The Summer of Suck 2: TV Shows (Wait, A Sequel? Noooo!)
#SummerRoundup #TV #SummerofSuck
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| Enjoy This Picture Because You Probably Didn't Enjoy TV This Summer |
Oh, TV. TV, my dear, sweet long-suffering bride. Where as film is my
mistress that provides me with seasonal dalliances, you are the one I
really love as of late. I thank you for realizing that an
entertainment-junkie like myself has, uh... certain needs. You’ve
never said anything about me and this torrid affair that movies and I
are having, the late-night premieres, sneaking out to see movies in
dark, dank rooms, always coming home with buttery hands and sticky
shoes smelling of a certain audience musk, but I know that deep down
inside you know how much I respect you. And neither you nor film have
ever even said a thing about my not-so-secret flirtations with your
mother, novels. So many long nights working my fingers to the bone,
licking them to make sure I can properly turn yellowed pages, or
scrolling up touchscreens (making sure I touch the screen just right
so as not to resize the type and suddenly make it too big or too
small; damn I hate that). Oh yes, novels/novellas are old but oh boy
does she still get the job done for me. She’s always ready and
willing to spread wide and open those tantalizing pages. Ooo, yeah.
Even still, with all of the options my wandering eye has, I come back
to you often, TV. In fact, on a weekly basis. Our love affair is
epic. Or at least episodic. One day they may write about us as two
great lovers. And when they do, hopefully their words will be kind
and not include this summer of 2017 because, girl, I don’t know
what duh hell you was thinkin’!
Come on, readers, y’all know you liked that. It bothered you in
a... good way. Pretty sure I’mma have you all spanking your books
as you read them, ya bunch uh nasty freaks. That’s right, people,
as the title of this post says, it is now time for us to look at the
TV shows that came on this summer of 2017 during the Summer of Suck.
If you missed it, I already ran through (in an overly long post) all
of the films of the season from Guardians of the Galaxy to IT, as
well as through some of the songs from this abnormally crappy summer
of entertainment. There, I concluded that when we look back on this
summer of movies we will think that most of the films that came out
this year were highly overrated and didn’t live up to even the
lower standards that the industry has set in the last ten years since
the previous box-office slump. The more I consider the lack of really
good movies, the more I am inclined to cement that sentiment. Stuff
just wasn’t good. So then, what expectations did I have for summer
TV? Well, not many. In fact, I rarely ever have high expectations for
summer programming as the system has, for many years, been designed
to pile out the programming that networks didn’t feel people would
want to see 22 episodes of but that they had already foolishly
ordered straight-to-series and mildly invested in. Yet, somehow, even
with the already pre-programmed lower expectations (shout out to the
defunct Mad TV), I found myself bored out of my mind with some of
this programming. This summer TV was worse than that time that you
went to your first ever Bar Mitzvah only to realize that there was no
actual bar, just a bunch of Jewish people sitting around listening to
some young boy stammer-read in some dead foreign language from, like,
a ba-thousand years ago, and who everybody swears is a man now even
though he still hasn’t been able to grow-in his mustache enough to
make it look less like the butt hairs of a donkey. Just.
Disappointing. Congratulations, 2017 TV, you’ve managed to
underwhelm me even more than I could ever have anticipated. Sigh!
Let me also say now that just as the film season starts long before
actual summer (it starts the first week in May), so too will my
summer season shows start earlier and run later because of a show’s
general length. It may have started firmly in April but if it ends in
late May or June, then it’s a summer show to me. OK? OK.
Since I reached another conclusion in that other post about it also
being the summer of Stephen King, I will start with one of his shows.
It’s hard to say which show is my biggest disappointment for the
season as I didn’t have very many expectations for anything, but I
would have to say that Spike’s...
The Mist adaptation is probably up
there in second place, if it doesn’t take the crown itself. With
such fond memories of the film still swimming in my head, I went into
this knowing plenty would change. There are a ton of things they can
do with this idea. I thought it would be truly terrifying to see the
people struggle against what was outside and interesting to see what
sort of creatures they could come up with. What I got was not what I
would have wanted.
For starters, their interpretation of the mist is that it is just a
fear miasma... I think, which is funny because if you read my post on
the films, you would know that I felt the big failing of the new IT
was that it did not adequately capture how Pennywise is a thing that
feeds specifically off of fear and how that fear from the kids is not
just about IT but is an allegory for fear of growing up and things
changing. Here, however, the creators go full-in on the fear
narrative. But, I included that “I think” up above because that
was my theory for what I saw at the end of the season. Frankly, I
really don’t know what their original intent was and got confused
by this from the very beginning. Confusing couple of sentences,
right? Yeah. Let’s uncrap this pack—I mean, unpack this crap
show.
The show starts with the mist slowly rolling through the nearby
forest and a soldier waking up with a dog beside him. The soldier
will be one of the main characters throughout the season. We know
from the film and novella that the military does have something to do
with the mist: they created it, or know why it’s there, or know
from where it’s coming. In the movie, it actually comes from the
military base up in the nearby mountains and was semi-created by
them. The novella and movie both make it an easy appeal to the
reader/watcher: there are creepy, deadly things in the mist. Here,
however...
Back to the soldier and the dog. The soldier awakes in fatigues not
knowing anything about who he is nor how he got there nor why he’s
there. He assumes the dog is his and runs after it when it gets
frantic and runs into the mist. Yes, the mist is that close to both
him and the town at the very beginning of the show. Well, not even a
full minute after the dog disappears into the mist and he chases it
is the dog found eviscerated and splayed in a tree branch. So we all
think, oh man, something got him.
Well, the soldier somehow escapes to the nearest town where he is
arrested for talking crazy by the town chief/sheriff. The cop’s son
is a jock and has a crush on this girl whose mother is rather strict
and her father isn’t really her father but she doesn’t actually
know that. This is our main family. The girl has a best male friend
who says that he’s sexual-orientation fluid and falls in love with
the person, not the gender. He is also some weird emo/goth wiry
punch-face. I literally wanted to punch him in his Maybelline-beat
face every time he was onscreen. He’s whiny and as much as he had
going on with him and the central plot, I found him both tedious and
uninteresting.
The main plot outside of the mist is that the cop’s jock son is
accused of rape at a party by the girl, with her bi-friend supporting
this claim. They snuck out to this party with the girl’s father’s
blessing even after her strict mother said no. Now the town is mostly
against the girl and her family because she has ruined this boy’s
life with her baseless claims. Even worse, her mother, who grew up in
the town, actually had a reputation as a slut back when she was
young. Hence, why the girl’s dad is really not her father but at
least he knows that and is OK with it.
There are two bad things about this rape allegation: how you are to
perceive the townspeople, and the person who did it. From off bat, I
guessed that the girl’s friend and not the jock was the one who
raped her. It was so obvious just from the details of the story and
how he looked at her throughout the entirety of the first episode. He
was the classic loser who befriends the cute innocent girl and hopes
that she will pick him to be her man but she has eyes for another. It
only makes sense that he would rape her (in that rape, an act that
NEVER makes sense, could make sense in the show), especially after
seeing how the jock character was being played as shy and not
overbearing or arrogant like a star player would be. So, I found
myself more-so just waiting until they revealed that so that they
could get on with something else in the plot but they kept that as
one of the many controversies in the series, which literally
motivates over half of the casts’ actions as the series progresses.
If everyone had known that it was actually the outcast that did the
rape, the story would have played out much differently.
The second thing about how you are to perceive the townsfolk is, in
my opinion, settled once you hear the girl’s story and realize that
her best friend did it. Technically, and rather unfortunately, they
are right to call her and her mother out for trying to ruin the boy.
She said she passed out and couldn’t remember anything and was told
by her best friend later that the cute jock she liked was the one who
drugged and raped her. What? So you’re believing on hearsay that
you were raped? (As an aside, this is one of the things that was
wrong with the whole Bachelors in Paradise controversy, too. The
person who lodged the complaint wasn’t even there to see the
behavior but felt uncomfortable with these two adults doing stupid
things with each other. Slow down before you react). I actually
blamed her, her friend (obviously), her mother but most of all the
jock and the police. The boy’s dad is a cop, as I stated. Yet, when
the police show up to school to talk to him, he is resistant to go
until they audibly and in front of a group say that he’s being
accused of rape, which is how all his trouble starts. There were so
many things wrong with this scene for me. Why didn’t his dad come
get him? Why would they need to get him at school, rather than
waiting until he got home, then doing whatever they needed to at that
time. Why could nobody on law enforcement’s side keep this private?
And why did the boy just not go with these guys who he clearly knows
are his dad’s buddies? He acted like he had never gone to his dad’s
job for anything. The whole thing just seemed stupid and unrealistic.
With that story dominating, I looked to secondary and tertiary plots,
all of which weren’t worth a pair of gas station underwear (I just
saw these on the road this summer. I could only imagine who was
buying a non-brand pair of underwear from a gas station). You had the
religious nature zealot played by red-headed witch
American Horror Story-alum who believed that the mist came to correct
some sin against nature. She goes against the priest to see who will
lead a group of scared people in the church. This, after she got
trapped in the mist and her husband got shot by some crazed dude who
then offed himself. You had the junkie lady who returned to her
mother’s house months after the woman died. She had been so out of
sorts that she didn’t even know her mother had died, let alone went
to the funeral. She’s dealing with past trauma and murdered a guy
and thinks she can never be loved and blah blah blah. A criminal on
the run seems like it would be such a riveting story, yet fizzles out
quicker than 7-hr-old cans of pop. I stopped caring about her
storyline three episodes in, but she was a good actress though. And
hot. The soldier never really went anywhere after that amazing
opening. He never remembered anything of substance save for his name
and got into a fight with some guy posing as him. He also found
another soldier who knew who he was and was going to take him to the
base at the end and he had hooked up with the junkie woman. There was
the cop who, seduced by the nature zealot, started believing his son
had raped that girl and this was why the mist came. He was ready to
kill/sacrifice the boy and force him out into the mist but he never
really had that interesting of a character arc.
The worst part, however, was the mist itself. Remember I told you
about the dog’s evisceration? Well, that is followed by the insects
all migrating from town, then the mist arriving, then the mist
spitting up new kinds of insects that were crawling into people’s
skin and whatnot, and you’re thinking, oh man this is going to be a
cool creature feature type of show. But then about halfway through
the season, they switch things up completely and start showing
people’s greatest fears. The junkie woman actually sees her mother
in the old house and the lady invites her daughter to shoot up and
overdose for good; the priest who loses to the nature zealot sees the
four horsemen of the apocalypse; a few of the people who actually
survive, only later to die, see some kind of shadowy figure. The jock
is killed by this shadowy fog-figure on the last episode but his
father survives as I can remember. All of this made me wonder what
the hell the mist was doing. Because if it was manifesting fears,
then what killed the dog and why did bugs or real creatures kill so
many people? And then why did it affect some people immediately and
others it took its time? For instance, the girl’s dad was exposed
to it the most but never got killed. The priest, on the other hand,
stood in it for a maximum of two minutes and was killed and dragged
off immediately. The polymorphic rules to the mist made the series
hard to follow as anything could happen but nothing ever happened to
the stars (the family) of the series. I can’t even remember what
happened to the rapist bi-boy.
In the end the hysteria shown in the various groups couldn’t pull
this story together, and while it had scary elements, it missed the
mark on nearly every plot point it tried to culture. It is just
another one of the many crappy adaptations of Stephen King’s work.
Speaking of novel adaptations, Starz’s American Gods was, uh...
well, it was somethin’. Based off of Neil Gaiman’s book of the
same name, it premiered way back in April and ran for eight episodes
for its first season (yes, it’s been renewed). Let me say that
there is a huge caveat here in that I have never read the book. So I,
like I’m sure many (or at least a few) viewers out there, had no
idea what to expect. What I got was a lot of hurry and wait,
lay-man’s philosophy and Lost-esque mystery with Lost-esque answers
(yeah, not many). OK, so around episode four I finally broke and
looked up some reviews of the book. Note: If ever you want the crib
notes on a book and not just a summary of how the author wants you to
perceive the book, look at the negative comments on a book. There are
one and two-star reviewers who love nothing more than to rip a book
to shreds and have no qualms about talking about the spoilers in
their reviews. I read three bad and four great reviews and could now
see the show for what it was and still didn’t particularly care for
it.
The premise of the show is that America was a wild, untamed land with
many a savage people both already living here and coming here
throughout the years to try settling the land. With each culture of
people came their religious beliefs. At some point (or maybe always)
these religious beliefs and the various deities within them
manifested into physical form and became more and more powerful the
more people worshiped them. Well, we zoom up to today’s time and
most people are losing their religion faster than the guy who was in
the spotlight and in the corner, replacing old gods with new gods
like guns, technology, dub-step music (I kid you not) and other
modern accoutrements. So, the old gods want to get together and
battle the new gods for supremacy of followers. Got it?
In the middle of all of this is a black dude named Shadow and his
wife who has just recently died with Dane Cook’s penis in her
mouth. She was rather soulless and didn’t actually love him nearly
as much as he loved her, and would often cheat on him because she is
such an apathetic nihilist and doesn’t seem to feel anything. She
was performing oral on his best friend, in the car, while they were
speeding down the road. They crashed. Her body splattered into a few
different pieces. Well, Shadow is contracted by this old dude who
calls himself Wednesday for reasons known only to Wednesday. We later
learn that Wednesday is actually the old Norse god Odin (look up the
meaning behind Wednesday in Norse mythology if you must) and he is
the one trying to gather all the old gods together to solve their
problem. His powers, along with most of the other gods’ are not
especially specific and even seven episodes into the season (there
were only eight), you still have yet to be amazed or even know what
he can truly do. But again, he and Shadow are on this journey because
he’s promised Shadow that he can do something, what, I can’t
remember and don’t care.
By now you’ve probably guessed that Shadow’s wife, played by
Emily Browning, comes back to life but only because Shadow implants a
coin in the soft ground of her grave after he wins it off of a
Leprechaun-gold dude. The coin is the Irish god’s lucky coin and he
wants it back but she won’t give it back until she and her dead,
rotting body are made alive again so she can be with Shadow because
she only now, after dying, realizes how much of a B she was to her
husband and how much she loves him. They were casino robbers together
and he was due to get out of prison in three days when she died.
There’s some other gods in there to and a few amazing scenes that
are certainly worth talking about like the black sex goddess who was
eating people with her hungry coochie. No, seriously, that’s
exactly what happened multiple times. As she’d have sex with
people, they would shrink and shrink and she’d eventually push
their heads pass her, uh... lips and that would be the end of them.
Guys and girls. She did it to keep young. But, sadly, she never
interacts with anyone in the main plot, which, to me was a complete
waste of time and effort. There’s also the Gen dude who has gay sex
with his cabbie which is how he passes his powers on to the cabbie,
but the cabbie is also very superfluous to the main story.
In the end, the first four episodes tend to ramble without cause or
reason, never revealing anything close to a plot. While it supplies
you with amazingly vivid visuals that fans of Bryan Fuller (NBC’s
Hannibal creator) are used to, it doesn’t get decent until Shadow’s
wife is resurrected and a story finally takes shape. The showdown
between the gods is about as exciting as watching a water-balloon
fight that you can’t participate in and where no one can properly
throw a water balloon. Honestly, and I’m being a little sexist here
maybe, but the best part of the series is the fact that Emily
Browning appears nude on two different episodes. She’s got a great
body. Yes, there is also full-frontal male nudity. If you’re down
for a visual feast, then it’s great, but if you want something with
a coherent plot or something that won’t feel too preachy about
everything from religion to sex to the mundanity of life to slavery
and racism to gun control, then look elsewhere.
Next, we have CBS’s so-so doomsday drama Salvation. In it, some kid
and the government discover an asteroid hurtling toward the earth
will strike in about half a year. Once it does, it will cause a
cataclysmic extinction-level event that could either wipe out all
life on earth or actually crack the earth in half and send the planet
exploding into pieces. Either way, it’s very bad. He tells the
government and also alerts this billionaire tech guy who happens to
be speaking at his college (the kid goes to MIT so, yeah, it’s
totally believable). The tech guy starts working with the press
secretary of, I believe the Pentagon (doesn’t much matter as she is
not ever really there but it gives her high-level clearance) to stop
this from happening. Her current boyfriend, the Asian dude works in
the government also and he has higher clearance and knows about the
asteroid. So everybody is both trying to save the world and jockey
for power, using the impending apocalypse to improve their
power-standing. Oh, and only this small group of people knows about
the asteroid.
I didn’t have much hope for this series and only found out about it
maybe three weeks before it was set to premiere so it didn’t
surprise me when CBS started burning episodes two at a time for a few
weeks in July and August. The plot is basically the same as the
movies Deep Impact and Armageddon, except you know how those films
have first and second acts filled with eggheads writing calculations
on dry-erase boards and yelling at suited government officials, “We
have to do something now! Now!” before all the real action starts
in the overly-long third act? Yeah, this is removing all the tense
action of the third act and extending out the first two acts, making
the science the star of it. That’ll work. This is not to say that
science and math can’t be cool or that they aren’t interesting
but here they don’t do it well enough to make it that intriguing,
which is why we get what seems like more than a dozen side-stories to
keep the plot revving forward. Just when you think you have the show
figured out and can focus on one storyline you really love, they
throw something new at you.
We start with the asteroid, then we
suddenly have a story of the whiz kid who found the asteroid anomaly
falling in love super-quick with a struggling independent writer
(yes, it was kind of my favorite part of the show and I loved the
actress in that role and their cute little love story), then suddenly
BAM! His most trusted college professor is actually a Russian
spy/turncoat who tries to kill him at one point but the kid ends up
shoot him. Still, the guy escapes because the Russians believe that
the US has created a super weapon and they want to know what it is.
If you didn’t see the show and think that that last sentence sounds
a little convoluted (not to mention is worded awkwardly), hold on to
your britches because it is about to get hella WTF. So as whiz kid is
falling in love and dodging the bullets of Russian sleeper spies, his
billionaire benefactor pulls him onto the team to help solve the
whole asteroid thing. Billionaire is working with the government but
they aren’t agreeing with the genius, so he starts doing his own
thing. Somehow in all of this, he goes to visit his uncle who raised
him after his father died in order to grab some mineral from a space
rock that his uncle owns because only it can be used in the fancy
weapon thing they are creating to destroy this asteroid. Well, this
guy pops back up in later episodes and tries to plan a coup of his
nephew’s company because he loathes him.
But that’s not all because the billionaire is apparently rich,
successful, handsome and single which makes him a total bad guy and
the epitome of Mr. Steal-yo-girl as he ends up dating/sleeping with
the press secretary after she gets into one big fight with her Asian
guy because he has been keeping her out of the loop. As it turns out
his son is a member of this world-class terrorist hacker group who
claim they only want the truth but hack into multiple government
organizations to mess around. In a strange twist, press sec’s
daughter links up with Asian dude’s son and they start to have this
pseudo-romance(?) rebellion because they aren’t getting enough
attention and, you know, Will Smith said it best, “Parents just
don’t understand.”
There’s also a reporter trying to get the story and spread the word
and the indie author gets invited to work on the billionaire’s
other project which is a rocket that is going to send people to live
on Mars that is named Salvation. She has to help imagine the kinds of
people they will need to build a new society and vet the actual
people they pick. There’s also a presidential coup in which the
president gets poisoned right as she is about to tell the world about
the news. She is said to be dead and her VP is sworn in, but actually
she only faked her death until the traitors could be flushed out and
it really is just one big mess.
Here’s the thing: they gave everybody something to do which was
good, but it felt as if there were too many balls in the air for the
writers to close out every storyline effectively. I know that in a
series you want to keep some strands left open, however, I know
(having written my serial episodic novel/novella The Writer for three
seasons now) that you have to close out some strands while opening
others to expand on in the next season. Also, you can’t have too
much going on, or else the reader/viewer could suffer a mental
overload. Here, everything felt crazy like they were throwing stuff
at the wall, or the fan or whatever cliché saying you prefer. Was
the Russian thing necessary for the first season? No. Did the threat
of nuclear war amp up the tension the show was supposed to have and
tried very hard to create? No. Again, it was already established that
the world is about to explode in a fiery death ball in half a year’s
time, what more tension do you really need? One positive from all the
switching and back and forth is that I thought the characters
developed really nicely even if many of them didn’t have a
background from which to draw. I understood their motivations and how
that changed over the season. But this hodgepodge of threats made me
long for one really good main story, then maybe two or three
offshoots at the most and not everything you can possibly think of in
one season.
If this was to come back for a second season, I
think the boldest thing to do would be to have the asteroid actually
hit, wipe out most of humanity, then send that Salvation rocket off
to Mars but with a small group of people trying to get back to earth.
If they did that, then I’d be impressed and readjust to the pace,
otherwise it wasn’t worth my time.
Speaking of not worth my time, Still Star-crossed epitomized that
sentiment. For those that don’t know, this Shonda Rhimes-produced
show was based off a book of the same name which follows the tale of
lust, love, romance and betrayal that continues after the deaths of
Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s famous play. Of course we start
the series with a replaying of those two young lovers’ romance and
follow through to their death. There is where our story truly starts
for there is where politics, privilege and wealth intertwine in this
push and pull for supremacy in the small hamlet where the two lived.
OK, so Romeo and Juliet were each the sole heir to their respective
family. But when they both died that left the city’s two richest
families out in the cold with no heir apparent which is actually
quite bad because people get antsy when they don’t know where all
of that money will go and each family has tons of businesses
depending on them (you have to remember this was still the time of
lords and serfs, so one family dying out meant that the people who
worked the land for that family could all be fired by the next lord,
or worse). As luck would have it, the king also dies within days of
the two lovers’ death (or he falls into a coma or something; he’s
incapacitated is all you need to know) making his son the prince the
new ruler. His son, having just gotten back from his travels
abroad, is worried about the encroaching power of Vienna. He sees
this Italian metropolis as a threat to his city and their current way
of life. Vienna and, apparently, all of Italy is warring in different
places for reasons not given in the show. So, he turns to his
conniving sister for advice. She tells him to arrange a marriage
between the Capulets and the Montagues (best part of the show: how
the prince said the two families’ names; it made me giggle every
time) in order to end the 100 years of strife between the two
families, consolidate the wallets of half the city and make their
allegiance to him as king even stronger, for soon they will have to
face a common enemy.
As it just so happens, Juliet’s family has two chambermaids
which happen to be her cousins. They were orphaned during some kind
of riot years ago and killed by people who were loyalists to Romeo’s
family. While both girls have lost their titles as ladies in waiting,
they still technically count as heirs to the house. Romeo also had a
cousin—his uncle’s son and overall scoundrel. He likes to
frequent whores, drink and fight, and was with Romeo the night he
killed the guy that made him go on the run. He and the oldest cousin
of Juliet must now be betrothed. The big problem? They hate each
other. The biggest problem? The Prince who arranged such a marriage
is, himself, in love with the eldest cousin. And we go from there.
This series, in my opinion could have been two episodes shorter
(yeah, that’s right. I’m starting with some of the easier, less
controversial problems first). The whole side story of the Prince’s
sister having to go to Vienna to talk to the sex-hound leader there
was just padding. Frankly, I could’ve done with less of the
storyline about the rich lord who was supposed to marry Juliet
marrying the younger cousin, too. And chasing after the priest also
felt pointless except as a flimsy reason to get them out of the city
for a change.
Then there was the main plot. I can’t remember what they called it
in school (not the inciting incident) but it is the main thing on
which the plot’s main focal point hinges. Anyone know what I’m
talking about? Well, maybe if I give the example here it might come
to you or me. Anyway, what I’m trying to call into question is how
necessary the plot was on the show. From start, we learn that the
older cousin/sister wants to become a nun, until she re-meets the
prince who has been gone pretty much ever since her parents got
murdered. Now, he’s given her things to feel and think about. We
also know that her younger sister is very thirsty to get married to a
lord or nobleman of any birth so that she can not only no longer be a
maid but also buy her older sister’s freedom so she can go and be a
nun. Essentially, the entire plot of the show and the conflict-point
can be remedied if the Prince would just marry the oldest sister like
he maybe wants (although he’s still young and might want to sow
those oats some more), then order the younger sister to marry Romeo’s
cousin.
Boom! Everything solved. We have to note here that the
younger sister never really lusted for love until she met the lord
that Juliet was betrothed to, but she really wanted to be married.
Granted, you still force two people to marry who don’t wish to be,
but you’ve killed two birds with one stone and strengthened your
own standing in the kingdom by taking a bride. In writing, while not
a cardinal sin, this is supposed to be one of those big narrative
dilemmas that is very much frowned upon because it makes your
characters look dumb, can cause the reader/audience to disengage from
the narrative and can even foster disdain for your characters. In
horror movies, this is played up to effect often for laughs or
expected jump-scares. Everyone knows to expect at least three, “Don’t
go in there, white woman,” moments in any horror film (it doesn’t
always have to be a woman or white. You know what I mean). That, in
some sense, is part of the fun. Here, however, it gets annoying.
Here, you want your main characters to act in a reasonable way that
is in line with their morals and beliefs and plain old common sense.
You can fill the rest of the story with plenty of people who lack
such traits (another horror-movie trope) but if the main character is
dumb as a rock and it isn’t played for pure comedy, you got a
problem.
These problems compound with every new decision made by main
characters, and starts to have the audience look beyond the camera at
the producers and creators of the show. And here is where we arrive
at our most controversial topic: the casting. I, in no way shape or
form, like to use the term SJW in a derogatory way. I think that
people fight for social justice because we still need it in many
aspects of life. However, with that being said, when it comes to
entertainment specifically, we not only need social justice but if we
are going to have it, then it needs to make sense. The casting in
this show was probably over 50% of the reason why I disliked the
show. Again, for those who didn’t see this, Juliet was a white
girl, Romeo was black. Fair, right? Until you see that Romeo’s dad
is white. His mother is dead so we don’t know what color she was.
His cousin and new heir-apparent is also white. OK, he had a white
father so that’s just his father’s brother’s son.
Now get this,
Juliet’s father is white. But her mother looks like some kind of
either Middle Eastern or Hispanic. You ready? Her two cousins ON HER
FATHER’S SIDE are black. So you think, oh, one of their dead
parents must have been white, right? But when the eldest girl escapes
back to her old home and sees a family-painting of the four of them
hanging on the wall, there isn’t a lick of white in it. Both of her
parents are black. So even if I was remembering it wrong and they
were cousins through Juliet’s evil, grief-stricken mother, it still
doesn’t make sense. On top of that, the King and the Prince are
both black but the Prince’s blood-sister looks Middle Eastern as
well. And all of these relations are by blood. I say all of that to
say that all the mixed and interracial familial relationships got
super confusing through the season. I know some people probably would
have curled their lips up at seeing an all-black family against an
all-white family but it actually would have made it easier to
identify everybody. You’re already working with characters that
have olde-English names and titles. While I am used to such
pronunciations from having grown up reading the King James Version of
the bible, many people still struggle with all of the thous and
thines and the names and how they address each other. I talked to a
few older people who wanted to watch the show but got rather confused
by the race mixing that was never addressed in the show. And we’re
not talking nursing-home residents here but still-working Baby
Boomers.
On top of that, most of what happened wasn’t very interesting.
Every betrayal was overly telegraphed and it really didn’t seem
like anything of real consequence to the story happened, except for
in the last two episodes. It was very blah.
 |
| The Black Woman in the Yellow Dress. Oh. My. God! |
Then there’s Midnight, Texas inspired by Charlaine Harris’ book
series of the same name. What to say, what to say? OK, this and The
Mist definitely hop back and forth for that number one spot as the
most disappointing show of the summer for me. Right now I give the
slight edge to The Mist because I already knew what I wanted it to
be, and while I got some of that wish-fulfillment, I didn’t get
enough and what I did get was ridiculous. NBC’s Midnight, Texas
seduced me with the premise and some fairly good trailers/adverts. I
am a bit of a sucker for anything over-the-top imaginative and
creative, and I especially like sci-fi and paranormal and horror and
all of that stuff because it allows people to be creative and take
risks. Also, I missed out on the True Blood phenomenon because I
didn’t have HBO at the time and heard about the show too late (I
like to start every show from the absolute beginning). This show,
while I didn’t have the highest of expectations was on my to-see
list. And while it didn’t make my famed to-unsee-list, I will say
that it had a lot of room for improvement. Premise is simple enough:
a medium who can talk to and see ghosts and all sorts of evil spirits
moves to a town that is filled by paranormal creatures/people who
attract such bad energy. You have your vampire, your knock-off Buffy
vampire-slayer (of course she’s hooked up with the black vampire
guy), a preacher who is a weretiger, a good witch (who is fine as
hell. Oh my god! (bites finger... then realizes he’s put a
parenthetical into another parenthetical and angered the grammar
gods)), a fallen angel and a demon who are in love with each other
(they’re gay. I felt I should mention that for some reason), and a
slew of humans and other baddies.
Well, I guess Midnight lays on one of the evil fault lines the
Ghostbusters were talking about because all sorts of bad is
constantly happening there. Beginning with a serial killer offing one
of the town’s girls. As it turns out, the girl was killed by a
white supremacist on the first episode and that’s when I had hope
because I thought, “Oh crap! They’re really goin’ for it here,
aren’t they?” No. In fact, they did not really go for it. The
tone was all over the place, which was mainly due to the acting, and
more specifically the acting from the lead guy, the medium. In my
opinion, he was not the right person for this role. Most recently off
of the show The Blindspot where he played Jane’s husband, I felt
that if they were going to choose someone off of that show for this,
I would’ve preferred they choose the guy who played her brother.
Something about him just isn’t charming even though he tries very
hard to be charming in this role. In just about every scene that he
is in, it feels as if he is acting in a comedy and everyone else is
acting in a drama. When those tones even each other out, it makes the
show feel like a CW superhero show.
The series is your standard procedural/monster-of-the-week with an
overarching plot to bind everything together at the end. That plot is
the coming of the apocalypse or something like it that has to be
stopped by a witch and a seer who will lead his people in some big
battle. Well, the end battle really isn’t all that big to me and
the witch doesn’t have to cast any spells or anything like that in
this fight, but does have to have some sex because she is a virgin
witch and the devil wants her as his bride for his very own
Omen-esque Damien demon-baby (It’s all for you, Damien! All for
you!) to, I assume, take over the world or at least let more evil
through? The reasoning is not well-shaped similar to in The Dark
Tower movie. But I will give the show creepy pervert points for
having the town’s salvation lay between the moistened untouched
legs of a fair, good black witch. Well done, NBC!
Anyways, some bad stuff happens, a few people die, the Medium falls
in love with an average girl whose brother is a serial killer, the
Good witch falls in love with the man of the dead girl from the first
episode and that’s about it. Whereas Salvation had too much going
on, this had too little. And the worst thing is that they made the
wrong person the overall focus of the series, though they tried to
refocus the series a bit in later episodes. The person who should’ve
been the star was the good witch. As I already said, this woman is
gorgeous. You know that new Kelly Clarkson song “Love So Soft”?
Yeah, she epitomizes this, embodies the sentiment. There was
something so pure, so innocent, yet so smart and strong about how the
character was written and how the actress played her that I
legitimately fell in TV-love with her. I was watching the series
solely for her by the sixth episode, which is very interesting
because I noticed the subtle switch in spotlight over to her a little
more as the series progressed.
On the final episode, it would seem
like (if going by the prophecy) she should take a back seat to the
Medium who is supposed to headline the defense against this
devil-thing, yet she seems to be the main focus throughout the
episode. And as I said, the battle between the devil and the medium
is subdued and uneventful because the witch is popping her 30 or
40-something-year-old cherry and ruining the devil’s whole reason
for being there. To me, this woman is what Lisa Bonet would have been
if she had kept acting on a regular basis (when on the Cosby show and
briefly on A Different World she was the black American sweetheart).
She may be what Zoe Kravitz will be in 10 or 15 years. Goodness, I
would maybe risk it all for her, I’m telling you. Outside of her
and maybe the vampire episode in which old friends came back, the
show wasn’t worth much, and the entire season didn’t compare to
the one episode that I saw of True Blood.
Next up, we had Showtime’s I’m Dying Up Here. This show is
supposed to be Jim Carrey’s love letter to the LA comedy-club scene
back in the 70s and 80s when he was trying to get his start as a
comedian. It was the fire in which he was foraged into what would
later become THE Jim Carrey. I have to admit that I saw maybe about
five episodes of this and couldn’t take much more. It’s not that
the show about a group of comedians (many struggling, some
successful) in LA’s hottest comedy club is boring, it’s just that
it’s... well, it’s bland. To me, I compare it to the film Funny
People by Judd Apatow. As I said in my post on movies when I
mentioned The Big Sick in passing, I tend not to like Apatow films
but did like Funny People for some reason, which is probably his most
hated film. So when I saw advertising for I’m Dying Up Here, I
thought, I’ll give this a go. Wrong idea.
The show falls flat in the same area that the movie fell flat: taking
comedians too seriously. This is actually one of the reasons I
partially moved away from comedy. Consider this, when Robin Williams
died so many people were shocked that he would commit suicide, right?
Well, here’s the thing. Having been the one who makes most people
laugh my entire life and having stayed around a lot of comedians, I
know for a fact that most of the people who are trying to make you
laugh the absolute most are the most miserable people around.
Seriously, look at the legendary comedians we have even today. Chris
Rock just went through a very public divorce, Eddie Murphy is doing
fine now but for a while people were throwing all sorts of barbs at
him for going through the bevvy of women he did after Nicole, Dave
Chappelle had to go to Africa to reclaim his sanity, Jerry Lewis was
repeatedly called out for being a sexist jerk and even Jim Carrey
himself seems to be either losing his mind over the fact that his
ex-girlfriend killed herself or is putting on one of the greatest
performance-art pieces the world has ever seen as he has, in recent
press interviews, said that he doesn’t actually exist.
My point is that there is a certain level of discomfort that most
comedians have in their lives that keeps them funny. When you come
along and show that, peel that layer back to look at the filth and
pain that lies beneath, it’s hardly ever pretty and, instead of
making for a good dramedy, can actually make the audience sour on the
comedic aspects. Basically, it’s the old adage about seeing where
the sausage is made. Even still, it was funny at times, when not
being so nihilistic.
Then we had TNT’s dramedy Claws. Starring Niecy Nash as a nail
salon owner and technician, Claws tried to market itself as a
funnier, female Breaking Bad and though I really enjoyed this show,
Breaking Bad it wasn’t. Niecy’s character runs a salon in the
hood but is trying to get over to a really good area of the city. She
already has her sights set on a salon that happens to be in that area
and that has an owner that’s selling her shop in order to move down
farther south (they’re in Florida and I think the selling salon
owner wants to move to Miami, which the show definitely ain’t set
in). The problem is twofold: the Asian salon owner despises Niecy and
sees her as nothing more than ghetto trash not fit for that area, and
Niecy needs to come up with the 20,000 dollars in order to buy the
salon for when the owner gets over her racism. To do that, a year
before the show starts she hooked up with the son of a drug
trafficker who roped her into helping them move weight through a
clinic situated in the same shopping center as her current nail
salon.
The show picks up at the one-year mark and things go haywire when
Niecy doesn’t get the 20,000 she was promised by her boyfriend, and
finds out that he is cheating on her with this new tiny hoe (played
by Chris Brown’s old girlfriend Karreuche Tran). Well, she comes
into his place when he happens to be raping Tran’s character.
Already pissed about the money, she tries to strangle him, beat him
and drown him when they get into a physical fight. Still alive, he
comes back only for Tran’s character to shoot him in the head. From
there the rest of the season is the boyfriend’s family led by his
Uncle-Daddy (his father died so his uncle raised him, hence the
hillbilly-esque title) played by Howard Dean who played Hank on
Breaking Bad, and his brother, who is a recovering drug addict and
general loser, looking for revenge. His brother also happens to be
married to Niecy’s best friend and nail technician. There’s a
white lady scam artist/constant liar who is hilarious in her
over-the-topness, and a lesbian who sleeps with the detective that is
looking at them for possible illegal activity related to the death of
the boyfriend or the sell of narcotics. With Tran being a complete
idiot, Niecy has to be the one to cover up the murder, take care of
the shop, make sure Uncle-Daddy doesn’t discover what she and Tran
did, figure out a way to get that 20,000 for her new shop and take
care of her mentally handicapped brother without losing her sanity.
The ride that this show takes you on is definitely a lot and it
almost starts to suffer from too much stuff going on, especially when
you learn of the twist at the mid-season mark where the boyfriend is
actually still alive and was rescued by a desperate swamp lady who
uses him as her personal live-in sex toy. But there is lots of murder
and dumb first-time-criminals hijinks to keep you entertained. Was it
appointment viewing for me? Eh! I wouldn’t call it that, but I did
watch it every single week without fail and liked it all the way
through. In fact, it might have been my favorite show of the summer
just for how much it committed to its own silliness.
Snowfall I watched one episode of and was bored, so I didn’t go
back for a second helping. I did not get to see GLOW but was a little
disillusioned and ticked about it because about ten years ago I had
wanted to write a book or script with a writing partner on the very
same thing—female wrestlers in the early days of wrestling—but
she didn’t want to do it and I really wanted a female presence on
the story, so I never wrote it alone. Oh well. Missed opportunities.
TNT’s Will I also never saw because, even though I enjoy things
about William Shakespeare, I couldn’t bring myself to watch that
interpretation for whatever reason. It was like that house work that
you keep telling yourself you’ll do and then never get around to it
and even once you move from that house, you still think about that
one thing that you could’ve and should’ve done. Yeah. Yep. Didn’t
see the Ozarks either because I don’t have Netflix and couldn’t
find that one for free online like I could other streaming services’
shows, but again, I heard it was like Breaking Bad, so...
Marlon starring Marlon Wayans and Essence Atkins (good god she looks
amazing) was actually pretty good. Look, I know that we’ve been
doing this no-live-studio-audience thing for near 20 years starting
with the great The Bernie Mac Show, but seeing as how the biggest
comedy on TV is The Big Bang Theory and they still do the multi-cam
show, and laugh-track/audience laughing, I’m going to go with the
notion that people still enjoy comedies that do that. Really, now
only ABC is doing the single-cam format from what I can see, which is
fine. So, getting that out of the way, I would say that you can tell
how differently the two types of shows are shot if you’re paying
attention. Multi-cams are often a lot goofier and let the actors be
more over-the-top with their acting while the single-cams go for a
more realistic, toned-down sense of acting. With all that said, I
thought Marlon was over-the-top, exceptionally ridiculous and exactly
what I would expect from Marlon Wayans. For me, while it clearly is
not as controversial, current and thought-provoking as The Carmichael
Show was during its late-summer run, Marlon does capture a certain
comedic tone that is just juvenile yet adult enough for the whole
family to enjoy.
Outside of how good Essence Atkins looks—and I
mean, my god, it’s like she hasn’t aged since Half and Half. She
was killin’ me! I can see why Marlon’s character didn’t want to
leave her alone even though they were divorced. Uh... what was I
talking about? Right, outside of her being a perfect casting choice
for the show, you can tell that Marlon himself rifts at least 50% of
his lines and they left those takes in the show. I was getting laughs
just off of how many times the cast had to make a face not to laugh
at Marlon because they knew they were supposed to keep straight.
Fine-and-mini (Essence’s friend on the show; don’t know her name
and not looking it up) who came off the defunct comedy Truth Be Told
was always trying not to laugh. Loved her character, too. No it was
not going to be smart, thinking-man’s comedy but it was good for a
few giggles.
Didn’t see the Defenders for the same reason as GLOW and kind of
didn’t want to see it either. I wasn’t that interested. Nor was I
interested in The Tick. I remember the one in the 90s (or early
aughts?) and wasn’t really down to revisit it. And at this time I
still have yet to finish The Sinner (though it’s looking
interesting halfway through it). Mr. Mercedes hasn’t concluded yet,
however, I think I can talk on it.
Another Stephen King adaptation, Mr. Mercedes is one of the King’s
few forays into full-on mystery thriller territory (sans-paranormal
interference). While it may read similar to many of his other books,
the show is unlike pretty much anything else that has been produced
from his work. Mr. Mercedes is a bifurcated story that follows two
main characters. Happening in 2009 in Ohio (a place I’m quite
familiar with), someone driving a Mercedes commits a heinous crime by
driving into a crowd of people waiting in line for some sort of job
fair. It kills over a dozen people and injures even more. The cops
are baffled as to who could have done it and know that this will
haunt them for ever.
Two years later in 2011, we catch up with Bill
Hodges who was the lead detective on what they called the Mr.
Mercedes case. Now retired, divorced and living alone (played by
Brendan Gleeson; I can’t remember if the character was Scottish in
the book), he fills his days with doing nothing much but going around
and bothering his old cop buddies and avoiding the sexual advances of
the also-retired woman who lives next door to him—they just keep
boomeranging her old, crinkled vagina back and forth as she is trying
desperately to get herself a, uh... buddy. Suddenly one day, he
receives a video on his TV from someone claiming to be the uncaught
Mr. Mercedes. Now, he fills his time with working the case that he
could never figure out before and stopping the killer who is hellbent
on committing more crimes.
With the bifurcated narrative, we then switch over to Brady who is
the Mr. Mercedes killer (or so they’d have us believe). A bit of an
outcast and loner, we learn of just how twisted he is as it is
quickly revealed that he experienced multiple traumas as a child,
including the death of his brother(?)—the show doesn’t make this
clear so I’m going solely off the show here—and the repeated
molestation of him by his mother, which is still going on as she
repeatedly is shown to slip into his bed and kiss him on the lips and
things. His father is gone and he never really knew the guy. He has
always been a little twisted and he now works in some kind of
electronics store fixing computers for people. But he hates the job
and the customers are afraid of him but love him because he fixes the
computers well.
In the show it is rather unclear why he starts tormenting Hodges
again after so many years and there isn’t much motivation or cause
behind his actions. He doesn’t stand for something or rail against
something like the main character in Mr. Robot does, he is just doing
it seemingly for fun. Frankly, I didn’t much like the book and the
show doesn’t improve on that. It’s slow, rather plodding,
repetitive and often uneventful, yet, unlike The Mist, I find it to
be a slightly better adaptation as it doesn’t try to wow. Still, I
felt that neither of those shows could hold a candle to CBS’s
defunct Under the Dome. Here, the story is supposed to be thrilling
but rarely ever seems overly threatening. I will, however, say that
the last episode in which Hodges love interest, played by Mary Louise
Parker, died was great. The show is supported by very strong
characters that, though you don’t like them, uniquely combine to
create a tapestry of middle-America that isn’t overly offensive and
caricatured. I especially like the young white woman with a mental
disability of some sort. She’s smart but socially awkward and
emotionally stunted. I think the actress playing her is doing a great
job.
And finally, there was ABC’s limited series Somewhere Between,
starring Paula Patton. You know, there has always been something
about Paula that I liked but that felt very off about her, and now
that I had ten weeks to watch her act, I know what it is. It’s her
neck and the way she holds her head. You know how when you watch old
romance movies, there’s always this thing that I call the “longing
gaze” that women would give off? It’s a face in which their lips
are longing for a kiss, their brows are precariously perched in
anticipation for something amazing and their face looks both soft and
inviting, ready for the man’s love, while also slightly hurt? Well,
that’s how Paula Patton’s face is almost all the time when she’s
acting. Her neck is strong (I like strong necks as I have one myself)
but also very tight as if she’s just swallowed hard after entering
into Christian Grey’s red room for the first time. I don’t know
if she does it on purpose or what but she always looks like she is
trying to be sensual and wanting to be infantilized. It’s not bad,
but it does make me think that she should be in far more rom-coms
before branching out to stuff like Somewhere Between.
To the actual show, Somewhere Between is another mystery thriller
similar in vein to Secrets and Lies. It follows Paula’s character
who is a mom and a news producer for a local station somewhere in
California, I believe (I was never quite sure on where they were).
Wherever they are didn’t have the death penalty which just got
reinstated. The first person scheduled to walk that Green Mile is a
mentally slow man who supposedly killed his brother’s would-be
fiance. Paula’s husband is the DA who put the man in prison in the
first place and is now advocating, along with the governor, for the
reinstatement of the death penalty. The series is about how Paula’s
family intertwines uniquely with the family of the man on deathrow
and takes one supernatural turn to stop the tragedy of unnecessary
deaths. On the very first episode, Paula and her daughter meet the
daughter and mother of the deathrow man. As it happens, his daughter
has the same mental disease as he does but is a loving and open
person. She becomes instant friends with Paula’s daughter, though
they have what looks like a two-year age difference. They also love
the same pop singer who came from the area.
As it also happens, the brother of the deathrow man was a policeman
and is now a private investigator who happens to wander into Paula’s
house seeking repayment of a debt on one of his client’s behalf.
Well, through a little bit of hurried plot, there is also a killer of
women on the loose. He gets so ticked by something that he calls into
the TV station where Paula works one night and says that he has
kidnapped her daughter. For whatever reason, he has done this to
show-up the DA’s and governor’s insistence that the death
sentence will be a deterrent for crime, which I was like, “Huh?
Whatever, dude!” In any case, he kills the little girl and dumps
her buddy in the nearby lake. Months go by, Paula’s marriage is
destroyed, the deathrow guy is murdered and everybody’s lives are
ruined. The deathrow guy’s brother is caught in a gangster’s bed
who takes him out to the same lake where the kid died, and at the
same time that Paula just happens to be throwing her rock-weighted
self off a cliff into the water to kill herself.
Well, he manages to get out of the cinder blocks tied to his feet and
rescue her only for them to re-emerge from the water one week before
Paula’s girl is kidnapped. Shocking! Now, they team together to
find out who is going to kidnap her little girl, who is killing these
girls and how this all somehow ties together with the deathrow case.
While there’s a lot going on here with the killer of women being
caught in the first three episodes only for that to end up not being
the person who would kill Paula’s daughter, you would think that
this series was overly complex. It is complicated, yes, but not so
much so that you lose the thruline. Strangely, it’s also one of
those series in which you could, in episode three take a wild guess
at who did it and you would end up being right. The amount of people
involved, the fact that Paula’s DA husband was being blackmailed,
the fact that the mentally slow guy was being rushed first to the
death chair and the fact that they would sink so low as to kill the
little girl all reeked of someone with money doing this. That, by
definition, only left one legit option: the governor or someone in
his camp. And at that point, it was only a matter of guessing that
wound up with the original culprit being the preppy entitled white
son linking everything together. He originally killed the ex-cop’s
would-be fiance and some other people. In turn, a second killer, who
wanted those other people that the prep boy killed dead, decided that
he would return the favor in a Throw Momma From The Train-esque
scenario where we do the crimes for each other.
To me, Somewhere Between hit all the right notes, but still ended up
feeling very one-note. The worst part about it was the little black
girl’s acting, which was only made more pronounced by the good
acting of the little white girl who was supposed to be at a mentally
lower level. There were about four or five episodes in the middle of
the series in which I watched them while playing with my phone
(something which I never do as I am not someone who can’t live
without their phone). Again, it was just an OK series, but nothing to
write home about. Still, it’s good to see Paula working, and I
thought that even though she made an odd couple with both of the
white guys they paired her with (both the DA and the ex-cop looked
too street-tough for her. She looks like someone who goes for the
preppy clean-cut guy similar to her ex-husband Robin Thicke), I did
think that she had chemistry with the ex-cop and enjoyed his Gerard
Butler-style acting.
REALITY/GAME SHOWS
Now that we’ve gotten through most of the scripted shows (oh yeah,
there’s one that came on Showtime that did Peak my curiosity
that I haven’t touched on yet and will devote a whole post to on
its own. If you were a fan, you know the one), let’s get to some of
the reality stuff. I will try to get through this junk even quicker
as, Oh. My. God! The return of the Gong Show was almost as big of a
national travesty as Janet Jackson’s Wardrobe Malfunction/Nipple
Gate that produced the 7-second delay that so many live programs have
now. It was terrible programming and reminded me of just how stupid
Americans used to be. Then I realized that this show is back on the
air because Americans are, apparently, just as stupid as we’ve ever
been. As if I needed anymore proof after last November.
I would’ve liked to see a full-scale reboot of Battle of the
Network Stars where all the networks took part in airing it or
something to that effect, but I was pleasantly surprised by what they
gave us, even though it could have been ten times better and maybe
should have featured a lot more current stars rather than the same
ones that did this game 30 and 40 years ago.
I enjoyed the return of Love Connection and think that Andy Cohen,
being the gay diva he is, is the right host for that show, especially
since they are venturing out to feature not just heterosexual dates.
Beat Shazam was, at first, not something that I liked but when I
started watching it with my family, it became a more enjoyable
experience. I think you have to watch this with someone and
participate in trying to guess the songs, otherwise it isn’t that
entertaining. But Jamie did his thing and reminded us all of how
goofy he really is. The worst, though, was how disappointing pretty
much all of the black contestants were. I’m with Jamie. Like,
really? Really? Black people couldn’t get Motown? Couldn’t get
Whitney Houston? Couldn’t get Mariah Carey? SMH! LOL. On a side
note, who else is thankful that the Katie Holmes-Jamie Foxx mystery
is solved? Oh man, the rumors of “are they or aren’t they” were
killing me. Good for them. The flicka da wrist!
Big Star Little Star was cute and that’s about all I have to say
about it. Steve Harvey’s Funderdome was also just an OK show. It
was nice to see the products that people could come up with, even
though half of them were literally written down in a second grade
notebook I had for my school science fair. Every year I would try to
invent something. Maybe I’ll take up my inventor’s gene again and
give the world something amazing. I also enjoyed World of Dance but I
felt that it went a little too fast and I would’ve liked more show.
It just felt so quick, but it did have some really good dancing.
Bravo’s One Night with My Ex was also interesting. What would you
do if you got to spend one more night with that one most important ex
you had and could ask them any question? The amount of couples trying
to get back together kind of amazed me. My favorite was the black
fitness model and her black DJ(?) ex who came to pseudo-propose to
her when she came to tell him that she was pregnant from the last
time they hooked up four or so months ago after having not seen each
other in years. What a happy ending.
Didn’t see Candy Crush. Didn’t want to see Life of Kylie. Boy
Band was... Gah, OK, um... Boy Band was a travesty. I do believe that
this is the third summertime singing competition that ABC has tried
in the last decade. See, for a long while ABC was trying to
capitalize off the success of American Idol with their own
competition. They foolishly missed out on The X-Factor when they had
the chance. They really should have brought that back instead of Idol
if you ask me. Then when NBC was able to successfully do a singing
competition too, they got antsy. That led to Duets, The Wall and this
sad iteration of fame-propellant. I can’t even say thank god they
got American Idol coming in spring because they still have some major
problems.
One of the major problems that sank this show for me was the
behind-the-camera stuff. As I said, this is their third (maybe even
fourth) try at a singing contest, yet in all of them the sound is
terrible. I don’t know if they are using an ABC studios sound team
or what, but the sound for a live show needs to be perfect in order
for things to not sound like they’re being sung in a studio, and
boy did this sound like it was being sung in a studio. You could hear
it so blatantly that it rather pissed me off that the producers
didn’t catch this after maybe one episode and fix it. When the
judges talked, you could hear them very well, but when the kids sang,
it sounded like the whole room was swallowing their voice. I had to
constantly turn my TV’s volume up and down just to hear them. It
pissed me off.
I also would’ve liked to see some of the tryouts to be on the show
ala American Idol or America’s Got Talent. I was a little sad when
America did exactly what I expected and chose not a single one of the
black contestants who could actually sing, while choosing at least
two of the white ones who really couldn’t, but it was mostly
teenage girls who chose on looks. What a waste. If they want Idol to
succeed come spring, they better have fixed those sound problems.
The F word was really nothing more than a time filler which I really
didn’t need this summer, or any summer. The only episode I truly
enjoyed was the one where the black guest was getting cheeky with
Gordon. Hilarious. And the Fear Factor revival was... a Fear Factor
revival, so... Yeah.
Can we talk about that The Bachelorette finale, though? I know it isn’t
exactly a new show nor a revived show like everything I’ve covered
but oh man this was sooooo disappointing, right, Bachelor Nation? I told y’all on Twitter that I thought this girl was fake back when
she was on Nick’s season. I insisted that they should’ve gotten
Raven for the next Bachelorette because Rachel seemed like she was
playing up to the camera too much for me, like she didn’t actually
want Nick. But y’all insisted that Rachel was your girl and that
she needed to be the next Bachelorette, so the show obliged. Then
when she chose Bryan, even though everybody knew she should’ve
chosen Peter, most of you all wanted to turn on her? Y’all
seriously didn’t see this coming? She wanted that title the whole
time.
There’s a reason why love and marriage are two separate words
and two separate things. She wanted marriage which was especially
clear to me during the hometowns. Seeing as how everyone looked
married (her sisters, her mother), it seemed like she was the last
one who wanted that title like everybody else had. The fact that she
set Peter up as the one she really wanted the most was so evident
because he was the one who actually got to go buy baby clothes. You
can’t tell me that wouldn’t win him favoritism points with the
fam. They got along well and there was no arguing like she had when
Bryan was there and she had to defend him. Some pointed out that she
defended Bryan because she really loved him (even Rachel said that on
the final rose), but no. She defended him because she had to step in
and defend him. Peter didn’t need defending because he wasn’t a
smooth-talker/charmer like Bryan, but kept it real, AND because he
was a real man and defended himself when need be. And so did Eric.
But we all knew that Eric was still there solely because he was Black
and nice looking and she would’ve looked foul if she didn’t have
a single black contestant in the last five.
But I called it from jump that Rachel was always about the appearance
of things rather than if something works or not. Look at the men she
chose to roll with for the longest times. Did she choose the people
like the lawyers and the doctors and all of that? No. With the
exception of Bryan, you look at her top guys and she chose all men
who were physical in their jobs and/or looked really hot.
Eric-fitness model, trainer. Peter-same. You had the wrestler guy
(who should’ve been the next Bachelor if he was slightly more
handsome in the face), there was some other sport dude and you even
had Lee who wrote songs. I don’t think she wanted anybody really on
her same level of professionalism and all of that but this speaks to
a bigger issue within the dating community and successful women vs.
successful men. I’ll stay out of that for now, but with all of that
said, and after much consideration and thought of what happened, I
will defend Rachel and here’s why:
As I said, Rachel was always obsessed with appearances. And being the
first black Bachelorette, even though it means little to nothing on a
truly historic level, it was important to her and the fans of the
series. So, she knew the pressure heaped on her and I believe fully
understood the narrative. As it stands in this country, the narrative
is this: black women are the most undesirable women when it comes to
dating and marriage, especially college-educated, supposedly
“successful” women. Now, I know that there were a few black women
that went on a rant talking about how she shouldn’t have chosen
Bryan and settling for someone you don’t love and all of that, but
having always seen her vanity, I have to defend her and say that I
think she knew what she was doing and, like a lawyer would, made a
very calculated decision to go with Bryan.
See, here’s the thing,
this show has been on for over a decade now, each season featuring a
new white woman ready to fall in love. To go from a white
woman—supposedly the most desired partner for dating and
marriage—to a black woman is a huge step (one of the reasons why
they shouldn’t have kicked Caila to the curb last season;
Bachelorette, this is your karma). In that time, practically every
season has ended in a marriage proposal on a makeshift altar.
Regardless of how many couples followed through with those plans or
not, it would look hella wrong if the first-ever black Bachelorette,
the poster-child for what everyone thinks of when they hear baby
mama, hoodrat, side chick, THOT, undesirable, ugly, loud, ratchet,
etc. DOES NOT get proposed to on the final episode. Even if the guy
says that he is madly in love with her at the time; even if he
proposed to her on the final rose special after they had been
secretly dating for three months; even if literally this same
situation happened on Desiree’s season (remember how madly in love
she was with dude that she cried dirty-mop buckets of tears;
congratulations on her and the chosen one’s baby, by the way) and
we didn’t (and couldn’t) make it a race thing then, it wouldn’t
have mattered. Why? Because all of the white couples before her got
their happy ending, however brief it may have been, and they got it
properly.
Put aside that bachelor Mesnick-guy who said he chose the wrong
woman, and Womack who was on the show twice and still wound up with
bupkis and you don’t have a lot of controversy like that at the end
of the process. Rachel wanted to save face for not just herself (she
really, really wants that Mrs. title) but try to crack this narrative
about black women and romance in this country. If I’m thinking
about what she did through that paradigm, then I think I can
understand why she chose Bryan. I also think that while she probably
isn’t in love with Bryan, he is finally old enough to realize that
if he wants a family he’ll have to pick a good woman and start soon
anyway, so if they can both put aside their fakeness and be real
about what they want out of a partnership, then I think they can make
it work. It won’t be that great all-time love story, but it’ll
still be decent. And plus, she did choose another minority, so I
would say just consider those things when looking to judge her
decision.
And finally, the one big show of the summer so big, so interesting
that it deserves its own post in order to unfold how I felt about it
(spoilers: I hated it!): Twin Peaks. I don’t know how much I really
should say or try to get into in this post as the show was so
ridiculous that if I even start talking about one strand of what’s
going on on this show, I’ll probably go on another full-page rant
about it. Suffice it to say that I had to binge the first two seasons
(never got into it the first time it was on) and the movie just to
watch this meandering 18-hour trip through ridiculousness that was so
bad that it wouldn’t even have been good to watch while high. This
is coming from someone who quite loved Mulholland Drive and
Eraserhead, so... That post is going to be a dozy. Stay tuned.
What do you think? What was your favorite and/or least favorite TV
show to watch this summer? Of the novel adaptations, which one did
you think was the best and why? And which of the new summer shows,
whether reality or scripted, would you not mind seeing have a second
season? What about all the documentary coverage of Princess Diana’s
death-anniversary? Did you enjoy it or not even tune in? Oh, and what
the hell was that sad attempt at a Dirty Dancing reboot that ABC made
back in May? That was weird, right? Man, I can’t wait until the
regular season restarts. Let me know all your thoughts in the
comments below.
If
you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel
#AFuriousWind, the
NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or
the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen.
For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult,
check out #TheWriter.
Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected
here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast
action/crime check out #ADangerousLow.
The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the
mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon.
Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels
The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming
this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on
the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to
talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with
that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “You can’t just
sit on your ass all summer and watch TV!”
‘Gosh! I know, mom. That’s why I
sometimes lay on my stomach or side.’
P.S.
Wow! These sign-offs are getting really weird and overly complicated,
aren’t they? That’s not even a proper sign-off, it’s a
conversation between a lazy high school kid and his/her parent. This
summer wouldn’t have been a good one to be lazy anyway, because so
much stuff sucked. Sigh! I wish everything really did float instead
of sinking to such terrible levels of meh! I’ll think of a better
sign-off next time.
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