September Roundup, '19
Things were real chill for most of September, but then every single goddamn channel that exists blasted us with new shows in the last week of the month, sufficiently melting my brain. Here they all go, nonetheless (and, as always, with the extra good shit in bold)...
Watch This Shit:
If you're in need of a good nostalgia fix, HGTV decided to buy the actual house used for exterior shots on The Brady Bunch so they could renovate the shit out of it and turn the interior into an exact replica of what's seen on the show. All the Brady kids are involved and, let's be real, if you grew up watching them, you're probably regularly watching HGTV at this point anyway. So, enjoy, gramps!
A courtroom dramz, that manages to be... quirky? For example, bailiffs trying to shoot a judge is a big fucking deal and is somewhat treated as such, but hitting thieves with your car seems to be casual as fuck. The bulk of the episode, however, deals with an officer planting evidence. It moves quickly, and bounces from event to event quite often, but Simone Missick is running shit, so I've got faith in this one.
Sex and the City, but funny. Plus some male perspective. Minus a fourth wall. BET+ is starting strong with this one.
Poor country bumpkins just trying to live their best lives. Sidenote: It's created and written by Emily Spivey. You should pay attention to everything that mad genius does if you know what's good for you!
Mike is Bob now. He makes socks. And has heart attacks. And falls for his nurse. She is not called Abby, and isn't one with humor, but she's still a good time. It's cute and laugh-track-y. Give it a shot.
Comedy shorts, packaged together in a half hour. It's TripTank, but with some live action. And not cancelled! So, that's a plus.
Netflix turning TV on it's head once again, this is kind of a wild one. It's a crime procedural anthology series, crossing Europe in four acts. Each location (France, Germany, Spain, and the UK) gets three episodes to tell their respective tales, all in the predominant local languages. I, myself, only watched the first UK episode (because I'm uncultured swine and choosing the non-subtitled option was easier), but David Tennant managed to make me interested in all the rest. He carries the episode through while only saying the same two words most of the time. It's an eerie, uncomfortable ride in an interrogation room in which the series' writers cleverly drop plot points in the police investigators questions.
Finally, some good scary shit this month! Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, and Aasif Mandvi Scooby-Doo their way around cases of either insanity or good ol' fashioned demonic possession. Benjamin Linus is up in there too, being creepy as ever.
A reboot of the classic film, completely written and directed by women, about women finding their voices and places in today's world. Jill Scott and Ryan Michelle Bathe are great, sure... BUT MICHELLE BUTEAU, THOUGH. She is my everything. Watch it, y'all. You won't be mad.
Good Talk with Anthony Jeselnik
Anthony Jeselnik, with his trademark deadpan and ego, has a roundtable discussion with himself and one other comedian.
Confession: Anthony Anderson drives me insane. Honestly, he's probably the only reason I really disliked black-ish. So, a prequel with Tracee Ellis Ross telling the tale? Sign me up.
This series follows Tracee's Rainbow Johnson as a mixed-race child growing up in post-hippie commune 1980's.
A quarter-hour reboot of the 1987 film. Starring super-d.i.l.f. Hayes MacArthur, it's on Vudu and therefor totally free, so not a whole lot to commit to. Give it a try.
Here's hoping they manage to squeeze in a shirtless scene every episode (that will hopefully not involve poop every time).
Extremely depressing (but well done) true crime examination of a Louisiana parish with a myriad of unsolved cases of murdered women.
If Jessica Jones was a comedy.
The dramatized true story of a serial rapist and the investigation into catching him. It starts off with what happens when men lead the investigation and, shock and awe, fuck it up royally. Then Merritt Wever and Toni Collette run the rest of the show and it's as amazing as Toni's car. (You'll see. Shit is nuts.)
Anyway, if Netflix knows what's good for them, they'll throw as much money as they can at these women and turn this limited series into an ongoing one because they are the buddy cops TV has been frothing at the mouth for for years.
A rotoscoped existential crisis, with some schizophrenia mixed in to boot. It's pretty fucking magical, y'all.
Meh:
A Little Late with Lilly Singh
Fuck yes to more women running late night. I'm all for it and, therefor, Lilly Singh's voice is a welcomed one. However, it just feels like the other piece of way-too-excited-about-everything bread sandwiching Seth Meyers with Jimmy Fallon.
I'm sticking with Seth, to be honest.
Patricia Heaton is part of a brand new group of internal medicine residents (even though she's old [#plot]), along with Lucas Neff (with a buzz cut), Sabrina Jalees (lol, do y'all remember her super awkward orgasm on Transparent?), and some other guy who's supposed to be cute (I guess?). Ito Aghayere's in charge of all those suckers, she's the bad cop to Kyle MacLachlan's good cop, but she's a good time nonetheless.
Allison Tolman is a Long Island police chief who finds a young girl, with no memories, at a crash site. Spoiler alert: she's probably an alien. Other aliens and/or men in black are fucking shit up trying to get the girl back.
I wanted to like this one, but it's got a bad case of boring. Though, Allison Tolman can do no wrong, so I'm gonna keep watching (with fingers crossed).
For folks into edutainment, who don't find Emma Stone's voice to be nails on a chalkboard.
A drunk widower stumbles into a choir practice ('cause... why wouldn't that happen?) and ends up Sister Mary Clarence-ing them. If you can get past the ridiculous premise, there are some good laughs to be had. Plus there's Tymberlee Hill. No one can legally put her on a Don't Watch list. Period.
Ryan Murphy's Netflix takeover has officially begun. Evan Hansen is now a high schooler obsessed with becoming President of the United States. And I mean obsessed. There's a nice little trigger warning at the top of the show, for anyone who struggles with mental health. So, watch out, every human on the planet, this series might make you uncomfortable. It could be the narcissistic need for greatness, women living only to better men, the suicide based presumably on closeted homosexuality (or maybe bisexuality... I'm not gonna keep watching, so you'll have to find out on your own, dear reader), Zoey Deutch doing her best Gypsy Rose Blanchard impersonation, or quite possibly it's just the close look at ridiculously rich white kids debating inequality. But, yeah, no matter what, something's probably gonna rub you the wrong way.
Personally, I'm still exhausted from 2016. Plus, AHS: Cult was a big let-down, so I'm of the mind that Ryan Murphy and politics should stop mixing. With what everyone in the US, and abroad, is actually dealing with in this day and age, satirizing it and putting it back in high school just feels foolish.
Jesus cut his hair (sad face) and is the brilliant FBI profiler son of a mass murdering Michael Sheen. Too bad they fired his ass, though, so he's now stuck working for the NYPD and he's gotta deal with daddy-o more than he'd like to. Plus, he's got the Will Graham thing going on where he can see from the killer's perspective. It's basically a Hannibal redux, so maybe just binge that on Amazon instead of watching this Fox shit. No matter how pretty Jesus is.
A disgraced New York City councilman went viral in a drunken arrest video. So, naturally, he becomes a citizenship tutor for immigrants instead. It's not terrible, but it's not great.
Poppy Liu and Joel Kim Booster for the win, though.
Another widower (they're trending this month, I guess) and father of two teenage girls, 1 year into unplanned singledom, is ready to date again. Because he can't cook. Much to his own surprise, he is eligible as fuck. Which... I mean, he's not ugly... but he's just all forehead and teeth. He's a good dad who can hold down a job, though. And apparently the widower thing is... sexy?
I don't know, y'all. It's funny-ish. A bit more dramatic than funny. I'll give it a couple more episodes and then decide for sure.
A dramatization of the Wu-Tang Clan's beginnings. There's more than enough (maybe too much?) grit to go 'round, but the highlights of the series are the musical moments, which unfortunately only amount to brief interludes.
Don't Watch This Shit:
A courtroom dramz with absolutely no quirk. Just full-on depressing drama with an unlikable character at the forefront. Stick with All Rise, folks.
MTV thought, "How can we do a poor Catfish photocopy, but make it way more stalker-ish?"
The trailer made me think "Hmm... Lost meets Clue, I guess? It could be good." So, I gave it a fair shot. Ten folks wake up on a deserted island, all with amnesia. Then the love connection happened, quickly followed by the attempted rape, and then the... shark attack. All within, like, 10 fucking minutes. That was when I Googled reviews and found that it gets so much worse that it wasn't even worth finishing the first episode. Hard. Pass.
Honorable Mention:
Premiering on World Suicide Prevention Day, this absolutely gut-wrenching documentary follows a family on a walkabout, retracing steps taken with their lost brother, son, and friend who took his own life thirteen years earlier.
If you or someone you know needs support, resources are available at evelynmovie.com.
Hello, Privilege. It's Me, Chelsea
Chelsea Handler, the self-aware beneficiary of white privilege, sets out to find out how to be a better white person to people of color. It's a poignant question, and this documentary provides some powerful answers, but barely scratches the surface of the problem at hand. It's worth a watch, nonetheless.
First of all, if you haven't seen all of Steven Universe, the fuck are you doing with your life? Second of all, don't worry if you haven't 'cause they recap it in cute musical numbers at the beginning of this lovely movie (that I sincerely hope does not serve as a series finale). Either way, go. Watch. Now.
The anatomy of a serial rapist, the painful details of his crimes, and why it took so fucking long to become public knowledge. Also why it's taking so long, still, to punish him. (The criminal trial, originally set for the 9th of this month, has been pushed back to January 6, 2020.)
Quit Watching This Shit:
White dude who doesn't give a shit about anything gets real old, real quick.