Captain's Log
At last! A new Thursday article where we can talk about MY bullshit
Finally! After promises of moving this article to Thursday, promises of Digman! on July 9, and various other lies, we are finally here for your regular Thursday article: a recap of the week in TV, with your chance to chime in on what you’ve been watching in the comments. (I suppose that this week, it’ll just be a recap of the last four days in TV.) Like The Simpsons with The Cosby Show, we’re moving from Sunday to Thursday to take our biggest competitor head-on (whoever that is, and wherever they are, and whatever they do, all of which is a mystery to me).
I guess that also makes this article “The Four Days So Far This Week in TV,” but I’m not breaking format to change the title for a one-time thing.
We had two Bob’s Burgers episodes to catch up on. July 3’s was entitled “The Shell Game,” wherein Mr. Fischoeder invites the Belchers to his tortoise’s 100th birthday party. Calvin there announces that he must will a successor for his tortoise should be ever pass on, and decides to hold a contest between a bunch of his rich weird friends and Bob. Bob is not particularly interested in winning, but the rich weirdos seem like jerks and the kids really want the tortoise. There’s also a subplot here with Mr. Fischoeder’s woman-servant Inga. Pretty good episode; I enjoy seeing slices of Mr. Fischoeder’s weird life, and the story brings in a strong guest cast– Zach Galifianakis returns as Felix, of course, but John Oliver, Joe Pera, Jessica St. Clair, and Amy Sedaris join the proceedings as well.
They followed that one with last Thursday’s “Wild Steal-ions.” Tina’s book of “semi-erotic horse-torical fiction” goes missing, and it turns out someone is holding it for ransom. Tina tries to figure out how to get it back safely; Gene and Louise try to figure out how to nail the culprit; Bob and Linda wonder if the kids are ever coming back to work at the restaurant. Solid, although I liked the first one better.
Last week’s Grimsburg was “How To Lose an Ankle Monitor in 10 Days,” and yes, there is a bit of a rom-com vibe here, between, of all people, Flute and Pentos. The criminals, whose criminal activity apparently funds a lot of economic activity in Grimsburg, are unhappy they’re not getting their cut. So they’ve decided to go on strike, which means the police force is furloughed while there’s no crime.
In the midst of all this, Pentos makes a bet with one of the other criminals (who thinks he’s lost his edge) that he can get his ankle monitor removed in 10 days. He decides to exploit Flute for this; with no crimes to solve, Pentos takes Marvin under his wing and teaches him how to commit crimes– which is a lot easier to do with no competition and no police force, and unfortunately for our lead detective, he proves to be a natural at it. Pentos does get the ankle monitor removed eventually, and despite Pentos letting his manipulation slip out, the bond they formed was real. And appropriately rom-com tinged for the title of the episode.
Martinez reveals she used to be part of “the Latina Salt-N-Pepa,” “Tajin and Chamoy.” But Chamoy has become a superstar, and with no work to be done, Martinez and Wynona visit Chamoy… where she’s under her father’s conservatorship and acting oddly, and the story takes an unexpected twist from there. I had fun with the episode on the whole.
Rick and Morty last week brought us “Ricker Than Fiction,” which is kind of a sendup of repetitive superhero franchises and gets a bit of Last Action Hero mixed in, when Rick and Morty are sucked into Rick’s “Movie-lizer” and Jerry has to write them back out of it into the real world. James Gunn guests and Zack Snyder makes a brief appearance. This one had some decent moments but was fairly flat on the whole, honestly. I did like them taking the piss out of how every superhero movie’s message now is basically “believe in yourself and the power of friendship,” and my biggest laugh came over the closing credits, which were scored to a plot-summary parody of “One Week.”
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia this week gives us “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs.” I had a long day and don’t get access to the show until 1 AM, and I was not going to force myself to stay up to write about it in a timely manner.
Sunday’s Rick and Morty was “Nomortland,” which is an entirely Jerry-focused episode… as Jerry discovers a Jerry from another universe who’s doing a Nomadland thing, finding little space-time pockets left behind from Rick’s adventures to live the nomadic life, slipping in and out of various universes. Jerry decides to join him on an adventure, gets dubbed “Eagle Man,” and then the adventure starts going awry when nomad-Jerry (“Mooch”) runs afoul of a network of abandoned Jerrys who run the dimension-hopping network. (They’re led by “Cool Jerry,” who has a leather jacket and a Rick he’s apparently beaten into submission.) So Mooch and Eagle Man have to get creative about evading them and making it back to our Jerry’s universe. I enjoyed this one; it’s one of the more inspired episodes of this season.
One of the universes that they travel to is the goat universe that gave us the promo image I used a few weeks ago, so I can’t use that one again. Hey, I haven’t used Bob’s yet. Let’s go with that.
Well… tough to fall behind when there just isn’t that much new out, eh? I guess this week’s Sunny counts, although I intend to catch up on it as soon as possible.
The Those Who Can’t watch continues. I wish this show was streaming anywhere so I’d have someone to talk about it with. Maybe you all need to learn how to torrent. We’re almost done with season 2; my favorites from this season are probably:
Nothing yet, but tonight we appear to be getting the final episodes for this season of Grimsburg and The Great North. (It seems Bob’s Burgers still has episodes scheduled for later in July and even August.) The latter may be the final episode of the show, as from what I know, it’s been declining in ratings and is on the chopping block. No firm word on that yet.
Next Wednesday, season 2 of Digman! premieres! Season 1 was one of my favorite shows on TV, and probably the funniest minute-for-minute show I watched in 2023. So you can bet your ass I’ll be all over it again. It’s been scheduled to follow the premiere of South Park, which I will not be watching, although I do think that’s a positive sign in terms of Comedy Central trying to get more eyeballs onto Rip Digman and his crazy misfit crew’s adventures.
Here’s your chance to tell us about the TV you’ve been watching this week. Or, since this is now a standard daily morning article, to tell us about whatever 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.
It's a gaming ship.
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Department of
Conversation
Weirdly, you might have competition since the weekly thread about TV at that other site that spun out of The AV Club is also on Thursdays.
I want to do a bit of a dive into the first emerging theme of The Practice: legal ethics and what that means to an attorney who puts winning ahead of everything. In the first twelve episodes of the show, Bobby Donnell argued jury nullification in all but name, and in a case where he was defending one person of two accused of murder, he suddenly pointed the finger at the other defendant. In that case, he then found our client, who was let off while the other defendant was now, did the crime and insisted he did it himself. So a suddenly regretful Bobby begs the judge to bend the rules in favor of mercy. Plus two of the firm’s associates don’t tell a judge a juror talked to them, which should force a mistrial, and when the truth comes out face disbarment. But no, they get a slap on the wrist because it’s clear that they did this because Bobby is setting the tone.
A lot going on, from a show that hasn’t embraced serialization yet and races from case to case. But as a TV lawyer might say, goes to pattern. David E. Kelley created this show as a rebuttal to the glitz and glamor of Bochco’s LA Law. He wanted a show about lawyers who work out of dingy offices and take whatever case they can grab. But in addition to us seeing underdog lawyers taking uphill civil cases, something we can root for, we get the seamy side of law. We get Bobby Donnell, who tells himself everyone deserves a fair hearing and a good lawyer, and who then gets lectured about how his methods are giving him a bad name, giving lawyers a bad name. It’s a fascinating experiment in legal drama since we want to like Bobby Donnell and since the show’s underlying theme is that the system, broken though it might be, can produce fair outcomes and justice. And yet…Bobby bends the rules. Bobby rolls high on his persuasion rolls all the time and we buy what he’s saying until we stop and think about it. And either we decide we accept his premise, that getting the not guilty verdict is all that matters, or we challenge it. There is a chance that audiences who don’t accept this stopped watching. Or maybe they watched in hopes of seeing Bobby impale himself.
Either way, the effect twelve episodes in is as entertaining as it was when it first aired. And makes up for some of the tendencies towards melodrama and soap opera and the occasional outlandish case. Doesn’t hurt that the cast is excellent. But would a bland cast succeed in convincing us that justice is being served?
If it’s the site I’m thinking of, anyone who wants to be there instead of here can stay there.
What did we watch?
Watched the Abbott Elementary/Always Sunny crossover and this is like a primer on why comedy that’s main purpose is to be heartwarming or give lessons* is not as entertaining or interesting as a show whose purpose is to make you laugh. Enjoyed the Gang getting so deep into 9/11 that they believe it is not real in hours and Janine using some strong profanity way more than the counter-episode, same with “Frank Is In A Coma.” And hey look, the show is making a point about how the ultra-rich are drug-addled morons and it’s FUNNY! (Big ups to Alex Woolf as said drug-addled moron, clearly feasting on the performance. “His dad was right about him!” from Charlie got a giant laugh out of me.)
*And I cannot stress enough as a Philadelphian, son of a retired teacher, and friend of actual city workers here who’s given them water and food and picketed with them (so don’t even try with me) that the lesson of Abbott Elementary – teachers try hard even when the government and systemic structures keep failing them – is really insidious and unintentionally exposes how liberal politics are by and large a miserable failure because their advocates in entertainment just demonstrate problems and go “Ah that sucks, huh” especially when celebrities who could probably help fix these broken structures show up for cameos! We have asbestos in our school buildings! Bradley Cooper with maybe a few million dollars could help fix those asbestos! Is he gonna do that?! Apparently not! Rant over.
Charity Shop Sue – a webseries made in the town / suburb where I live, people have mentioned it to me a few times and I figured I should finally check it out. The main character is compellingly strange, it’s essentially a faux-documentary thing like The Office on a microbudget with very short episodes but the writing is more miss than hit and I think without the odd central performance (and, for me, the local interest) it wouldn’t have attracted much attention at all. As it is, the main actress has managed to spin something of a career out of it and has become a minor LGBT icon somehow. I will probably watch every episode out of morbid curiosity, it does hit on some very funny moments occasionally but when it doesn’t hit it’s a bit painful.
The X-Files, “Sleepless”
Hey, everybody, it’s Tony Todd! And Krycek’s first episode!
The plot here–during the Vietnam War, the military altered a squad of soldiers to not need any sleep; now one of the survivors is wiping out the others (and the responsible parties) by inducing violent waking dreams–is solid horror fare. Very traditionally satisfying, and you could even get a good movie out of it. The best parts are actually the least showy, with subtle makeup work and great performances really selling the profound horror of what it would be like to go decades without sleep. I can feel their exhaustion and desperation and the frazzled patchiness of their consciousness.
Unsurprisingly, Tony Todd is terrific. For a while, I thought the episode wasn’t using him as well as it could–he was still doing great work, but not getting the material he needed to make it as iconic–but then he had his final scene with Mulder, where he gets to become this figure of devastating pathos, completely becoming the tragic hero of the piece rather than the sympathetic antagonist, and it’s incredible. (“Good night.”)
And we get Krycek. I’d never seen any of the Krycek episodes before, but I’d picked up enough about him over the years that the reveal at the end was no surprise, which is kind of a shame, because Lea does a decent misdirection job here, playing his character with a touch of vanilla, earnest gee-whillickers-ness but still showing enough spine (and even doing enough trolling) to not seem like a showily innocent plant.
Tony Todd was a really underrated actor, as with many in horror, especially Black ones. He has a similar role in Smallville as the victim of a messed up Luthor experiment, which is probably the first time I noticed him, but he’s fantastic here.
Just phenomenal, and he had presence for days: while I’m sorry that doing so much genre fare probably contributed to him being underrated, it also feels like a great fit for someone who was so, so good at instantly feeling larger-than-life. He could really burn down the screen when he wanted to, too.
Good point! It’s not just his voice but his sheer presence and power that makes Candyman such a believable legend. He looks like he just walked out of a 19th century tall tale.
Enthusiastically seconded. I’m really happy that he got a couple of really lovely send-off roles right at the end of his career – his appearance in the recent Final Destination is very moving and he also did some fantastic voice work in the recent “oh this franchise CAN still be good!” Indiana Jones video game.
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Eight, “The Trial of Henry Blake”
Not just a showcase for Mclean Stevenson, but written by him – although, as a matter of fact, only the climax is really about Henry even though the plot is centered around him. The climax is Henry being truly assertive, with Stevenson playing him as tired of this crap and willing to accept whatever consequences are thrown his way – very cool. Comedically, his high point is his ironic commentary on a gurney race.
This also has an infamous shot of Klinger trying to paraglide his way out of the army with a very obvious greenscreen effect. This is definitely the kind of thing the show would drop after a while (in favour of other gimmicky stuff). It also has Hawkeye throwing another salute, this time to trick Margaret into saluting with a gizmo on her hand, as well as some implied Hawkeye bisexuality (“I can’t think here! There’s no booze, the place has been cleaned to within an inch of its life, and your knees are driving me wild.” – Alan Alda delivers that line so sincerely).
“Charge three states you have a noncom who is a transvestite.” / “Well, I don’t pry into a man’s religion, sir.”
“He’s a doctor, that’s what kills me.” / “His patients have the same problem.”
I’m kind of a bisexual Hawkeye truther at this point, honestly.
So’s my wife. I don’t entirely buy it but once you see the signs, it’s hard not to at least ponder. (Also, we are sure that even though he’s from Maine and Christian, he spent a huge amount of time in New York surrounded by Jews.)
It’s the way Alan Alda plays it with such conviction every single time! Like, above and beyond the needs of the joke!
Bisexual Hawkeye Truther sounds like a band name I’d encounter at one of the weirdo DIY gigs I go to.
I mean, it absolutely would be if I had any musical talent.
The Practice, “Sex, Lies, and Monkeys” – Aside from the aforementioned “Bobby pleads with the judge about a woman he helped convict,” we have: Jimmy wins his first jury case, involving a movie critic fired by his boss because he looks like a monkey; Ellenor is sued by the man she rejected after a bad blind date; and Lindsay discovers she was drugged to make her far more willing to have sex, by a former boyfriend who’s an ADA. For all the seriousness of the main plot, we start the show’s voyage towards the absurd and towards the soap operatic. How Lindsay deals with the scum who raped her – and she calls it rape, thankfully – is emotionally satisfying and utterly unrealistic. And it’s pretty clear that the writer of the the Movie Critic Monkey Trial isn’t a fan of critics. Guests in addition to carryovers Linda Hunt (doing her best work so far here) and William Atherton include guest judge Armin Shimerman, at this time rarely seen without his Ferengi makeup prior to his work on Buffy.
If you think The Practice gets absurd, wait til you witness Boston Legal.
I’m disappointed that I know several lawyers in real life, and not once have they ever worn flamingo costumes into court.
I love that Kelley was actually a lawyer and then wrote what is probably the silliest non-sitcom lawyer show in history.
The big Captain’s Log news would be I watched the first episode of Digman! Funny as advertised! Also maybe the most rapid-paced humor I’ve encountered in a while, so it has the MST3K/ZAZ advantage in that if a particular joke doesn’t work for you, just wait a short time for the next one.
Drunk on Too Much Life – Documentary about the filmmaker’s daughter and her journey through mental illness. The daughter finds an outlet in artistic expression and the film intercuts her artwork and poetry with verite footage. Quite well done!
Nice!
Yeah, the rapid pace of the show is a big reason I’m such a fan. Not many shows even try to pack as many gags in as Digman! does.
General TV/article commenting:
I’m enjoying the write-ups on Those Who Can’t, so I hope you keep those up even as you bemoan our collective lack of access to it.
I’ve been watching Mr. Show–although I’ll be doing it in smaller chunks going forward–and liveblogging it on Discord, which has been a lot of fun. Going to start watching Taken soon, too: I may make some real headway into it this weekend, or I may wind up devoting myself to movies. (I’m in the kind of not-great headspace lately where usually movies work better for me, but we’ll see.) But if not this weekend, then soon.
I think I’ve officially trailed off Poker Face at this point, since I missed one episode and then another and then another and have no desire to catch up. I’ll still defend S1–there’s a lot about it I genuinely like, especially on the level of the individual mysteries–but this season lost me: too broad, too weakly plotted in its episodic stories, and too invested in surface-level political commentary that it undermined with its actual storytelling.
Ah, so perhaps Taken will have an advantage in each episode being about eighty minutes long, thus feeling like a movie.
Mr. Show in smaller blocks? Why would you want to do that?
The first episode of Those Who Can’t involves the teachers trying to plant heroin in the locker of a student who’s been bullying them, so that should give you an idea of how the show goes.
Not like I’m breaking any individual episodes up! Just that I might not be able to watch as much TV on one Monday as I have in the past.
The first episode of Those Who Can’t involves the teachers trying to plant heroin in the locker of a student who’s been bullying them, so that should give you an idea of how the show goes.
Sounds like they’re actually pretty good teachers, because that kid’s about to learn an important lesson about not pissing people off.
No life. Only Mr. Show.