What's To Watch? - Apr 14-20 - Farewell Tours, Future Threats, and Echoes

 

     Shows bring new characters into our lives, and when they're particularly successful at it, enough of them become endearing that the finale is likely to be sad, no matter how gracefully they stick the landing.  Some manage to do it by leaving the story open enough that we can at least pretend this isn't the last time we'll see them. Some manage to provide a complete enough ending that it's satisfying. For this latter case, I'd offer the finales for both Six Feet Under and The Good Place as examples - particularly the latter.
     It occurred to me as I was starting to put this week's piece together, that we're heading for perhaps a few too many goodbyes near the end of May.
     At the very end, on May 31st, we'll be leaving Ted Lasso (Apple TV+) and friends behind. Being a show built around someone who transforms the world with a selfless honesty and optimistic positivity, perhaps it's best that the last of the anticipated tearful trio (always a chance I'm forgetting someone else) will be in the hands of Team Lasso.
     As for the other two sets of characters...

      Arriving today on Amazon Prime is the fifth and final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. We've been following Midge, her family, friends, and various associates from 1958 into the start of the '60s, as she embarks on a life-changing career path she fell into only because of her husband's dreams, her natural talents and quick wit. While the pandemic-shot fourth season was disrupted, delayed, a bit disheveled, (and perhaps a touch too Forrest Gumpish in trying to tie her to events), I'm hopeful that they'll have pulled it well together for this final run.

     We're getting the first three episodes today, which as best I can tell as of this writing will be one third of a nine-episode farewell season. After (relatively) flooding us with new episodes today, the better to get us back up to speed, it'll be one each Friday through to the finale on May 26th.

     This Sunday, the 16th, another much-enjoyed show begins its fourth, and also final, season over on HBO. In this case it's the Bill Hader-starring comedy drama about dysfunctional human and gifted hitman Barry Berkman, who is trying to reinvent himself as an actor. It's Barry. Here's the trailer for the new season.

     I had been a fan of Hader's from his years with Saturday Night Live, where he would disappear into his impersonations and original characters, making him a marvelous utility player. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy, but often uncomfortable in his own skin.
     Co-created with Alec Berg, Barry has also brought us a wonderful mix of characters, including Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root), NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), and Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler).
    As with the previous three seasons, the fourth will consist of eight episodes. We'll get the opening two this Sunday, then one per week thereafter, with the finale on May 28th. My simple emotional nature hopes for as happy a state as possible for some of the main players, but I honestly don't know quite what to expect... which is both good and apt for this unusual series.

    My opening with thoughts of finales certainly doesn't mean I'm in any rush to reach the end of these, nor that I'm speeding to compose epitaphs. I think I'm mostly doing it in order to help remind myself to savor what's coming. Also, seeing three much-enjoyed series scheduled to end within the final six days of a month had to get my attention. At the moment I expect that all three series will be ones I'll be revisiting, as a least two of them join the virtual stack of comfort videos.

     Meanwhile, a friend's recommendation reminded me of one of the many (many) items I'd added to one of my Watch queues, but hadn't gotten to. This one had arrived on Netflix at nearly the end of March. An eight-episode comedy series starring Rob Lowe and his son John Owen Lowe, playing a charismatic, world-famous father and the son who grew up in his father's shadow.
     In this case, the elder Lowe plays Ellis Dragon, eccentric and brilliant founder and CEO of a biotechnology company,  with John playing Jackson Dragon. Father and son are estranged as the series opens, largely due to the death of Ellis' wife/Jackson's mother some months earlier. Not only had she been a bridge and balance between the father and son, but Ellis had become markedly less stable following his wife's death.
     Largely a workplace comedy, it's Unstable.

     The father & son Lowes co-created the show with Victor Fresco (a television writer who also created Better Off Ted and The Santa Clarita Diet, two shows I enjoyed and would have watched more of had they not ultimately been canceled by ABC and Netflix, respectively.)
     The eight episodes, running between approximately 20-26 minutes each, was a fairly easy and natural binge. It's too early to have any word on a renewal for a second season, but if we get one I'll give it a look.

     Way back near the end of January, one of the then about-to-begin series I mentioned was The Ark. A twelve-episode series on Syfy, set roughly a century from now, involving a colonization mission to another star system. Approximately one year out from their destination a disaster kills most of the crew

whose skillsets were specific to maintaining and operating the ship. Suddenly, the colonists - who were selected for their expertise in matters vital to establishing and maintaining a settlement once they'd arrived - are awakened to find a state of emergency they're not immediately equipped to deal with, and almost no time in which to solve the problems necessary to both stay on course and survive.
     I've yet to watch a single episode of the series,

in part because there's been so much else bidding for my time, in part because these series are too often canceled, unfinished, and in part because the early reaction to it was generally so negative - everything from the writing and the story to the characters and effects.
     As something made for Syfy, the current pipeline is that episodes air Wednesday on Syfy and stream starting the following day over on Peacock. This is all part of the library-building for that streamer. So, I also knew it was accumulating there, which left it all the more comfortably set aside. I'd all but forgotten about it.
     For whatever reasons - presumably it's been at least modestly successful, or has a strong enough champion to give it more time to build an audience - this week, one week out from next week's season finale - it was given a green light for season two. So, we know that it at least has legs. By this time next week all twelve episodes of season one will be in place over on Peacock - the first eleven are already there.  Here's the trailer

    Should I get around to starting to watch it, I'll make mention of it. If you've watched any of it and want to offer a recommendation or warning, please feel free to.

    As we're over on Peacock, I'll note that today Cocaine Bear begins streaming there as an exclusive. Up until now it was a rental, a digital purchase, or in the hands of pirates. As noted three weeks back, I enjoyed it. A somewhat dark, violent comedy, with a mix of likeable characters -- including the child performers.
     Also over there, starting next Thursday (the 20th), a new, surreal, sci-fi drama series launches. It sets a nun up against an advanced Artificial Intelligence called Mrs. Davis

     The series stars Betty Gilpin as Simone, the tech-battling nun, Jake McDorman as Wiley, an ex-boyfriend of Simone's who has her back, and Margot Martindale (who's coincidentally also over in Cocaine Bear) as her Mother Superior. The cast also includes David Arquette, and Katja Herbers, who's also one of the three leads in a CBS/Paramount+ favorite of mine: Evil.
     Much as they did with launching the wonderful Poker Face, Peacock will be delivering the first four episodes on the 20th, then one per week each Thursday. Information's a little garbled as to whether this will have eight episodes or ten; info is that it was originally given a ten-episode order, but the official line seems to be that it'll be eight.

    Likely an odd item to end on, but it's where the path took me this week.
    A couple things mid-week reminded me of eras in the entertainment world that have come and gone. Many of them are far more appreciated by me decades in hindsight than they ever were in their day. A recent link showed me how the final, sad, corrupted vestiges of the once honored showbiz fraternity and philanthropic society, The Friars Club, were recently padlocked in New York after a long, hard decline.
     Later that same day, while - quite separately - looking through Tubi for some free-to-all items to possibly point out, I happened across a block of five of their more classic roasts, from roughly 1968 to 1971. (There seems to be at least one discrepancy in the mix, so the Milton Berle on referenced there as 1969 may have been from 1967 -- for all the difference that's going to make to anyone now.) They are there under The Classic Friar's Club Roasts. I started to give the first one a look, a 1968 roast emceed by Alan King, where the guest of honor was Johnny Carson. This was roughly a year after Johnny staged his own strike against NBC in a move that no only brought him more money but more control.
     The farther under the age of 50 one is likely the less interesting any of this would be, but I'm finding it of interest. Certainly, in large part, because of the people empaneled, including the likes of Groucho Marx, Steve Allen, Dick Cavett, Flip Wilson, and Don Rickles, among others. Also, because these proceedings stand in stark contrast to what the roasts had descended to be by the late '90s and into the new century, when they were broadcast on Comedy Central, and had become vicious, unsavory, tear-downs. Very different spirit and energy.

     That's all the time I have this week. Another too busy Friday between me and a potentially over-booked weekend for me, when I very much should be getting some rest instead... but likely won't. I hope you find something of interest in the mix above, and you come back here next Friday. - Mike