Captain's Log
Easter, 4/20, whatever you celebrate-- here's a look at the last week in TV
Remember, tell your friends about this new series, if you want to see it continue!
We’ll kick off with this week’s season finale…
Matlock ran a double-length episode to close out the season (which also means no Elsbeth this week). With Olympia fully in the loop now, Matty has her dig into proving her suspicions, while Sarah ends up getting pressed into a case from her side work last episode. The two-part episodes probably gives us a few too many flashbacks, and it ends on a couple of cliffhangers (which I’m rarely fond of when a show ends a season that way), but it also gives us some great performances all around– I want to highlight the delightfully nasty work by Beau Bridges as Senior here, particularly with Julian, since I haven’t much talked about him this season– and I enjoyed quite a bit more than I didn’t. A fun ride throughout the season, with the performances and occasional stretches that really elevated it, I rather enjoyed this Matlock with a twist.
Hacks continues on with “What Happens in Vegas,” where Deborah brings the new staff on an impromptu writers’ retreat to Las Vegas, where she and Ava fight again, this time with Ava realizing the writing staff needs to feel comfortable and bond to really collaborate, and Deborah not really being used to having writers at all (before Ava). So, party out in Vegas! This ends up being a funny and memorable sequence (most of all with Lauren Weedman’s mayor showing up again, particularly hilarious in this appearance), and it has consequences both immediate and obvious, and longer-term and perhaps less obvious. So far through season four, Hacks has kept playing at a high level.
The Righteous Gemstones treats us to its regular midseason “Interlude” episode, now taking us back to 2002 and some background on Corey, Lori, and her husband Cobb’s relationship with the Gemstones– and a couple of details that may hint as to what’s really going on in the present day. I never stop being amazed by the child actors playing the Gemstone siblings in these episodes– J. Gavin Wilde’s young Jesse is uncannily good in particular.
That said, the plot has felt like it’s moved a little more slowly this season than before, plus we had the Civil War flashback episode to start the season… which, all in all, means we’ve got what seems like a lot of story to resolve in these last three episodes. I’ve been one of the Gemstone faithful from the get-go and haven’t been let down yet, but right now I’m wondering how it’s all going to wrap up neatly in such a short time.
Moving into the network sitcom world, Poppa’s House features what could be another trite sitcom trope, the old man complaining about how everyone’s on their phones nowadays. But the other adults take him up on his challenge, and after a game of Truth or Dare leads to some hurt feelings, they eventually get resolved by talking them out. This includes Poppa being honest and sincere in some of his. And the others come around to his perspective that working through problems and talking things over, rather than leaving them unaddressed under a layer of distraction, makes for healthier and more meaningful relationships. I like that this idea that could feel hacky doesn’t result in a story that feels hacky, and that the show has pretty consistently shown Poppa growing and changing over the course of the year, rather than being a set-in-his-ways lump who either refuses to adapt or is proven right all the time.
Abbott Elementary ends its season with another field-trip episode, something of a wind-down after the plotting of the last few episodes. “Please Touch Museum” involves a field trip more geared towards the younger students than the older ones– the aquarium closure mentioned last week reverberates here– but the older students make the most of it, by writing a play featuring the teachers (and having them play each other). That whole sequence is quite funny.
Also, Orlando Jones returns as Gregory’s dad, and Janine finally gets to meet him. This took some pleasant and unexpected turns. Ava and O’Shon also get their little moment in the sun. Solid finish to an uneven season, but one with highs that were higher than season three.
The Great North involves the Tobin kids (and a few others, including Aunt Dirt) showing up at school on a snow day after getting a voicemail telling them the school will be open anyway… and then it becomes a mystery of figuring out first that this was a setup and then who did it and why. Meanwhile, Wolf and Honeybee try to get Beef to open up about his breakup with Carissa. This mostly involves all of them getting drunk in the van.
Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney – Okay, we finally watched the first two episodes of this, and dear lord it is a scream. It’s somehow both more polished and more anarchic than last year’s Everybody’s in L.A. Mulaney’s opening monologues are long and somewhat surreal, the episode topics end up leading to some fascinating and hilarious conversations, as do the mix of guests on the couch. (Where else can you watch Stavros Halkias and John Waters bond over Baltimore stories, and also watch Halkias ask Neal Katyal “You don’t beat off? You never beat off? Everybody beats off! Chill, dude!”?)
That– or things like “Richard Kind had a traumatic brain injury and believes he’s Gene Simmons from KISS, but he is dressed like he would be on an episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown“– either greatly appeal to you or do not at all. If they do, then I can wholly recommend this show as funny as hell.
Andor – So the same friend who recommended Invincible recommended this as well, and that went well enough I decided to give it a spin. In this case, I had no intention of trying to finish it in time to start with season 2, but at our current pace it’ll probably end up happening. So far, we are through eight episodes, and while I must warn you that it’s probably better to take the first three all at once– they were released together for a reason, and that reason is “the first two episodes are pretty slow and set up the kickoff of the real action in the third”– when the show does kick into gear, it provides some real thrills. And even on a more episodic and less intense or plot-heavy level, there’s some good stuff about life under the rule of a fascist empire.
I’m not a particular Star Wars fan of any note, so personally I’m rather pleased that this isn’t a reference-heavy slop-fest, either. It’s a story rather unlike any told in the Star Wars universe, as I understand it, and really does seem like the kind that’s only there because that’s the best way to actually get it made and for the audience to have a shorthand familiarity with the background details already. So far, pretty solid, although I’ll have a more firm opinion once we finish this season.
Didn’t see this week’s The Studio yet, but we’ll get back to it.
Kicked it with a few episodes of classic favorites– some 30 Rock season seven, starting with “Governor Dunston” (because I pulled up the show on Hulu and couldn’t stop laughing at the preview image), and then watching the next two episodes as well. Still remarkable to me that the show played at such a high level in its final season.
A classic Simpsons revisit led us to “Bart the Vigilante” and “Bart’s Inner Child.” For reasons I forget, possibly related to the Andor watch, I was thinking of the line “They’re very slowly getting away!” which led me to the latter. Let’s go to to the old mill anyway, get some cider. And then watch McGonigle.
We also watched Mr. Show‘s “It’s a No-Brainer,” which generally speaking isn’t a top episode for me, but I was in the mood for the Jack Webber sketch, and we do get some other funny sketches here (“Dream of a Lifetime,” “On the Spot News”), and the pretty remarkable “Culture Hunt” segment, with David’s dumbass bro being on the verge of a real emotional and maturational breakthrough before Bob’s dumbass bro talks him out of it.
Well, I feel like an idiot, even though in this case I can perfectly well blame lack of accurate information. I thought Good Cop / Bad Cop‘s finale was this week, but apparently last week’s episode was the season finale. I was going to make it the header image since I already used Matlock two weeks ago.
As I mentioned up top, Matlock aired its season finale as well. It has been renewed for season two. Abbott Elementary also aired its season finale this week, with no major changes– Ava’s brief journey out of, and then back to, the job of principal being the biggest real turning point– although Janine finally meets Gregory’s dad this episode, which provides some nice comedic surprises.
And the revised Mythic Quest series finale was released on Friday. Haven’t seen it yet, but I will.
The Rehearsal season two premieres tonight! I have not read any of the reviews, on purpose.
Tell me something good! Or bad! Just tell me something!
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.
It's a gaming ship.
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Tell me something good! Or bad! Just tell me something!
I can recap my early feelings about The Pitt! I’ve watched three episodes (with at least one more on the docket for tonight), and so far, I feel like this is–after a clunky first episode–engaging and (mostly) promising.
The premise: we follow, hour-by-hour, a complete shift at a Pittsburgh hospital. The ER is constantly overcrowded, with patients stuck in hallways and having trouble getting any longer-term beds; consequently, patient satisfaction tends to be low. We have a lead protagonist–Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle)–but it’s a huge ensemble featuring doctors of varying levels of experience. It’s not a single story but a bunch of patient-related (and non-patient-related) stories progressing simultaneously.
The pluses: a relative lack of dreamy, somber prestige atmosphere. Some strong, efficient storytelling when it comes to the patients: the way the season is structured means that it isn’t technically episodic, but the various stories that would be case-of-the-week plots are pretty well-done. There’s a refreshing desire to engage and a willingness to follow that to some technically far-fetched but nonetheless compelling places, like a doctor with an ankle monitor or a mother who doses herself with ipecac in order to try to get her budding school shooter of a son the psychiatric attention he needs. My favorite plots, though, are the ones that are dramatic but also naturalistic, like two adult siblings who, out of love, keep choosing to prolong their father’s life even when it means keeping him dazed and in pain. Some good character development for the doctors, especially the younger ones at the start of their training. Everyone is sketched in with enough skill that you can keep track of their essential characteristics, if not their names.
The minuses: sometimes cheesy, obvious, and too clear about what lessons it’s trying to teach. (As I believe Chris said, we often, and with good reason, criticize prestige TV here, but other models–here, the primetime network drama–have their own failure modes that are irritating in their own ways. Anything can be done well or badly.) Sometimes the humor is unfunny and too broad. Some of the characters and their relationships can feel cheaply familiar, not so much archetypal–and not looking at what it would take for a person to inhabit an archetype–as stock and insufficiently realized. (This could change as I go on.)
Basically, so far this feels like a solidly entertaining episode of a late ’90s/early ’00s medical procedural. Even its one variation on the format–the “it’s a 15-hour shift we cover in 15 episodes!” bit–is essentially the show riffing on 24. This isn’t making the medical drama into anything new, and it’s not yet an excellent medical drama with unbeatably good tension, realism, characterization, plotting, etc. But it’s already a pretty good medical drama that I could see getting better as it goes along, and it’s already worth watching if you like this kind of thing and want a lot of intriguing mini-stories and a look at integrity and professionalism and choices in reasonably high-stakes context.
This Chris fellow sounds very wise and should be heeded. It’s interesting to see shows this past year shift back from the prestige mode, probably fueled as much by the change in fortunes of streaming companies as anything, but also very possible that the sentiment when those shows came into vogue (we can expect from our episodic entertainment!) has been replaced (we don’t have to be punished by our episodic entertainment!)
We’ve been watching Ghosts, which is about as sitcom-y as you can get – the blocking is boring as hell, you aren’t encumbered by a studio stage anymore! Move around! – but as shows to wind down to before bed go, it ain’t bad. The quickie version of the conceit is a couple moves into a haunted mansion and after a near-death accident, the wife can see and talk with the house’s many ghosts while nobody else can. So of course you get a bit of the old joke where she can’t/won’t stop acknowledging the ghosts even while it makes her look crazy to everyone else (not funny), but luckily they quickly move away from that and towards her husband knowing there are ghosts he can’t see or hear and trying from context to figure out what they’re talking about from his wife’s responses (never not funny). Each ghost is from a different era so you have the Viking ghost, the Revolutionary ghost, the hippie ghost, the finance bro ghost (brhost?) etc. etc. which gives the writers a lot of fertile ground for character-based punchlines without having to go non-sequitur. It’s fine! This is not an endorsement.
Anyway, they’ve been pushing Poppa’s House pretty hard at the breaks. I do enjoy some Wayans and Wayans, Jr. Also have a lot of Matlock to catch up on.
Ghosts looks like it could be pretty solid– and it’s an adaptation of a UK sitcom– although I am kinda like “Man, four seasons seems like a lot to go through for what is probably just a solid network sitcom.”
Poppa’s House doesn’t generally go much more than “solid,” either, but it does have a good cast, and my affinity for the Wayanses goes a long way. And it does occasionally rise to some very funny moments.
Catch up on Matlock! The season’s over!