what I'm watching

I have a very long Mad Men post and a shorter post about Galavant and Bunheads, but neither is ready to fire, so I thought I'd make a general catch-up post since there have been a lot of post-worthy events lately.

The Last Man on Earth

Boy did this go from intriguing to total shit in about forty minutes. The first half of the premiere made a fairly compelling case for "how exactly would you make a sitcom about the last person on Earth," only to introduce the last woman on Earth (and in subsequent episodes, yet more survivors). The longer this series goes on, the more it resembles some extreme form of the According to Jim/King of Queens model of Doofus Husband, Nagging Wife, a sitcom genre we should be streets ahead of by now. Phil is just fucking awful. Carol is only slightly better, and in large part because I feel bad for how terribly the show treats her. Both are one-note characters, and it's an old, tired note. Together they're a sad trombone, is what I'm saying.

Even when a second man turns up -- played by the terrific Mel Rodriguez, veteran of lamented one-and-dones Enlisted and Running Wilde -- Phil's only reaction is how this affects his sex life as the heretofore last Y-chromosome on Earth. He can't even bothered to muster up any equally shallow responses, like hey, here's someone else who can do some of the manual labor I'm shirking, or hey, here's a guy who might actually be my friend so I don't have to talk to basketballs.

What a huge disappointment. I'm sticking with it in the hopes that another twist puts us back on course, as I know a lot of people are, but I expected better from the creative team and from Will Forte.

The Americans and Justified

How fucking good is Keri Russell on The Americans? There aren't many shows I was more looking forward to than this, and it has not disappointed. K-Russ is aces, and this may be her strongest season. I'd be ready to assume hers will be the best performance of the year in the Actress - Drama category, if I weren't expecting great things for Elisabeth Moss in Mad Men's final round.

Another Emmy contender is Joelle Carter on Justified. The series has struggled since the end of the second season -- the Bennett family's season -- to come up with an antagonist as compelling as Mags, which has made a lot of subsequent seasons uneven, but knowing this is the last season freed them up to focus on the show's backbone: the relationships among Raylan, Boyd, and Ava. Sure, everything and everybody else serves only as a distraction from that backbone, but because it's the final season and we're expecting it to all come to a head instead of Raylan and Boyd continuing to postpone their last draw, distraction isn't a bad thing.

This is the part of the season where I start worrying for the cast. Will Joelle Carter wind up the wife on some southern-fried variant of the Doofus Husband, Nagging Wife sitcom? Will she be some Disney kid's mom on some ABC Family show? Please somebody give this woman another cable drama role.

Jere Burns has a role in Steve and Nancy Carrell's Angie Tribeca, starring Rashida Jones, which sounds good - I don't know how big a role, of course. I've been a JB fan since Max Headroom and especially Dear John (and subsequently in Something So Right, Good Morning Miami, etc etc).

The Flash

Things are shaping up, but I hate the idea of Golden Glider's power being a gun that turns people into gold. Stay home, turn golf balls into gold, and sell them and buy better powers.

Community

Something has seemed a little tonally off - I don't know how much of the writing staff made the leap to Yahoo, but it could easily just be the lack of Troy and Shirley - but every second of Gillian Jacobs this season has been amazing. Britta seems a little weirder now.

Broad City

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope Kelly Ripa is nominated for an Emmy. Broad City was one of the best shows so far this year, and Ripa's episode is one of those absolutely perfect episodes that immediately goes to the TV Hall of Fame.

iZombie

Off to a pretty swell start. Right from the first few minutes it's more engaging than the superhero shows, and that Rob Thomas sense of fun is there front and center. Couldn't be more pleased with this.