What's To Watch? - June 2-8 - A Big Bite of the Apple, and the Future of TV

 

     Back in the middle of April I noted that the final week of May would see me bidding farewell to several sets of variously endeared characters, as several series would have their finales. So it was, that since last time we got together, we've seen the close of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime) a week ago today, Barry (HBO) this past Sunday, and Ted Lasso (Apple tv+) no Wednesday, the fuinal day of May.

     Maisel went out on good notes, with the final season stretching into the future for most of the characters, emphasizing life lessons learned, growth, and the comfort of hard-forged friendship returning to provide comforts late in life. That's a good thing to achieve. Across its five, uneven, seasons, 43 episodes, beginning in 2017, Midge, Suzy, Abe, and many of the other characters became dear to me, and I'll inevitably get back around to rewatching it to take it in more as a complete, imperfect package. I'll never know for sure how much other things - the pandemic in particular - altered the trajectory of the show - it certainly did the timing, and working through the necessary protocols really compromised season four, leaving season five's nine episodes to do their best to tell the remaining key parts of the story and let us have our farewells. We come to care for characters, and so don't want to say goodbye, so some sense of rushed doings is nearly inevitable.

   With Barry, I'd let most of the fourth, final season build up, and while moving through it I quickly realized I'd allowed completely unrealistic, vague expectations creep in concerning any notions of happy endings. The show's ultimately about damaged people, while catching glimpses of the children buried beneath the scars. With so much extreme action so casually mixed in, I compartmentalized and connected with the child-like cores of some of the characters, and blurrily wished, in denial of too much, for happy resolutions that were not in the cards. Still, an excellent series, a nice showcase for some solid performances, and I'll be interested to see what's next for several of them, including (of course) the show's star and co-creator, Bill Hader.
     Ted Lasso being the last of this trio of shows to switch off the lights is a nice touch.

     A warm, aspirational series, of the three this is the one I'm most definitely going to be revisiting both to better appreciate the writing and performances, and as a sheer comfort. (It joins The Good Place as a re-bingeable, comfort show of the past less than eight years. Shows we really needed when they came along.)  The story of an American football coach being hired to travel to the U.K. and coach a team in a game he had zero background in, complete with an almost surreal, folksy style, seemed like such an unlikely basis for a show I'd even watch, much less come to hold so dear. The power of an honest, optimistic force in the world, gradually realigning the world around him for the better... it's a warm and very worthy fantasy. And, yes, sure, it's a fantasy, but one of reinvention, rebirth, and positivity that we'd be so much better off for if we tried each day to embrace it. As I noted when I finally got to try the show out some months ago, one of the oddest things was when I suddenly became aware of my own face, realizing that I'd been sitting there, watching it alone, smiling enough that my face was feeling the unnatural strain of it.

     Ted Lasso gives me the ideal jumping point to an emphasis on some of what's on Apple tv+.
     A friend had, months ago, given me an access to the show, along with some other Apple fare such as the first (and so far only) season of the very-different sci-fi drama Severence. (Which was every bit as intriguing as I'd heard.)
      The access was a limited time situation, but I was very grateful for it. It ended suddenly just after episode four of this final season of Lasso, so I had hit a pause on the show. The timing proved interesting, as while I was avoiding any spoilers, I couldn't help catching some complaints coming from various quarters about the tone of this last season, with typically over-the-top pronouncements from some that the show had fallen apart. Happily, these people turn out to have been full of shit. But, hey, it's the Internet! Sure, some darker themes were part of the mix, but they were pretty essential parts of the story. The show was never, at least for me, a laugh out loud comedy, but different people process things differently. Anyway, I hope that at least some of those mistaken fans saw the light as the season proceeded.
     This past, holiday-extended, weekend saw me sign up for a free trial week of Apple tv+ (free for 7 days, then $6.99/month), and catching up on Ted Lasso was the first stop, taking me through the penultimate episode, then just waiting for the mid-week finale.
     In a move that likely underscores how out of balance my life is, I then proceeded to go through the following as I moved through the weekend and into this week:
     One of the Apple shows I'd mentally bookmarked back in 2021, after hearing an NPR interview that centered on the show, was Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio's musical comedy series Schmiggadoon.
 

    Season one had aired back in summer of 2021, and season two had just finished in early May - six episodes each. Starring Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong (and an excellent cast, many of whom stuck around for the second season as new characters) as a couple of NYC doctors whose romantic journey stagnates, so they go on a backpacking trip in the hopes that the shared experience will rekindle their spark. They get lost, but then find a small, stone bridge leading to a strange, little village of mostly odd, decidedly very old-timey (style, dress, tech and attitudes) people, and that the place is under some enchantment such that people break into choreographed musical numbers over just about anything. This initially delights Melissa (Strong), who is a fan of musicals, while creeping out and repelling Josh (Key) who is not. This escalates when they discover that they're trapped there until they've met some unspecified requirement of having found "true love."
     Here's the trailer for the first season of Schmiggadoon

     It's a fun, tight, six episodes, centered on rural-themed musicals of the '40s and '50s in overall style. The second season continues Melissa and Josh's story, leading to a decided different, urban-themed musical experience, drawing on a blend of Cabaret, Chicago, Sweeney Todd, Annie, Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar.
     The two seasons - again, twelve episodes total - constitute a fun pair of experiences and a complete story arc for our couple. It really doesn't call for more of their story. I suppose they could come back to do a third season, though I would hope that they make sure they have a good character-driven story reason for it, and not just because they have a longer list of musicals they want to riff on. I mean, I'd watch it, but I live in some small fear that they'd go into Hamilton territory, and I seem to be part of a small minority who really, really hates the music (style) in that show.

     I also took in all episodes to date at the time of a science fiction dystopia series set at some uncertain point in a possible future. One in which all pre-disaster history is not simply lost, but pretty obviously has been actively scrubbed and suppressed. The whole of the human world appears to be just a little over 10,100 people, all living in a multi-tiered, underground complex which is all the world they or their parents ever knew. New births - including the ability to try for it - are licensed, with birth control devices implanted as a default. Society has a sort of ultra-patriotic, dogmatic feel to it -- really a very religious-level mentality about it, such that one is not meant to question. It's openly espoused that no one knows who built the facility that they live in, no one knows the origins and nature of the disaster that made the outside world of the surface above into a toxic, unlivable place, and no one even knows anything of the pre-disaster world.
     Obviously, someone, somewhere, knows more about it, but such knowledge is officially suppressed, and anything that might link back to those times has been scrubbed away. Any artifacts of that nature are referenced as relics, and they're illegal to possess. There are other, oddly-specific restrictions, which we're still finding out about as the show unfolds.
     Some 140 years ago there was some sort of rebellion, with the rebels trying to break the seals of the facility, which it's accepted would have killed everyone. The rebellion was put down, and under The Pact everyone is doing their assigned part to keep everything running.
     The name of the place, and the show, is Silo.

     This (first) season will be ten episodes, with number 6 arriving today. The season will wrap June 30th.

     Also in the science fiction (or at least sci-fi) vein, I caught the first season of Invasion.

     A show with international settings, and a title that pretty much puts it out there, I thought it overall handled the ten-episode first season well enough, but many others who didn't accept that meaningfully introducing so many characters on different continents, and having us get to know more about them in the run-up to what they'll ultimately be facing, takes time. Some people are looking for a movie, not a series, or they want a very obvious invasion to happen very early on, and for us to learn about the characters in whatever bunkers, foxhole or on whatever battlefields they'll be on. I'd suggest that it's better taken in at a more aggressive pace, and can understand why people who were watching it from week to week would have been disappointed in how so much of the first season is set-up.
     The first season ran from late October into December, with a second season ordered two days before the season finale. It's supposed to be arriving sometime this summer, but no one seems to know.
     Billed as a comedy, Irish actor and comedian Chris O'Dowd stars in the ten-episode first season of a show set in the small town of Deerfield, where a mysterious, coin-operated machine - Morpho complete with a blue butterfly motif - appears in the town's market, a machine that claims to predict the "life potential" of the user, printing it in one or two words on a card. Understandably, some seem very direct, others more cryptic, and soon the majority of the town - particularly the adults - are questioning their careers and relationships, in some cases abandoning one or both for a new horizon.
     O'Dowd plays Dusty, a history teacher who coincidentally hits his 40th birthday the same day the machine appears, so he's already being confronted with his own existential crisis.
     Based on the book by M.O. Walsh, it's The Big Door Prize

    This is a show where the mounting mystery of the Morpho machine (including a change-up at the of the season) is a potential weakness, as there may not be a strong pay-off for those waiting for the From Where, How and Why of the devices.  While I'm hoping there's some meat on those bones, the broader (and narrower, individual) question of life's meaning is the more important focus.
    The show had a second season greenlit halfway through it's run, but for now with pretty much all domestic production stalled by the writers' strike, we'll have to see about the timing. Seeing it sometime in 2024 is still possible, but likely optimistic.

     So far I'm less than thrilled with how much my Smart TV and the Apple tv+ app seem to be at war with each other, but I'll likely press on to explore what the streamer has to offer, and maybe in the meantime see if I have better luck installing on a different device or through a different bit of tech like a firestick.

     While making a tub of pasta salad, pre-dawn on Memorial Day, I listened to an episode of NPR's Fresh Air, on the Hollywood Writer's Strike and the Future of TV. It's a reasonably worthwhile 44 minutes, laying out not only the immediate issues of the strike itself, but a good contrast between how everything worked around the time of the previous strike versus the changes in the media landscape of the past fifteen years. Along with that, it hits changes that were already well in play since at least last year. Also, how so much, and broader, negotiations with other unions are right around the corner.
     This may be a long strike, and even in the absence of a strike most of us who've become used to the media landscape of the past several years have a great deal of recalibration of our expectations to make, as the arguments are strong that the era of Peak Television was over by the close of last year. Broadly, we've gotten used to more and more, and the idea of streamers with ever-growing inventories of shows. The dynamics for that have passed, as that model depended on money being pumped in without any demand for short-term profits. Now that the investors are demanding the profits, the streamers' accounting departments have been looking more closely at the realities of the costs of maintaining a huge library when so many people need to be paid for their work even being made available, the writers demanding more money and better terms, others involved in the process approaching their own contract negotiations, streamers in general looking at losing customers rather than aggressively adding them, and the un-likelihood at those who have been having money thrown at them for new content will suddenly, graciously say they're being paid too much and turn more of it back to be spread around... it'll be interesting to see what the new normal will be once deals have been made.
     Also - at least when it comes to what we think of as scripted shows - we will need to adjust our sights downward. Lamentably, but predictably, cheap-to-produce "reality" tv is going to become more prevalent again, much as it did during and immediately after the 2007-'08 strike. It will be up to us to potentially ignore it well enough to keep it from swelling to fill space, but obviously there are millions of people who eat that sort of thing up.

     That's enough for this week. I had a few others lined up, but I'm trying to control the length of these pieces, and since most of what I'm hitting here is streaming content - and the rising expectation is that the streaming services are starting to slow down on what they're rolling out - it'll keep for another week.
Until then (at least), take care! - Mike