekly have all come to an end, except for the network shows. It’s Antenna Week at Media Magpies!
Finally made some more progress on Solar Opposites! There really isn’t a lot new to report, as the show has not diverged in quality, though it’s worth noting we’re coming up on the end of the series and so presumably coming to the wrap-up of any major storylines, including the Wall. We get some Wall progress in one episode, but I still largely enjoy the Opposites’ adventures more than that. One highlight is Terry having to find the maturity to focus long enough and rescue the opposites. In another episode, Terry’s “romantasy” obsession leads to a funny running bit with him and Korvo after Terry gets involved with magic and fairies, while Jesse and Yumyulack discover their principal has been turned into a pupa and have to try to fix that situation.
Matlock, “Prior Bad Acts” – Excellent return from the two-week break here. We get into Olympia’s personal life in a way we haven’t before, as she learns from Julian of a case on the docket where her mother and new husband are defendants— and we learn just the extent of how strained Olympia’s relationship with her mother is, and how she attempts to repair it. There’s also a great home storyline for the Kingstons, as Joey is getting out of rehab and Matty is nervous about him spending time with Alfie… and she has to learn to see Joey as a person, not just his addiction. And the big plot gets a big jolt forward… and perhaps some slow background momentum, as Senior rather easily thwarts Eva’s coup attempt, but now he knows she has people in New York who might be moving against him… and coming so soon after the Wellbrexa leak, he’s certainly going to be paranoid and more interested in getting to the bottom of things— whether that leads him to thwart or dig into Matty and Olympia’s investigation, even though he doesn’t necessarily know what he’s looking for, should set up a thrilling back half of the season. I think we only get one more episode tonight before the winter break.
Elsbeth, “Basket Case” – Did you want a Bill Belichick / Jordon Hudson story, but involving St. John’s basketball? Here you go! In this case, the university is St. Ivan’s (which I think has showed up before), and the coach is Sam MacMurray’s Russell Willoughby, coming out of retirement from a long acclaimed pro career to take over the program, off to a rough start. Many observers blame Lana Condor’s Peyton Ramsey and her outsized influence on Willoughby and the program. And after the athletic director tries to ban Ramsey from the facilities and complains that she’s made Willoughby a shell of his former self… he’s found dead in an alley late that night. Who did it and why? Is Peyton as much of a problem as people think, or is it a combination of the age gap and her directness and aggressiveness as a young woman that put people off her? And might she and Elsbeth even have some things in common? Well, it’s a pretty good episode, although the side plot with Wagner and Connor is weird and petty.
Abbott Elementary, “Goofgirl” – I thought this one was pretty funny. Ava’s “big-headed” riff on Janine to the camera crew (and how delighted she seems to be by it) was a comic highlight and would be for many shows. I also enjoyed Gregory finally having had enough of Jacob’s nonsense (“Get out of my classroom”). The main plots involve a girl student wanting to join Gregory’s Garden Goofballs and getting met with some hostility from the boys who assumed it was a boys club (“Isn’t that why ‘balls’ is in the name?”). Janine wants to start a fashion club, but gets some pushback from Ava due to Ava’s view on her own fashion tastes. And there’s a minor but pretty funny plot where the counselor Elena (Marcella Arguello, whom I’ve mostly seen on After Midnight) decides to get involved with Barbara and Melissa’s problems with their men— largely because Barbara and Melissa’s approach is the silent treatment, and, you know, that’s the opposite of communicating your needs, so of course she gets interested, and maybe gets more than she bargained for.
Stumble, “Button Day” – Another fun episode that develops our characters a bit more— with most of the focus this time on Sally but particularly Peaches. The candy-button factory in town (what even are candy buttons?), that’s apparently the major employer of the city, is having their big annual “new color day” coming up, and the owner (Jeff Hiller, who you may recognize from a few sitcoms), who is definitely not a weird German with a Nazi family past, promises Courteney a “big check” if the team can perform at the announcement. Courteney needs a star flyer, and needs to find a way to reach Peaches, who proves difficult to motivate and resistant to abandon her petty-crime-and-ankle-monitor lifestyle. Meanwhile, with Sally still living at the Potter house, Boone struggles to talk to her or find ways they can communicate, though eventually they find common ground (I don’t want to spoil that for you). So far, still a strong early run for the show.
Bob’s Burgers, “Les Lizárdables” – Well, we get a Gene plot this episode, as he tries to find a Thing and runs into Courtney who’s discovered a rare lizard, and wants to be Lizard Guy… though he discovers the responsibility of caring for a lizard is more than he’s used to. This leads into Mr. Frond trying to use his peer mediation program to resolve the “custody dispute.” Mr. Frond is really the worst in this one. Although the B-plot features Gayle and her cats taking up residence in the Belcher home, and she is also often the worst. This wasn’t bad or anything, though, with some very funny lines (dear god, Gene gets an absolute howler early on regarding Gayle’s impending visit).
DMV, “The Next Window” – Big Sac! Barb’s big plan to save her branch is to mail a holiday card to California DMV Director Ray Henderson, and when the post office returns the card to sender, Colette gets an idea… Well, since Noa has broken up with Mary, and Vic and Gregg emphasize to her that a guy who looks like Noa’s “window”* for being single is going to be very slim, and Colette is apparently too nuts to just ask him out, she decides they’ll road trip to Sacramento for the state office holiday party, under the pretext of delivering the card and being Noa’s licensed driver so he can practice (I guess on his learners permit). Then Barb, Gregg, and Vic also come along. Barb meets a kindred spirit at the party in Leslie Jones’ Sally, Ray’s executive assistant, and Gregg is planning to meet his “friend Kevin”… who was the AI chatbot DMV employee services was using until they cancelled the contract, and rather than tell Gregg the truth, Vic got a burner to keep texting Gregg and keep up the illusion. Some fun stuff this episode, and if we’re going to spend this much time on the Colette-Noa stuff, at least she gets to be more active here and to show some maturity in giving him advice, rather than just acting like a lovestruck teenager terrified to be perceived.
St. Denis Medical, “No Wonder His Kidney Wants Out” – Well, that probably wins our episode title of the week, if nothing else. A heavy load of guest stars in this one, with a main story involving most of the characters, and the question of whether any acts are truly selfless. It’s spurred by two brothers (David Hornsby and Paul Scheer!), the former of whom needs a kidney transplant, and the two constantly bicker… although privately, Scheer offers to the doctors to test to see if he’s a match. Ron, of course, insists there’s no such thing as a truly selfless act, and when Alex tries to prove him wrong by donating to Parker’s (Jonathan Slavin!) GoFundMe for his dog’s surgery anonymously, but then accidentally donates ten times as much as she should. Ron gets pretty obnoxious in this one, moreso than usual— to the point of letting people think he made the donation— which does make it pretty funny when Serena turns it back on him. Meanwhile, Joyce is sure the building inspector certifying the new wing is someone she went on a date with years ago, and is flummoxed when he seems to have no recollection of it. And Bruce is trying to make a new best friend (which, aside, makes me feel like this was aired out of order based on last week’s plot with Bruce and Chaplain Steve), and enlists Matt… to help him find one. Naturally, Bruce is incapable of realizing that his sense of superiority over everyone else and need to be right about everything is what’s keeping him from connecting with other people. Good episode.
I will get to Pluribus eventually, especially with all the hype it’s getting… but December is a tough month because even though the network slate will slow down soon enough, I’m working on all of these year-end articles. And I still have, you know, all that stuff in the rest of my life.
Haha, I ain’t got time for that now.
It appears last night may have been the season finale for Beavis and Butt-Head, although per our usual scheduling, we’ll cover that next week. That’s all for now, although I assume our network schedule will come to a screeching halt soon enough.
We’re starting to get some confirmation dates for January, but that’s a ways away. So far, we’ve got Animal Control scheduled to return for season 4 on January 15, along with its partner in Fox’s Thursday night sitcom hour, Going Dutch, back for season 2. The latest in the ASOIAFAFTVU, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, premieres January 18. (A prize awarded to the first person to correctly guess that acronym.) We may also give Best Medicine, the hour-long comedy/drama starring Josh Charles as a doctor who moves to a small town, a shot— that premieres January 6.
Tell me what you’ve been watching.
About the writer
Captain Nath
Born on the bayou, thriving in the mountains. Writer, gambler, comedian, singer-songwriter, bon vivant, globetrotter, and all-around Renaissance Man with perfect opinions about TV and music. Pronounced with a long A and with the H.
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As the network TV season comes to an end, we take a look back at some canceled shows that shouldn't have been
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I should've saved "season finale season" for the excerpt
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The image represents the spiritual imprisonment this column has me in. Either that or I have a thing for necks
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Hey, you try coming up with something to say besides "good episode" every week
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Three, Episode Five, “OR”
“Send a case of thumbs to that table with my compliments.”
“May I have your attention please?”
“Stop bleeding for a minute.”
“Sir, Major Burns is being abused again.”
“Cut that out, Frank.”
This is definitely one more resembling the show’s later years; lots of Heavy Conversations, no laugh track (as a result of being set entirely in the OR, in which the creative crew flatly refused to allow a laugh track). This contains three entirely different iconic moments; Sydney’s famous line “Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice: pull down your pants and slide on the ice,” (which has gotten me through many bad days like this), and even better, the great scene between Trapper and Frank where the latter first talks about his shitty childhood. In this case, it’s the line where he says anyone who talked at the family table got a punch in the throat, and speculates this is why he snitches on people.
Most interesting to me is the final big scene – less famous than the others, though I think people do occasionally reference it – where Hawkeye suspects Henry has arthritis in his fingers, which could get him sent home. Henry reflects that he’s technically doing a lot more doctorin’ in the war than he ever would at home, and thus improving his skills very quickly. It’s interesting; I find the more writing I do in one go, the worse the result is – definitely in style, maybe in content, though this doesn’t bother me in essays because I have the ideas ready to go already. I wonder if the same is true for doctorin’; if doing a lot of it in one go actually kind of makes you worse (certainly, this will be Charles’s argument when I get to him in, uh, 2027).
Without Honor
Streaming Shuffle stays winning. It amazes me that a simple dramatic setup lets you riff pretty much as much as you want; Hitchcock said that the essence of drama is giving you a piece of information at least one of the characters don’t know, forcing you to scream at the characters; this means anything the characters are doing that doesn’t fix the problem increases the tension. If there’s a theme here, it’s how the middle-class lifestyle is a fragile edifice that can be tipped by the slightest surrender to impulse.
The twist of a certain character being up and about is fantastic, the best possible twist you could have in this story. I was hooting and hollering at it.
One of my favorite episodes of MASH and a past Streaming Shuffle!
That Henry scene has such a bittersweet clarity (even without taking later events into account). Henry hates being there, but at the same time, he’s quietly awed by being part of, and changed by, this particular expression of his profession. It doesn’t feel like who he is so much as it’s what he’s devoted himself to, and he’s never felt more like Mulcahy.
Trapper’s weary comment about the time he got along with Frank being, in retrospect, completely wasted is darkly hilarious, and that whole conversation is great; Wayne Stevenson plays a great bit of flummoxed sincerity when he says Frank’s childhood was awful.
And hell yeah, Without Honor. And that twist! Your delight over it makes me even happier that I did my best not mention it in the write-up.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “The Perfect Murder” – Doesn’t live up to the title, but comes close. More later.
Frasier, “Semi-Decent Proposal” – Part one of two, only not. Conceived as a two parter, with two different writers and directors and different titles, the showrunners felt the first half had more meat than the second half and it aired as a single episode. But then gets split in half for syndication and streaming. And there is certainly a lot in the first half. Frasier meets an almost perfect woman (Patricia Clarkson), but she is friends with his ex Lana (Jean Smart), and the only path forward is to first become friends with Lana and then to tutor her son. I immensely disliked Lana, the high school prom queen turned total bitch, when we met her (I could not finish that episode_, but here her temper is played less for laughs and Jean Smart turns her into a decent human being whose divorce is a disaster and who is well aware of her flaws. (Among Smart’s incredible number of Emmy wins is one for this appearance.) It’s really starting to seem like as the show ages, the writers realize one path to avoiding repetition is to tone down the gags.
Live Music – teenage Mancunian alcoholic superstar Jim E. Brown was back in town, and since he last played here (October 2024) he’s become a bit of a social-media celebrity, so instead of playing to a half-full venue he did two sold-out nights in a row. I’m not sure I would have bothered going back (his gimmick is a little one-note and I definitely experienced diminishing returns) but one of my girlfriend’s bands were supporting. And it was kinda fun seeing him play to an enthusiastic full house even if The Joke doesn’t hit as hard second time around. He did have a couple of new jokes, including playing one song three times in a row which did admittedly get it to stick in my head ever since.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “A Perfect Murder” – another episode with a weak plot (and perhaps the most obvious twist possible in this kind of story) that gets considerably elevated by the cast and some fun characters. The younger of the two brothers is great, so wonderfully insincere and full of schemes.
He’s a local, woo live Philly music! And yeah, I’ve seen him live and laughed hysterically because I’d never heard of him before, but it is a single (very good) joke.
I’m afraid you can’t claim this one, he’s very definitely from Manchester. The next thing you’ll be claiming is that he isn’t 19 years old! Ridiculous!
Born on 9/11/2001 to boot!
The Great S2 premiere, with some great ownage (Catherine starving out Peter with his favorite chef is very funny, as is the latter trying and failing to enjoy a cooked rat) and it’s pulling off one of the rules of drama, namely getting a character to a goal or endpoint then asking what’s next. Plenty of boring and much slower shows would have had Catherine get to be Empress only in the series finale or something, but it’s only the second season. Peter sincerely loving Catherine, and being driven by the goal of getting her to love him as well as getting to be tsar again, is also this great twist that is not part of history and the show is better for it.
Notes: Elle Fanning’s face at the end here soundtracked to “Queen” by Perfume Genius rules. Equal parts dazed and grief-stricken. Marial and Archie’s relationship is one of the most sincere on the show and it gives Archie more dimension than being a pure schemer. (“Try to save me.”) Peter at one point muses that he’s somehow always able to think of his next move with Catherine, and while it’s evident he’s thick as hell, Peter does have a sense of cunning. There’s another life and timeline where he’s an awful but genuinely savvy finance bro. Georgy and Peter cucking Grigor is inherently funny.
The X-Files, “Terma”
The excellent “Tunguska” gets this dire sequel that is surprisingly boring for an episode featuring both a gulag and an amputation with a hot knife. Retroactively makes me dislike the opening of “Tunguska” even more, because the hearing, in action, is even dumber and more pointless than I expected. (“Tunguska” still rules, despite that opener.) Anyway, since I have nothing to say about this one, this is as good a place as any to admit that while I used to be crushing on Mulder and Scully, like a normal bisexual, I’m now all about the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
There’s gotta be a gay and bi following for Skinner out there, right?
I can definitely verify that.
It was very annoying to quickly find I am apparently a bisexual cliche, when I started watching the show and quickly decided I wanted to make out with Mulder and Scully individually and also see them make out with each other. They have an incredible chemistry.
My wife and I have been calling it one of the best TV shows for bi crushing ever for exactly this reason.
I’ve been watching Will Trent, which is copaganda but does some interesting stuff with its setting and characters and also – and this is important – Ramón Rodríguez is extremely attractive. It’s more diverse than the last cop show I was watching even semi-regularly, and I’m not sure if that’s a bit of a change or it’s a nice difference, because I don’t really watch cop shows any more. Anyway, Betty isn’t a cop, so stan Betty.
We started the new season of A Man on the Inside, which is still fun and fluffy, though Ted Danson’s Charles getting distracted by the prospect of new love is going to get annoying real fast. He and his actual wife sure have great chemistry, though, and I love her character.
Heated Rivalry is just shockingly strong for a low-budget Crave original. I’m glad it’s getting such a positive reception.
I am also almost done with my rewatch of The Untamed, and my love for my cancelled wife remains as strong as ever.
10,00 points for fusing two of my least favorite coaches, Belichick and Pitino and killing them.
Well, the show didn’t kill the coach, but the athletic director– the coach and the Jordon Hudson are the two main suspects.
As our weekly Pluribus correspondent in the field, I’ll note that “HDP” was a good episode, though it makes the dramatic unseen revelation at the end of the previous week’s episode even cheaper and more annoying. The best part of it is Samba Schutte’s Diabaté, who can embrace fun enough to stage James Bond reenactments for his own amusement and have a car for every day of the week but who can also offer Carol genuine compassion and connection in her loneliness–for a little while. (The bit where Carol realizes that, despite his kindness, he hopes she won’t stay any longer is really well-observed and performed by both actors.)
Still interested to see how Manousos will factor into all this, now that he’s getting ready to make a very long drive to come see Carol after he got her message. After Carol’s gotten abrasive, indifferent, and politely disinterested reactions from her fellow independent survivors, it’s cool to see Manousos hear one of her discoveries and look like he’s falling in love.
Even more interested to see how the show, if it goes on for a while, will deal with the long-term survival of the hive mind (love Diabaté nonchalantly calling it “the world,” telling Carol, “The world misses you”), given what we learn here about the severe restrictions its morality impose on it re: gathering food.
I’m fucking thrilled that Samba Schutte has such a good gig. I have to get to this show one of these days.
Yes, me too! I loved him on OFMD.
I made his 40-orange cake and it was genuinely delicious. I’ve kind of wanted to do one of his charity classes.
Well, I finally managed to find an image that doesn’t really work on mobile.