5) Silicon Valley
This year, my top four shows are head-and-shoulders above the rest and I had a lot of trouble deciding on which show would claim this spot. Ultimately, I settled on Silicon Valley, a consistently hilarious comedy with some pretty good characters.
I'm admittedly not very tech-savvy nor do I follow much of what the Pied Piper gang is trying to do with their product. However, even to one with little technical knowledge, it's fascinating to watch the cutthroat nature of the digital business both between competing firms and within them. Richard and company seem to continue to catch big breaks only to be held back from controlling their own destiny at every turn. It's an interesting battle for financial and intellectual independence for some of the most brilliant minds in the industry.
Oh and beyond that, it's funny. Really, really funny.
There is no character on TV quite like Erlich Bachman, a man who has confidence, bravado, and foolishness in spades and in equal proportions. T.J. Miller's screen presence is right up there with that of any comedic actor anywhere. While he's often difficult to take seriously, Miller is able to make us feel for an oft-absurd character whose desire to be part of the Pied Piper team and friendship with Richard come off as genuine. When he faces struggles this season in both departments, we feel for him because Miller makes him the most likable character on the show, even disregarding how entertaining Erlich is when he's trying to impress or influence others.
Over the years, Erlich has replaced Richard as the guy we really root for and it's a good change. Many comedies (::cough:: Modern Family ::cough::) have a tendency to have their characters never really progress, but what Silicon Valley has done with Richard's character through three seasons keeps him both fresh and believable. Richard used to be superlatively timid when he was just trying to get his algorithm off the ground in Season One. By Season Three, he's still pretty nerdy and often tentative with decision-making, but leadership of this group and the frustration of trying to make it in the business world has created a substantial change in his character. He's much more demanding and often arrogant; the latter is a flaw that frequently costs him and makes his failures seem all the more avoidable.
I'd be remiss to do a Silicon Valley review without mentioning Bertram Gilfoyle, a close second to Erlich on the comedic front. Gilfoyle's one liners and deadpan humor are excellent, particularly when he's messing with Dinesh. He's mostly a dick who has little sense of loyalty to the group or any sort of moral code, but he's certainly a favorite of mine.
If you haven't seen Silicon Valley, it's an easy watch with 30-minute episodes and an addictive sense of humor. It's one of the best comedies out there and has been for all three of its seasons.
Season Grade: B+
Essential Episodes: "Maleant Data Systems Solutions" (s3.ep4), "Bachman's Earning's Over-Ride" (s3.ep8), "The Uptick" (s3.ep10)
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Television Review - 2016 (Part 1)
Welcome to my (annual?) review of television shows I've watched during the year.
For reference, here's a list of shows I've watched this year, in no particular order. Unless otherwise indicated, I'm only considering the episodes released during 2016. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything.....
Suits
BoJack Horseman
Silicon Valley
Top Chef
The Big Bang Theory
Modern Family
Mr. Robot
Catastrophe (Seasons One and Two)
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Ballers (Season One)
You're the Worst (Seasons One, Two, and Three)
Archer
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Sopranos (Season One)
South Park
Better Call Saul
Louie (Season Five)
Similar to what I did a year ago, I'm going to do a rundown of my top five television viewing experiences of the past year. Like 2015, however, I'm going to start by covering a few shows I watch that have declined in quality and have been progressing towards irrelevance for me.
Trending Downward
Mr. Robot
I listed Mr. Robot as my fifth-favorite viewing experience of 2015, but even then, I had some problems with it. There was a often a sense of mystery and confusion surrounding Season One's excellent plot, but most of it involved getting to figure out who Elliot is and what he's all about. That largely worked because Elliot is a truly fascinating character. Season Two opened with confusion, confusion, and more confusion. It was as if the show had sacrificed its entertainment value in an effort to keep the viewer in the dark about what's really going on. Mystery and intrigue are nice and all, but at some point, you have to make the viewer care what the resolution will be. I don't love this show enough to wade through the mud. We've still got the back half of Season Two on our DVR and we might never get to it.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
I fell asleep during an alarming amount of episodes during Season Two. Kimmy's initial transition to today's world was what made this show compelling during the first season, but it turns out that this show didn't have all that much to offer beyond that initial storyline. We got a decent arc surrounding Titus' relationship with a construction worker, but not much else was compelling. The show's biggest problems are Lillian and Jacqueline. The former is as uninteresting as she is decrepit and has a one-note sense of humor. The latter is (as I've said before) a retread of Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney from 30 Rock. Throw in Tina Fey's disappointing turn as an alcoholic shrink and there was little to like about this season. I've already seen 30 Rock and don't need to watch a show with exactly the same comedic style and lesser characters.
Modern Family
This has taken up residence as the show on our DVR that we pretty much only watch as a last resort. Eight seasons in, the Dunphys and the Pritchetts haven't changed all that much despite everyone on the show aging. The only character that's shown much in the way of real growth is Haley, and she's not on the short list of the show's most interesting characters. Jay, Phil, and Luke are still great and Ty Burrell is consistently excellent, but they're delivering a brand of humor that's simply become stale after eight seasons. That's forgivable, but at some point, a long-running series needs to rely more on character development to keep things interesting. A few humorous personalities can't carry this show, particularly when Cam and Mitchell haven't had anything interesting to do in awhile, Manny's schtick is just plain old (and the whole mature-person's-mind-in-a-child's-body act was a lot more endearing when Rico Rodriguez was, you know, an actual child), and Gloria is nails-on-a-chalkboard-level annoying.
Over the next week or two, I'll have future installments reviewing my five favorite things I've watched this year for the first time.
For reference, here's a list of shows I've watched this year, in no particular order. Unless otherwise indicated, I'm only considering the episodes released during 2016. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything.....
Suits
BoJack Horseman
Silicon Valley
Top Chef
The Big Bang Theory
Modern Family
Mr. Robot
Catastrophe (Seasons One and Two)
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Ballers (Season One)
You're the Worst (Seasons One, Two, and Three)
Archer
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Sopranos (Season One)
South Park
Better Call Saul
Louie (Season Five)
Similar to what I did a year ago, I'm going to do a rundown of my top five television viewing experiences of the past year. Like 2015, however, I'm going to start by covering a few shows I watch that have declined in quality and have been progressing towards irrelevance for me.
Trending Downward
Mr. Robot
I listed Mr. Robot as my fifth-favorite viewing experience of 2015, but even then, I had some problems with it. There was a often a sense of mystery and confusion surrounding Season One's excellent plot, but most of it involved getting to figure out who Elliot is and what he's all about. That largely worked because Elliot is a truly fascinating character. Season Two opened with confusion, confusion, and more confusion. It was as if the show had sacrificed its entertainment value in an effort to keep the viewer in the dark about what's really going on. Mystery and intrigue are nice and all, but at some point, you have to make the viewer care what the resolution will be. I don't love this show enough to wade through the mud. We've still got the back half of Season Two on our DVR and we might never get to it.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
I fell asleep during an alarming amount of episodes during Season Two. Kimmy's initial transition to today's world was what made this show compelling during the first season, but it turns out that this show didn't have all that much to offer beyond that initial storyline. We got a decent arc surrounding Titus' relationship with a construction worker, but not much else was compelling. The show's biggest problems are Lillian and Jacqueline. The former is as uninteresting as she is decrepit and has a one-note sense of humor. The latter is (as I've said before) a retread of Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney from 30 Rock. Throw in Tina Fey's disappointing turn as an alcoholic shrink and there was little to like about this season. I've already seen 30 Rock and don't need to watch a show with exactly the same comedic style and lesser characters.
Modern Family
This has taken up residence as the show on our DVR that we pretty much only watch as a last resort. Eight seasons in, the Dunphys and the Pritchetts haven't changed all that much despite everyone on the show aging. The only character that's shown much in the way of real growth is Haley, and she's not on the short list of the show's most interesting characters. Jay, Phil, and Luke are still great and Ty Burrell is consistently excellent, but they're delivering a brand of humor that's simply become stale after eight seasons. That's forgivable, but at some point, a long-running series needs to rely more on character development to keep things interesting. A few humorous personalities can't carry this show, particularly when Cam and Mitchell haven't had anything interesting to do in awhile, Manny's schtick is just plain old (and the whole mature-person's-mind-in-a-child's-body act was a lot more endearing when Rico Rodriguez was, you know, an actual child), and Gloria is nails-on-a-chalkboard-level annoying.
Over the next week or two, I'll have future installments reviewing my five favorite things I've watched this year for the first time.
Friday, December 9, 2016
South Park (Season 20)
I've been a big fan of South Park since I was but a middle schooler. In addition to being really funny, it served as an important escape during some tough times in my life and when I was much younger, it helped me to make sense of things that were way over my head or outside of my sphere of knowledge. It's crazy to think that something that's self-described as "a show about potty-mouthed fourth-graders" can be those things, but the truth is that South Park has always had something useful to say and is often on-point with its social commentary.
Recently, South Park has organized itself into season-long arcs. While it's always had some appetite for playing the long game, the commitment to turning each set of 10 episodes into its own little movie with a few side plots mixed in has largely been effective. Season 19 of South Park, which was basically an extended story about PC culture, Donald Trump's rise to popularity, and the unsettling prominence of sponsored content online, was the long-running series' crowning achievement. That sentence seems bizarre, particularly when rivals The Simpsons and Family Guy had thoroughly tanked far prior to that breakpoint, but it's true.
Season 20 of South Park largely picked up right where Season 19 left off. PC Principal remained on as a character, albeit more of a minor one, and we jumped right back into the presidential campaign, featuring an over-his-head Mr. Garrison as a Trump stand-in against Hillary Clinton. Shortly after the season begins, we're introduced to one of the season's best features, "member berries". These are essentially little purple berries that speak in high-pitched voices about pop-culture days of yore ("memba Jeff Goldblum?"), most frequently about Star Wars. The overall point that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were trying to get across with these is that there's a lot of parallels between nostalgia and the things that many voters felt Donald Trump stood for. While this was fairly obvious from the start and they still spelled it out for the viewer, it made for a compelling storyline.
The other excellent narrative from the early half of the season was an in-depth look at online trolling. There's a troll on the school message board that's ripping girls to shreds and everyone is completely convinced it's Cartman. In a crazy twist, it turns out that the troll is Gerald Broflovski, who is just about the last person you'd expect. Gerald is a successful lawyer and is the patriarch of the closest thing that South Park has to a stable family. The stereotypical reasons that one might assign to trolling (rage coming from getting picked on as a kid, behavior stemming from the shittiness of one's own life, a complete lack of morals, etc.) don't really apply to Gerald. He's just doing it because he thinks it's really funny. One of the strongest episodes shows Gerald, fresh off a trolling session, leaving the house and interacting with the world in a thoroughly positive, friendly way. Trolls can be a jerk to strangers on the internet and not have that behavior affect their life at all once they step away from the computer, so it's a way to act privately in the most public of forums. It's commentary on how the internet reflects the ugliness of many of us and that we can't assume anything about the people we meet there.
After a relatively strong start, however, Season 20 begins to lose a lot of its steam. The latter half of the season revolves around a scheme from some folks in Denmark trying to set up something called "Troll Trace" that would make everyone's internet history public. There's some decent one-liners in there along with jokes about just how catastrophic that would be for the vast majority of humans, but overall, the last several episodes fall relatively flat. They're mostly just forcing the plot forward at the expense of being funny or saying anything meaningful, and unlike last season's PC Principal arc, the plot wasn't edge-of-your-seat exciting.
I'm sure much of this can be forgiven because Parker and Stone got thrown for a loop on Election Day when Donald Trump won the presidency and they had to scramble to re-boot an episode in less than 24 hours (consequently, that episode sucked). That afforded them the opportunity to get in more Trump satire (splicing "Hail to the Chief" with "The Imperial March" was particularly inspired, particularly given the season's focus on Star Wars), but there's plenty of that to go around these days. I would have loved to see how they would have wound up the season had Clinton won, because you get the sense that was the story they were prepared to tell.
I guess this means that South Park is back to being just a good show instead of whatever awesomeness we got to experience in 2015. That's just fine for a show that just concluded its second decade of life. At this point, it's doubtful that Parker and Stone's material will ever get stale, because the insanity of our wonderful society will always keep generating more.
Season Grade: B
Recently, South Park has organized itself into season-long arcs. While it's always had some appetite for playing the long game, the commitment to turning each set of 10 episodes into its own little movie with a few side plots mixed in has largely been effective. Season 19 of South Park, which was basically an extended story about PC culture, Donald Trump's rise to popularity, and the unsettling prominence of sponsored content online, was the long-running series' crowning achievement. That sentence seems bizarre, particularly when rivals The Simpsons and Family Guy had thoroughly tanked far prior to that breakpoint, but it's true.
Season 20 of South Park largely picked up right where Season 19 left off. PC Principal remained on as a character, albeit more of a minor one, and we jumped right back into the presidential campaign, featuring an over-his-head Mr. Garrison as a Trump stand-in against Hillary Clinton. Shortly after the season begins, we're introduced to one of the season's best features, "member berries". These are essentially little purple berries that speak in high-pitched voices about pop-culture days of yore ("memba Jeff Goldblum?"), most frequently about Star Wars. The overall point that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were trying to get across with these is that there's a lot of parallels between nostalgia and the things that many voters felt Donald Trump stood for. While this was fairly obvious from the start and they still spelled it out for the viewer, it made for a compelling storyline.
The other excellent narrative from the early half of the season was an in-depth look at online trolling. There's a troll on the school message board that's ripping girls to shreds and everyone is completely convinced it's Cartman. In a crazy twist, it turns out that the troll is Gerald Broflovski, who is just about the last person you'd expect. Gerald is a successful lawyer and is the patriarch of the closest thing that South Park has to a stable family. The stereotypical reasons that one might assign to trolling (rage coming from getting picked on as a kid, behavior stemming from the shittiness of one's own life, a complete lack of morals, etc.) don't really apply to Gerald. He's just doing it because he thinks it's really funny. One of the strongest episodes shows Gerald, fresh off a trolling session, leaving the house and interacting with the world in a thoroughly positive, friendly way. Trolls can be a jerk to strangers on the internet and not have that behavior affect their life at all once they step away from the computer, so it's a way to act privately in the most public of forums. It's commentary on how the internet reflects the ugliness of many of us and that we can't assume anything about the people we meet there.
After a relatively strong start, however, Season 20 begins to lose a lot of its steam. The latter half of the season revolves around a scheme from some folks in Denmark trying to set up something called "Troll Trace" that would make everyone's internet history public. There's some decent one-liners in there along with jokes about just how catastrophic that would be for the vast majority of humans, but overall, the last several episodes fall relatively flat. They're mostly just forcing the plot forward at the expense of being funny or saying anything meaningful, and unlike last season's PC Principal arc, the plot wasn't edge-of-your-seat exciting.
I'm sure much of this can be forgiven because Parker and Stone got thrown for a loop on Election Day when Donald Trump won the presidency and they had to scramble to re-boot an episode in less than 24 hours (consequently, that episode sucked). That afforded them the opportunity to get in more Trump satire (splicing "Hail to the Chief" with "The Imperial March" was particularly inspired, particularly given the season's focus on Star Wars), but there's plenty of that to go around these days. I would have loved to see how they would have wound up the season had Clinton won, because you get the sense that was the story they were prepared to tell.
I guess this means that South Park is back to being just a good show instead of whatever awesomeness we got to experience in 2015. That's just fine for a show that just concluded its second decade of life. At this point, it's doubtful that Parker and Stone's material will ever get stale, because the insanity of our wonderful society will always keep generating more.
Season Grade: B
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)