Between multiple trips, a long summer cold (okay, it's not quite summer yet), and a busy work schedule, I haven't had a lot of time for blogging, but there also hasn't been a whole lot new to say about television, I don't think. Still, in that time there have been a few streaming shows to check in on, so let's do that:
I'm still not feeling Daredevil ... in fact, far less so in the second season than in the first, which seems to be the consensus of most of my friends, even most of those who liked first season more than I did. Now, part of this -- especially since the main exceptions here are some diehard Daredevil comics fans -- may be that, as I've said before, Daredevil was never the main focus of my comics fandom. Certainly Frank Miller's run was on my radar, but I got into comics more for the weirdness (Dr Strange, Steranko's SHIELD covers, "imaginary stories" and red Kryptonite) than the grimness). Furthermore, I never liked the Punisher, and I was a regular comics reader when he first achieved his fame and got his first solo series, so I was the demographic that was supposed to like him.
Anyway. So I just haven't finished the second season of Daredevil, and who knows if I will.
Elsewhere on Netflix, Flaked was a big disappointment, a big frustration. Will Arnett is great on Arrested Development and Bojack Horseman, and I actually watched both Up All Night and Running Wilde. But this show ... if you haven't seen any of it, Flaked is about an alcoholic in recovery who is a sort of unofficial community leader in his LA neighborhood despite clearly and consistently acting in his own self-interest all the time.
Arnett developed it with Mitch Hurwitz, but somehow Hurwitz forgot one of the key lessons of Arrested Development, and Arnett forgot one of the key lessons of having been married to Amy Poehler: women are funny too, for Christ's sake. The women in Flaked are plot devices at best, and most of the women who appear don't even manage to have that much of an impact. Both plot and laughs are reserved for the men. I was going to say that none of the women have discernible personalities, but I suppose it's more true -- and more damning -- to say that the stronger and more evident their personality is, the crazier they come across, and the more of a nuisance they are to Arnett's character.
Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
Arnett's Chip is so unlikable that although the plot developments later in the series do make things much more interesting, they don't do anything to redeem him or make him more interesting, especially since they feed into the above problem. That said, some of the writing is strong enough, and some of the performances strong enough -- especially the fantastic George Basil as Cooler -- that it turns into one of the shows where the flaws just frustrate the shit out of you because the good things make you want to keep watching. This is where the binge-watch is handy, because you can just power through it on a Saturday afternoon and it doesn't feel like a heavy time investment.
When Flaked came out, some column by some fiftysomething -- judging by the photo that runs by his byline, so he may be a sixtysomething if it's not a recent photo -- bitched that it was yet another sitcom about yet another rich young kid, which is eyeroll-inducing since a) Arnett was 45 when the show premiered, b) his character is perpetually broke and lives in a store owned by his ex-father-in-law, c) class conflict between the broke residents of the neighborhood and the wealthy developers who want to tear the store and other buildings down is actually a major theme of the show. I think "rich young kid" was a kind of code for "unmarried person without children, in southern California," especially since the other shows the columnist namechecked were Togetherness (in which only one of the four leads is rich, and he's only rich in the second season), You're The Worst (one of the characters has a nice house, but That's Television For You, the characters are pretty clearly middle class), and Love.
Love is another Netflix show, and it's one of my favorites in a while, though I definitely understand why it wouldn't be for everyone. For one thing, both of the leads are total messes, and each can be a total asshole at times.
Love is about Mickey (the great Gillian Jacobs) and Gus (co-creator Paul Rust), who are both go through break-ups from terrible relationships in the first episode and meet at the end of that episode. It's a long time before they actually go out on a date, though -- several episodes, despite Gus's obvious interest in Mickey. There are various reasons for that, but it immediately sets the show apart as very different from Mad About You or A to Z or something -- this is not about love at first sight.
Like I said, they're both messes. Mickey has drug and alcohol problems. Gus is a "nice guy" with a lot of the baggage that self-identified nice guys can bring to the table -- namely that he's not actually that nice when you come down to it, and can be a bully. They're each pretty judgmental about the other -- and they don't have a whole lot in common. There's definitely something there between them, but at the same time, after a while you're not sure whether you're really rooting for them to get together or not or if it's going to be spectacularly unhealthy.
I'm probably not making a great case for it, but you can't sum up the tone of a thing. For me, the show works terrifically. Each character has just enough likable moments for their flaws to feel like things they can overcome rather than indications that they're simply toxic people. It's a tough balance to hit, and maybe I watch enough TV to appreciate that balance.
Another reason to watch is Claudia O'Doherty as Mickey's new roommate Bertie. I don't know what she's done in the past, but I have to imagine she's going to do a lot in the years to come, because she's hilarious.
Moving on from Netflix to Hulu, we have the weird situation of The Mindy Project.
What the fuck happened here?
This is a show that has never been able to sit still for very long. Cast members have come and gone on a regular basis as the show has been constantly reconceived -- remember when Anna Camp was Mindy's best friend? When Stephen Tobolowsky was introduced midway through first season and written out as soon as second season started? The weird ways Adam Pally has come and gone from the show?
But having Mindy and Danny break up and move on via montage only to start building a plot where a different older and more conservative co-worker shows an interest in Mindy? What on Earth is the point?
If Chris Messina has moved on to another show and Mindy Kaling just really likes the dynamic of Mindy Lahiri with an older and more conservative love interest, there would be less clumsy ways of handling it. The only clumsier way of managing it would be to cast a different Italian-American from New York and have him join the practice and immediately start a bantering love-hate relationship with Mindy.
It's hard to judge the decision to have Danny and Mindy break up separately from the Mindy and Jody plot, given that one transitions almost seamlessly into the other. It's a weird choice even if it's completely one-sided and just winds up being a season of Jody pining after Mindy, just because we've been down this road before.
This has never been a consistent show, but lately my incredulity has just made it difficult to even pay attention to.
PIVOT!
On to Horace and Pete, which isn't on a streaming service but is available straight from Louis CK. This is his ten-episode series that you purchase direct from him for download or streaming, starring him, Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Alan Alda, and Jessica Lange, with a bunch of people in the supporting and guest cast.
Louie's entering the show as a drama for the Emmys, which is about right. It definitely has funny moments and moments structured like stand-up comedy, but the latter are the weakest parts, overall. Let's see if I can figure out how to sum this show up. Well, Horace and Pete's is a 100 year old bar in Brooklyn, named for its original owners, a pair of brothers. It's always been owned and run by a Horace and Pete ever since, and when we open, it's being run by Horace the 8th (Louie), Uncle Pete (Alda), and Horace's brother Pete (Buscemi). Pete is an outpatient at a mental hospital, who sees monsters and has violent fits if he doesn't take his medication; until that medication was developed, he was hospitalized for many years. Uncle Pete is a grouchy old racist asshole. Horace is devoted to keeping the bar going because it's a safe space for Pete, who has never lived anywhere else -- their apartment is up the stairs from the bar, and was also their childhood home.
Horace and Pete's sister Sylvia (Edie Falco) wants to sell the bar because Brooklyn real estate is worth so much and they can make a lot more money from selling it than they could make from a lifetime of running the place -- especially since the men are insistent on only serving Budweiser and watered-down liquor, no mixed drinks, with separate pricing for the regulars and the hipsters who come in to drink ironically at a dive bar.
So those are your initial conflicts. And those conflicts, that story, plays out satisfyingly, if also bleakly and incredibly depressingly. The story of the factors I've just described is a good one.
Furthermore, this is a show like nothing else, in that it's shot like a play, complete with an intermission. I know that Amy Sedaris's dialogue in the last episode was improvised -- I don't know how common that was.
The weak parts of Horace and Pete fall largely into two areas:
The stand-up-ish bullshit: the bar is populated by barflies whose chatter about current events is frankly not much different from stand-up rants, but which takes a distinctly conservative meatheaded position. Sure, I'm sure this is true to what you hear at bars like this, but it's not like "women who get abortions are all going to hell, and so are the fetuses" is a part of the conversation that's missing from television. Between this show and Louie, Louis CK stands back and gives these guys the mike without challenging them more often than you'd expect for someone who seems personally to be ... if not a liberal exactly, certainly not a Fox News Republican.
Every episode has a scene of these guys spewing this bullshit, and it just doesn't add anything. I would've started fast-forwarding through it, if the controls on the Roku were better.
Secondly, the characters in general can be very hard to like. They're very well-written and realistically conceived -- I understand why they're assholes and where that assholishness comes from. But watching unpleasant people be unpleasant to each other can be that much more unpleasant when it's realistic, you know? It just adds to the bleakness, especially when Horace and Sylvia both have kids, and you wonder how those kids are going to turn out when they become parents in turn, and when this cycle ends, and how far back it goes.
That said. This is a one of a kind thing in television. There is nothing you can point to and say "well, such and such did it better," because there's nothing else out there that's doing this. The last three or four episodes are powerful television, it's just a bit of a climb getting there.
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