THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup May/June 2024

“What are you watching?” is pretty much the automatic question I get when I tell people what I do for a living.

With the stress of the last two months I haven’t gotten to watch as much TV as usual, but I do have some thoughts on some shows! I’ve also included content warnings for shows that need them, so you can see those beneath each title! These are in alphabetical order this time!

Baby Reindeer (Season 1) — Netflix
CW: sexual violence, stalking

In my last roundup I wondered if Baby Reindeer was going to have some commentary on the central threat of violence inherent to stalking through its genderbending, and boy does it feel good to be right. Without giving anything away, Baby Reindeer was an unpredictable ride that was equal parts difficult to watch and impossible to look away from. As it turns out, the show wasn’t so much about stalking but about obsession and the depths our deep desires to be seen and validated can push us.

The Bear (Season 3) — Hulu
CW: triggering for all food service workers

I’ll be having a lot more about The Bear in my next video as I take a quick break from copaganda but I’m really most curious to hear what you all thought about this season. It feels difficult to judge because it feels so unfinished and of a piece with the upcoming fourth season, but it seems like the consensus is: “still good, not as good as it has been.” I have my own thoughts, but let me know how you felt below!

The Boys (Season 4) — Amazon
CW: graphic violence, nudity, creeping quickly approaching fascism

The Boys is obviously not everyone’s cup of tea. Its gratuitous with sex and violence to the point where you’re not sure whether you’re excited or just nauseous. The political commentary feels way, way too close to home in the middle of an election year. To top it off, some of the characters have grown a little worn, and drifted apart. It doesn’t feel like everyone’s on the same show anymore. And yet, it consistently entertains me. I’m enjoying Billy Butcher’s story far more than I ever expected, watching A-Train’s conscience is equal parts gratifying and hilarious (shoutout Will Ferrell), Firecracker taps into the way we’ve allowed fascism to go mainstream in the name of fringe entertainment.

I have notes on many of the episodes, from the portrayal of “the smartest person in the world” being the most conniving to the wildly inconsistent pacing to the over-the-top and unnecessary scenes of Homelander being extra violent and mean (we get it, already). But the show consistently holds my attention and I’m always fascinated to see how people react to its obvious political satire, fixating on only fractions of it—conservatives keying into critiques of a woke Hollywood corporation and liberals keying into the portrayal of fascism.

Clipped (Season 1) — Hulu
CW: cringe

Clipped is a fictionalized retelling of the Donald Sterling Clippers scandal in the NBA from 2014. As a basketball fan who watched this all play out in real time a decade ago, this show is laughably terrible. It messes up fundamental aspects of the timeline, the portrayals of real people are not even remotely close, and the basketball itself looks atrocious on the rare occasion they show it. Based on the book by Executive Producer and Lakers insider Ramona Shelburne, the show sports a deep and obvious disrespect for the Clippers franchise, to the point that I’d be pretty insulted if I was a fan of the team. Compared to another recent NBA show, HBO’s Winning Time, Clipped feels like a Lifetime reenactment.

Putting aside basketball, the show is better, but still has many flaws. The tone of the show is all over the place, seemingly asking us to laugh at Ed O’Neil’s portrayal of the incompetent Sterling, in a way that undercuts the gravity of the situation. The storyline surrounding V. Stiviano—the woman who released the tapes—is similarly confusing in tone, although that might have more to do with her real life alter ego being sincerely strange.

All in all, it’s an incredibly unintentionally funny show that’s supposed to be about racism in a business where white men own teams of black men, built on an empire of racial housing discrimination. There’s interesting stuff to be said here, but the show is awful.

Hacks (Season 3) — HBO
CW: 

I’m only about halfway through the third season of Hacks, and while I’ve enjoyed it, I find myself wondering why I haven’t finished a season that concluded a month ago. Part of that has been that I’ve been busy. Part of it has been that the show just hasn’t held my attention the way it did in the first season. But I think the biggest thing for me is that, when searching for a decompressing laugh, I’ve turned to animated TV over any live action sitcom. It’s the same reason I’m behind on Abbott Elementary.

While I always enjoy these shows when I do get around to watching them, there’s a part of me that wants to get as far away from real life as possible if I’m going to relax and laugh. This is to say nothing of the quality of Hacks—I really enjoyed the colonoscopy prep episode, both for the comedy and the drama—but I feel like critics often try to hide their own experience of the world from their criticism, and I just want to be honest.

House of the Dragon (Season 2) — HBO
CW: violence, nudity

I know everyone said this after the Game of Thrones episode “The Long Night,” but seriously—why is this show so dark? I’m starting to suspect it has to do with Max’s compression because The West Wing looks like the worst lit show in the history of television on that platform as well.

Anywho, House of the Dragon is fine. Something I find both interesting and difficult about the show is how much of the plot is built off miscommunications, blunders, and idiocy. I understand that the show is portraying the ease with which conflicts spiral out of control due to unforeseen consequences, but I also find it hard to invest in any of the characters when they all seem to be varying levels of incompetent, stupid, or internally inconsistent. Seriously, how much of this story’s plot hinges on Ser Criston Cole being a hypocrite?

The Sympathizer (Season 1) — HBO
CW: violence, nudity, racism

I found myself thinking frequently of Little Drummer Girl while watching The Sympathizer, another Park Chan-Wook directed miniseries about an intense and complicated conflict. There it was Palestinian and Israeli spies (probably not hard to figure out why it was on my mind) and here, the Vietnam War from the perspective of a communist double-agent. The series was a bit inconsistent and the ending confusing and muddled, but the acting performances and direction were incredibly powerful. Park’s work is often focused on memory and perspective, using the focus of the camera to show you only part of the picture, or out of sequence, drawing the viewer into the point of view of one character, only to reveal a bigger truth that was being hidden. What I find most interesting about Park’s work is that this bigger truth does far more to complicate the characters, story, and emotions than it does to provide clarity. His stories reject the neat narratives we use to understand conflicts and people, and he does it with as much style as anyone.