Jersey Shore Family Vacation (Season 2)

This post is a product of completionism, both from a TV-watching perspective and a blogging perspective.

Everyone has a guilty pleasure show and this is mine. I don't know why I watch this. It's practically scripted and everyone's basically a muted version of their former selves. I reviewed Season One, kind of, and don't have much additional to say this time. The gang wasn't always able to be in the same place at the same time, and between Deena being pregnant and Ronnie going through some serious issues with his wife, there wasn't always tons of fun to be had. Nonetheless, I still consume this content even though it hasn't really been a ton of fun since somewhere around Season Three or Four of the original series.

Grade: C

South Park (Season 22)

South Park re-invented itself late in its run with season-long serialized material, and the novelty has worn off that change and there's now some distance from the excellent Season 19. They've been pretty hit-or-miss with their material since then, with some excellent episodes tossed together with some misfires (see basically the entire back half of Season 20). It's inevitably compared to Family Guy and The Simpsons, and the good news is that the quality has held up far, far better than that of either of those two shows.

One nuance of Season 22 is that libertarians Trey Parker and Matt Stone take aim at some of the opinions expressed in older seasons of South Park. The pro-capitalist stance they took back in Season Two's "Gnomes" is reversed in their two-part season finale in which they attacked Jeff Bezos and Amazon's continual takeover of our way of life (though the principal mouthpiece was effectively a talking Amazon box, so it wasn't a full-on endorsement of communism/socialism, either). Similarly, the two-parter of "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal" seemed almost like an apology for Season Ten's "ManBearPig", in which they dumped on Al Gore and his focus on global warming. Though they didn't exactly let up on Gore, they presented 'ManBearPig' as something to be taken seriously and the dangers of kicking that particular can down the road. It certainly resonated.

When they weren't trying to make a point, Parker and Stone did put together some funny material over the course of the season. "Buddha Box" took on our society's smartphone addiction to hilarious effect (and brought a little victory to the hectic lives of PC Principal, Strong Woman, and the PC Babies). Also effective was the Halloween episode "The Scoots", which presented a not-so-subtle homage to The Birds and Mr. Mackey going insane about the plethora of e-scooters being scattered about town.

Less good were "Tegridy Farms", which featured newly minted weed farmer Randy Marsh taking on vape culture. While it was the rare episode in which they focused almost exclusively on comedy rather than messaging, and despite the re-emergence of Towelie, it didn't come out all that funny, (and on a personal note, from someone who neither smokes weed nor vapes, much of it didn't resonate). The plot twist of Randy's new career was used to good effect for the rest of the season, however. Also weak was "The Problem with a Poo", a weird takedown of Mr. Hankey that seemed scatterbrained and lacked focus; it may have just been an excuse for Parker and Stone to create an episode with that title, given the similarly-named attack on The Simpsons.

It's still impressive that South Park keeps chugging along like this after this many years. They've mostly lost the capacity to surprise me, but maybe they'll have another Season 19 waiting in the wings in ten years.

Episode Grades:

1. "Dead Kids": B-
2. "A Boy and a Priest": C+
3. "The Problem with a Poo": D+
4. "Tegridy Farms": C-
5. "The Scoots": B
6. "Time to Get Cereal": B-
7. "Nobody Got Cereal?": B+
8. "Buddha Box": A
9. "Unfulfilled": B
10. "Bike Parade": B

Season Grade: B-

Movie Grab Bag #2!

I mentioned at the bottom of my last post that I was surely forgetting a few films that I had recently seen. And I was! So here's a recap of three more...

American Graffiti

I wrote that The Sting was my favorite of the old movies I watched, but I had completely forgotten American Graffiti when I wrote that. Gun to my head, I think that still holds true, but it's pretty close. This film follows recent high school graduates Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) and Steve Bolander (Ron Howard) on the last day before they have to leave for college, along with their friends John Milner (Paul Le Mat) and Terry "The Toad" Fields (Charles Martin Smith). The four each get mixed up in their own adventures over the course of the film, and the stories only occasionally intersect.

The film was made in 1973 and set in 1962; accordingly, it has basically every early-60's and late-50's song you're familiar with in its soundtrack. Most of the storylines are entertaining (I particularly enjoyed Toad's surprising success at picking up a girl and Milner's racing rivalry with Bob Falfa, played by a very young Harrison Ford) and gave me a good feeling of what life must have been like for young people back then. All four of the primary characters are given compelling, life-changing arcs, and their development is just as much of a focus as packing the plot with amusing teenage hijinks.

Grade: B+

Fargo

Weird film. But also a really good one.

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) needs cash quick, and hires a couple of hit men (Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife so that ransom money can be extorted from her rich father. Predictably, the scheme goes wrong, but in unpredictable ways, as a few homicides creep into the mix, which gets the attention of the Brainerd police department, led by Marge Gunderson (an Oscar-winning Frances McDormand).

Jerry's scheme continues to spiral out of control as he gets more and more desperate to both get his hands on the money and keep Marge and the police off of his trail. It's part thriller and part comedy, as the characters (particularly the kidnappers) are ridiculous enough to create humor amidst serious material. The dialogue makes it pretty goofy as well, as many of the characters are just so gosh-darn polite and speak in a Canadian-sounding accent. Fargo is gruesome, violent, and occasionally hysterical, with some excellent acting performances.

Grade: A-

Ralph Breaks the Internet

I'm kind of on record saying that a sequel to the nearly flawless Wreck-It-Ralph was probably unnecessary, and many Disney attempts to build a franchise out of a successful film don't do so at a Toy Story level. Ralph and cutesy racer girl Vanellope von Schweetz had a natural conclusion to their story, but now they take their adventure out of video games and into the world wide web, for some reason.

Well, okay, there is a reason, and it all stems from Vanellope's boredom with her repetitive daily life, which leads to a series of events that threaten the unplugging of her game, Sugar Rush. The pair go on a quest to get enough money on the internet to order a replacement part so that her game will work again, and en route, we get plenty of amusing jokes about how the internet works, which few kids will likely understand. Visually, the internet world is stunning and rates on par with the Sugar Rush world from the first film, if not better.

The best part of the film, both for myself and my daughter, were the cameos from past Disney princesses in which they hang a lampshade on the ridiculousness of the plots, family structure, and gender roles from their older films. I was laughing out loud during quite a bit of this.

Wreck-It-Ralph had a natural antagonist that was present through most of the movie, but this film has a moment with about a half hour left where it realizes that woah, everything is resolved already, so it sort of manufactures a villainous figure to create some suspense down the stretch. I didn't care for it, but it fit the theme of the film, which is that friendship involves supporting others with their dreams and aspirations, even if it's not what we might selfishly want.

Grade: B