Captain's Log
A wave of season premieres gets us back to a pretty full schedule
How many shows did I cover last week? Four? We’re doubling that, thanks to four shows in four days premiering or resuming, plus one sneak preview.
Let’s lead off with our sneak preview series premiere, then our regular series premiere, then our season premiere…
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, “Pilot” – Oh, man, just immediately as a proof of concept that almost nothing on TV is funnier than Tina Fey (and company) writing dialogue for Tracy Jordan (and company), Reggie Dinkins shines. As a show, it might still need some development as to where it’s really going, what the stories and characters will be beyond an exercise in Tracy Morgan and others saying ridiculously funny things. But as an exercise in Tracy Morgan and others saying ridiculously funny things, it is already excellent. And the bones are there for it to be more, with the obviously strong writing pedigree, and with Tracy Morgan, Daniel Radcliffe, and Bobby Moynihan on board (as well as Erika Alexander, Precious Way, and Jalyn Hall).
Morgan is Reggie Dinkins, a former NFL all-star who was banned from the league after gambling on himself. His ex-wife Monica (Alexander) is still his agent and manager; he lives with his fiancé Brina (Way), son Carmelo (Hall), and Rusty (Moynihan), his best friend, former teammate, and now apparent hanger-on here to say ridiculous shit in a Bobby Moynihan flavor. To rehabilitate his image, Reggie hires Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe), an Oscar-winning director whose career disappeared after a meltdown directing a Marvel movie (in a scene that’s funnier than the entirety of The Franchise except that one credits scene with Nick Kroll and Richard E. Grant). To the plot, well, this first episode largely focuses around introducing us to the characters and the characters trying to figure out if the documentary is even a good idea. But for a sitcom, the comedy is more important than the situation, and the pilot has at least a solid half-dozen laugh-out-loud lines, largely from Morgan of course, because really, the character is just “Tracy Morgan being ridiculous in a different context.” But if it’s this funny and stays this funny, I honestly don’t care about anything else about it. Unfortunately, it’ll be five Mondays from now before we can see the second episode.
Favorite lines (or at least the ones I most remembered from the pilot):
Rusty, describing the film Reggie wants to make: “The movie was gonna end with me getting Takened and then Reggie rescues me with a famous sword.”
Reggie to Brina after he (temporarily, of course) fires Monica: “Babe! Call my knee doctor and tell him that bone that looks like a hat is… gone.”
Brina, later: “I called every doctor in your phone, and they’re all DJs!”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “The Hedge Knight” – The latest HBO adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s work comes from the Dunk and Egg novellas, the stories of an aspiring hedge knight and his squire in Westeros, nearly a hundred years before the events of the main series. Well, we mostly spend time on setup this episode, as the knight Dunk squired for dies, and he decides to take up his sword, armor, and horses, and become a hedge knight himself. “It’s a hedge knight, innit! It’s like a knight, but… sadder.”
That line (delivered by a prostitute at Manfred Dondarrion’s camp in Ashford) should also give you a sense of the show’s lighter touch; there are definitely more overtly comic moments in this show than in the other two. (I mean, the scene where the GoT theme music starts to swell is a great example. And there are cutaway gags!) I’m enjoying Peter Claffey’s performance as a big, friendly guy; the kind of guy whose size and athleticism makes him an obvious candidate to be a knight, but who also is kind of worried about always taking up too much room or drawing attention to himself. It sounds like most of the episodes will be shorter than the other two series, as well, adding to the lighter feel. Anyway, pretty fun, will continue reporting.
Going Dutch, “The Laser’s Edge” – Season 2 premieres with an episode that is in some ways very “Here’s everything to know if you are a new viewer checking us out for the first time.” But even though it spends a little time establishing certain character dynamics (and also that Hal Cumpston lost a significant amount of weight in between seasons), and what the situation at Garrison Stroopsdorf is, the actual episode ends up being pretty funny, driven by Col. Quinn’s (Denis Leary) insane desire to prove himself and get one over on Maj. Gen. Davidson (a recurring Joe Morton).
This time, Davidson is taking over the base to run a combat exercise, but has left Stroopsdorf out of participating. Col. Quinn (who I have to refer to with his title because his daughter is Capt. Quinn. Or Patrick and Maggie, if you think that’s easier, even though no one on the show uses “Patrick”) hatches a plan: “The first part’s gonna sound like kidnapping, but I checked it out, and legally, we’re in the clear.” The team will waylay one of the paratrooper teams somewhere far away on their way to the exercise, then take their place and beat Davidson’s team— at what is, essentially, glorified laser tag, much to Patrick’s annoyance. Also, Patrick had Papadakis turn up the electric shock on all the uniforms to be more, uh, combat-authentic? (“Whoa. Judging by how many of you guys wet your pants, I definitely goosed the shock too much.”) Pretty funny antics and actually a pretty clever strategy by Team Stroopsdorf in the end, even if certain parts were not as clever as others in the beginning.
There’s also a side runner of Maggie (Taylor Misiak) dealing with her jealousy that XO Major Abraham Shah’s (Danny Pudi) estranged wife Celeste (Milana Vayntrub) has transferred to the base as of the end of season 1 (she’s also a captain) to try to make their marriage work, just as Maggie and Abe seemed to be developing some chemistry. That does lead to some pretty funny plot complications, and funnier still when Maggie and Patrick bond over them afterward.
Anyway, this was a pretty funny start to the season, with what had been a solid and enjoyable enough network sitcom having the comedy dial cranked a little higher this time out. Hopefully this continues.
Animal Control, “Bagged Birds and Alley Dogs” – Technically the season-premiere date, but they ran a sneak preview a few weeks ago so this is the second episode. We get the return of Ken Jeong as Lee Park, the wealthy celebrity dog trainer who’s donating a bunch of money to put his name on a park, if you missed one of season 3’s stories. While the dynamic is very different than Jeff and Chang, the funniest parts of this episode involve the two of them— Frank is just supposed to be picking up Lee from the airport, but Lee wants to take a call, and, well, you’ll see where that goes.
Back at the precinct and setting up for the welcome party, the two different Animal Control departments continue to be in conflict, although personally I’m with Shred and Patel having more fun inhaling helium and talking in funny voices than with Templeton’s asinine levels of perfectionism about the balloon arch. I dunno how sustainable this is, mostly because the other precinct is so one-note, just consistently petty, obnoxious, and vindictive. Even the seeming shading in turns out to be fake by the end.
Oh, and speaking of Shred, he and Emily are trying to avoid each other lest they find themselves in a compromising position and their passions overtake them… so of course they repeatedly find themselves in compromising positions throughout the episode, and by the end of the episode, their passion overtakes them.
Abbott Elementary, “Mall Part 2: Questions & Concerns” – I waited too long after I saw the episode to write about it, but I remember it being pretty good— as ridiculous as the mall is, it has rejuvenated the show and given it fertile ground for new stories. Unsurprisingly, one of those stories is “irate parents,” which brings back head of the PTA Tariq, still a per-second MVP of the show. There’s also a story with Jerry Minor’s Morton trying to steal Melissa away from her friend group of, well, the main cast of teachers, but this specifically involves Jacob and Barbara. The giant Ben Franklin head was also pretty funny. And Mr. Johnson filling in for Dia.
Stumble, “Lorraine” – We’re back with new episodes! Courteney learning of the betrayal at the end of last episode has brought out another side of her personality… a competitive and vicious one she calls “Lorraine” (and that Boon seems to really enjoy). Unfortunately, that viciousness can be pretty nasty when it’s directed at her cheerleaders… and it’s exacerbated by Steven’s ludicrous reports to HR regarding the events of last episode (when he wildly misinterprets Courteney firing him as her intern as a declaration of love). That means mandatory HR training, immediately, right at the time when Courteney has paid out of pocket for a high-end choreographer she can only afford for four hours… and also, weirdly, the HR seminar might have launched some sparks of romance between two of our cheerleaders? Funniest moments:
The cheerleaders trying to make up the choreographer debacle to Courteney by secretly planning and practicing their own routine… until Courteney realizes they stole it from Bring It On.
Courteney after Boon points out this mean streak isn’t from her competitiveness but from her own abusive cheer coach: “I hate it when you’re right. That means it was so obvious.”
The choreography solution is somewhat foreshadowed early in the episode, but it’s still quite funny to see Courteney go for it, and see the early signs of how it’s playing out.
High Potential, “Grounded” – Ugh, we were having TV problems when we tried to watch this, so first the signal was all screwy and then a TV setting turned off the sound for most of the first act. From what I gather, the case involves a retired military man who loves to skydive seemingly dying mid-air, in a way that pings our LAPD team that this might be murder. And also, Morgan has to take some kind of detective course on proper procedure, taught by Michael Hyatt (Brianna Barksdale herself, or maybe you remember her as Dr. Akopian from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). There’s some head-butting between Lt. Soto and Capt. Wagner, the team fights to keep Morgan on board, Arthur Ellis resurfaces and contacts Soto, and the case has the usual twists (including Morgan trying to sneak off on her phone to help Karadec and Co. solve it while she’s in the middle of her course). Probably fine. I would watch it again to fill in all the gaps I missed, if it was a show that I thought really rewarded that.
Best Medicine, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” – Honestly, this one grated on me a bit for a couple of reasons. The main plot involves the star high school baseball player coming into the office with a sore back after Sheriff Mark takes him out for BP… and then Martin trips over him and his arm breaks. Oh, and the kid is Glendon Ross Jr., so he’s the son of Martin’s bully. This plot grated on me because the town is so provincial and unreasonable while Martin is just trying to figure out what’s wrong with Junior (because his arm shouldn’t have broken that easily), between how much they harass him over the baseball game and Glendon Sr. suing him and filing a restraining order, that I was like, you know what? You’re right about this shit! Fuck these people, get the fuck out of town and don’t look back. The town doesn’t seem that quirky or charming if 95% of the residents we interact with are small-minded assholes.
The B-story involves Elaine, still regarding her job as secondary to her aspiring vlog career, moving out of her house and into the waiting room after a fight with her mother. There’s a bit of hijinks here, but the weird runner is that she doesn’t like her mother’s boyfriend, and after her mother visits her, asks her to come back home, and breaks that her boyfriend proposed and she would like Elaine’s blessing… Elaine just… blows up at her again, then moves in to Louisa’s spare room? So is this gonna continue multiple episodes, or are we just gonna leave how shitty Elaine is being to her mother here unresolved?
This episode really forgot to include the “charming” part of “charming small town.” Another one like this might be enough for me to start freeing up some time on Tuesday evenings.
St. Denis Medical has the week off for NBC’s slate of MLK Day NBA games, or to not program against the College Football Playoff Championship, or both.
Somehow that hasn’t happened!
Fringe: I’m nearing the end as I write this, and may be there by the time you read this. Who wants to talk Fringe?
Ended? It’s January.
And I’m gonna undermine my own pithy statement by observing that Shoresy is airing its final episode of season 5 in Canada today, but I am still not sure when Hulu will officially launch the new season in America.
We got nine shows on the schedule right now! Isn’t that enough for you? Well, it’ll have to be, because I’m not adding anything else to my schedule until February. You can watch other stuff if you want, of course.
Let’s hear it! I wrote a lot and I expect the same of you.
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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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Three, Episode Eleven, “Adam’s Rib”
“They got a lot of guts.”
“And they keep serving them.”
This is one I’d consider a top five episode – it’s got some riffing on the characters navigating The System, it’s funny as hell, and it has the extremely funny and relatable concept that’s low stakes and all the funnier for how seriously Hawkeye pursues it (Hawkeye’s silent, volcanic rage at hearing there’s liver and fish is fantastic). I’ve been thinking today that, if Mad Men is a sitcom with flowery dialogue, M*A*S*H is a drama that happens to be funny. This is a great example of Hawk trying to bring some humanity to an inhuman situation; the final twist would become a cliche for the show, but it works here in an O Henry kind of way.
“I’ve eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish!” This is one of my all-time favorite lines in the show.
I remembered this as happening later, but it has Trapper use an old flame, which you couldn’t really do with BJ.
“We want something else! We want something else!”
Definitely a top tier classic. (I tend to think of “Private Charles Lamb” as a relative/inverse of this.)
It is really tempting as a gag to just post the entire article all over again in the comments here.
Just this week’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents but I’ll save my thoughts on that for later.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Portrait of Jocelyn” – I have thoughts. Later.
Doctor Who, “The Invasion,” last two parts – The sixth episode ended with Cyberman on the march with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Alas, nothing we see in the last two parts is as striking. Indeed, there is a lot of tell instead of show as the Doctor, the companions, and UNIT, the only people in the world not under a poorly defined Cybermen mind whammy, quickly rally. As cool as it is that Zoe was able to calculate the perfect trajectories for British ABMs to take out all of the Cybermen’s invasion force, it’s not cool only see stock footage of missile tests and blips on a radar screen. And then to see it again in the final boss battle. But over the eight part serial is really not that padded and is quite a bit of fun, and also more or less sets up the kind of storytelling we’ll see in the next season with the Third Doctor. (Also, it’s pretty clear the public knows about the Cybermen. The later insistent that nothing the Doctor does is known to the world makes no sense.)
The Practice, “Suffer the Little Children” – In the main plot, we focus a bit more on Ron Livingston as ADA Alan Lowe, who has promised the mother of a Black teen killed because he accidentally had gang colors on he will get her justice. And in order to do this, he really twists the rules to make a suspect, also a Black teen and a former gang member, confess or to get the suspect’s younger brother to snitch. Up ro and including making sure the gang world knows who the suspect is in hopes the kid would prefer going to prison to being killed on the streets. It’s interesting enough, and Livingston has a different energy than Jason Kravitz or Lara Flynn Boyle, but it’s a bit too familiar. Much more interesting is the second plot: Lindsey ends up helping out a mentally challenged man just freed from prison after DNA testing clears him. The man has nothing, and is desperate to see his daughter, and Lindsey bends over backwards to help. A bit trite, but Ray McKinnon is excellent as the man in question, and lord help me but I teared up a bit at the reunion between father and daughter.
Frasier, “The Love You Fake” – The rivalry between Frasier and neighbor Cam Winston comes to a head, but Martin and Cam’s mother decide to take matters into their own hands and pretend to be dating to force their sons to get over it. Though by the end, it’s not as fake as it seemed. As before, Brian Mitchell Stokes is great as Cam. Alas, I guess they decided once again that Frasier can’t have any friends besides Niles, and we never see Cam or his mother again. Also, we learn that inexplicably Frasier used the space he could have had a laundry machine for a “hat nook.” He’s never worn a hat, and no one who could afford a laundry machine would choose to use the public laundry room. Oh, and for some reason Niles is riding a Segway, a sign of the times I suppose.
Inside No. 9, “La Couchette”
Superbly fun, funny episode that makes excellent use of its claustrophobic sleeper car setting. This has a shot in it that’s almost as good as the famous “Troy with pizza” gif. A fair amount of gross-out humor–my wife gagged multiple times when one character had to catch another character’s explosive diarrhea in a shoebox–done very well. This feels both like a typical episode (in style) and an example of its range (in tone).
Inside No. 9, “The 12 Days of Christine”
Did I just mention the show’s range? Because this is a beautiful, bittersweet, slightly haunted look at one woman’s life in progress as we skip from holiday to big day to holiday and it gradually becomes clear that something eerie is going on. Very smart in how it uses its structure, and if some of the red herrings feel a little cheap in retrospect, I don’t care. Sheridan Smith is absolutely incredible here: the way she says, “Oh,” in one of the final scenes as she realizes something … honestly, just thinking about it is going to make me cry. So many heartbreaking, well-realized moments here: Christine’s relationship with her father, especially after you see him with Alzheimer’s and then see what he was like before that, is especially affecting. The fucking cruelty of time only going one way. The mercy of memory that means that sometimes it doesn’t feel like that.
Live theater! Saw a farcical play of Sherlock Holmes at the Walnut Street Theater. The text adapts two of the stories, “The Final Problem” and “The Return of Sherlock Holmes,” resulting in an extremely meta conclusion I wouldn’t spoil. Suffice to say the production is really well done and silly, and despite doing parody, Harry Smith, playing Holmes, is arguably better than most recent Sherlocks at capturing the essence of the character. (It’s crucial that as much as Sherlock Holmes is a weird, off-putting intellectual, he can be warm and caring, especially with Watson.) Reviewing it for the local theater spot as well.
I always feel like if a Holmes adaptation can’t get the part that you mention in the parenthetical, it’s not for me.
I love the RDJ films but “warm and caring” is absent.
I can read him as caring about Watson in those (albeit badly, like Hepburn caring about Grant in Bringing Up Baby), but yeah, I can’t remember anything outside of that. I do like those, though.
Someday I ought to do my definitive not-definitive list of actors who have played Sherlock Holmes in things I have watched. (Reviewing every last actor who’s played Holmes just in movies would kill anyone who tried. He’s literally the most portrayed fictional character ever.)
Oh, I definitely want to read that!
See also the memes about autistics in media being cold and difficult and autistics in real life getting frantic about offending or hurting anyone.
Stranger Thin5s, parts four and five – The fourth episode, the “midseason finale” because four episodes dropped a month ahead of the rest, is over ninety minutes, and balances multiple plotlines, and has a lot of action, and somehow manages to hold everything together. A good chunk is Max’s not-necessarily-internally-consistent story of what she has been up to in the mindscape subdivision of the Upside Down, but Sadie Sink (who since we are in the mindscape can look her actual age) seems to be having a lot of fun. Indeed. almost everyone does. And then we get the very bleak and very stupid battle between Vecna and a battalion of soldiers who seem not to have been prepared one little bit for fighting Vecna and the demogorgons. (Really, no one has figured out you need a platoon of flamethrowers?) And finally, Will somehow tapping into Vecna and getting to be a hero. Oh, and let’s not forget Robin telling Will about how path to queer self-realization, which actually plays a part in the plot as well as just being kind of great. Oh, and the unfairly derided Kali aka Eight is back.
But part five doesn’t really follow too well on part four. It’s to a large degree More of the Same, and to a large degree The Same but MORE!. JRoberts, talking about earlier episodes, called out the Netflix bloat, and while I don’t entirely agree with his assessment of the season, he is right about this. There is one big reveal that the army is far more interested in continuing its perverse super soldier experiments than into killing Vecna, so now we can feel better about all those soldiers dying.
And there is also the matter of Millie Bobby Brown. I have said that outside of Charlie Heaton, I think the cast here is good to great, even the new kid actors. But Brown, who was a really good kid actor, is kind of awful this season. Eleven is stiff, stuck in the same place she’s been since 2016 in terms of how she talks, but not it’s not endearing, it’s dopey. The emotional beats needed to make the father-daughter relationship work are missing. To be fair, that might be due to David Harbour’s terrible bullying of Brown. Can’t really blame her if she felt like she wanted to be in the next county and not with him. But what was once the heart of the show is not there.
Busy time of year for TV! I’ll have to check out A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms at some point–certainly I was immensely charmed by the first Dunk and Egg novella. (I can’t remember if I read past that or not.)
I need to catch up on Primal, but I’m up-to-date on The Pitt, which is off to a pretty good start. (We’ll see how some ominous interview comments about forthcoming plotlines play out: trying to hope for the best on that front.) Both the “erection lasting longer than four hours” blood-draining and the pitch-black tragicomedy of the widow with dementia feel like they’re definitely pulled from real ERs. I’m not too attached to any individual patient storylines yet, but it’s good to see all our regulars again.
The Pitt is apparently so accurate that doctors online said they don’t want to watch it because they feel like they’re back at work.
You do need to catch up on Primal.
Year of the Month update!
Coming in February, we’ll be looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Throne of Blood
Feb. 6th: Gillianren: The Story of Anyburg, USA
Feb. 13th: Gillianren: The Truth About Mother Goose
Feb. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Incredible Shrinking Man
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
And there’s still time to sign up for January! Here’s some of the movies, albums, books, TV, and games you can write about.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
Jan. 26th: Bridgett Taylor: Lonesome Dove
Jan. 29th: Cori Domschot: Jewel of the Nile
I started watching both High Potential and The Rookie during the months I was unemployed just for something to do. I made the mistake of watching them back to back last night. They’re both copaganda, of course (something of which I’m more forgiving perhaps than many here). But The Rookie is just so much better a show. Sure it’s a melodrama and it shows a fantasy ofthe dedication and competence of the LAPD. But it also really tries to get into the emotions of its characters and ground the viewer in the toll that crime takes on its victims. In HP, it’s just an excuse for some puzzle games and an admittedly fun performance by Olsen. And when it does try to raise the emotional stakes it gets a scene like the concluding one here where cops use blackmail to get what they think they need. The Rookie shows cops failing but it almost never shows purposeful malfeasance played as the right thing to do because it gets results you stupid chief.
Yeah, I’ve definitely cooled on High Potential a bit, after the novelty factor wore off. It’s kinda settled into something more formulaic than I was hoping, and a little generic at some points (I feel like a weird amount of Soto’s dialogue is first-draft pattern dialogue), but at least Olson’s performance does give it something to stand out. I think I’ve come to prefer Elsbeth as my network cop-consultant murder-mystery show, and now that I think about it they have a surprising number of similarities.