Television Review - 2016 (Part 4): #3 TV Experience of the Year - You're the Worst (Seasons One, Two, and Three)

3) You're the Worst (Seasons One, Two, and Three)

I'm not sure what else I have to add here, as I've already covered the first three seasons of You're the Worst in more detail here. I'd say just click that if you're interested in a broader recap of what the show's all about and why I think it's so great.  I'll instead use this space for some member berries that should amuse those who've watched it already.

• Vernon: "The popcorn is trash juice. Pass it on."

• Paul: "I can finally say it. You are so stupid! Why does no one talk about how dumb she is? She's like the dumbest person on the planet! 50 years ago, she would be sterilized for the good of evolution."
• Lindsay: "I'm not so stupid that I couldn't get you to let me bone another guy in front of you and make you think it was for our marriage."

• "Sunday Funday! Better than a Monday! Can only do it one way! And that is the drunk way!"

• Edgar: "Sorry Jimmy, I can't come. My car broke down."
• Jimmy: "Oh, well, that's not a surprise. Piece of shit with no auxiliary plug or car booze."

• Lindsay: I hope she gets pregnancy 'roids and they leave her bed-ridden and I have to raise her baby myself. I'd parent the shit out of her. "Wear that skirt. Don't blow that boy. This is pizza."

• Lindsay: You can't leave! I love you.
• Paul: Do you even know what love means?
• Lindsay: Yeah, it's like, "Hey, I love you," smooch smooch, "Now go make me some bagel bites."
• Paul: Love isn't about having somebody to get you things. Love is putting someone else's feelings above your own. Do you think you could ever do that? Honestly?
• Lindsay: EW!

• Lindsay: Ooh, another dick pic! And forwarded. Online dating is so fun.
• Gretchen: Who are you forwarding them to?
• Lindsay: This gay porn site pays me ten bucks a dick. I have a job!

• Jimmy: The problem is death doesn’t bother me. I’m not upset by the inevitable. It’s like being upset by the weather, or an Irishman proving to be untrustworthy.

• Killian: Hi.
• Jimmy: What?
• Killian: I just moved in... over there.
• Jimmy: Of course you did.
• Killian: Why do you say that?
• Jimmy: Because the death of any interesting neighborhood is the influx of white procreators.
• Killian: Oh, that's cool. My nutritionist is gay, too.
• Jimmy: I'm not gay. I'm English.

Yeah I ran out of steam with looking up quotes. Just watch this show if you haven't. It's hilarious, interesting, and addictive.

Television Review - 2016 (Part 3): #4 TV Experience of the Year - The Sopranos (Season One)

4) The Sopranos (Season One)

I intended to binge The Sopranos, thinking I could get through it in a month or two. This was folly. Folly!

There are 86 hour-long episodes of The Sopranos. That's about 26 more hours of television than The Wire, which took my wife and I a great deal of time to chug through even before we had our daughter. This is not a short project.  We only got through one season before the end of the year starting in late November and if we manage to finish this off by mid-March, I'll consider that a pretty good success.

I mention The Wire because there's plenty of parallels to that show. Season One of The Sopranos is about organized crime and the various factions and power struggles that can exist within drug gangs as well as between them. There are few people, if any, on the show that we'd consider to be universally good. All of the major characters are very well-drawn and have at least some endearing qualities (in varying amounts) to make us feel for them despite all the muck.

All of that said, it's not fair to hold any show up to The Wire's standard or premise, so that's where I'll cut off the similarities. The Sopranos is much different in that it has a main character in antihero Tony Soprano, portrayed extraordinarily well by James Gandolfini. Tony has what you would otherwise call a normal family unit, with his wife Carmela, daughter Meadow, and son Anthony Jr. They go through a lot of typical bumps in the road you might see in televised marriages and parent-child relationships with one pretty significant exception; Tony is an underboss in the largest New Jersey-based mafia crime syndicate.

A lot of Season One focuses on how Tony manages his relationship with his children and works through their problems. Both kids understand (or come to understand) that their father's in the mob, but neither has a good sense of all that entails. It's a struggle for Tony to be any sort of positive role model in light of his work. The community seems to understand what Tony's business is all about as well, and that affects how others interact with Meadow and A.J.

Tony Soprano lives in a constant moral gray area. Even within his mob activities, Tony is faced with situations that test him to do the "right" thing. Usually, these situations initially cause him rage, but often he comes down on the side of loyalty and (relative) justice, which helps us root for him a lot despite how despicable he can be. It will be interesting to see later in the series whether Tony stays on that side of the line or whether he'll become even more corruptible a-la-Walter White.

Another thing making Tony unique is the fact that he's seeing a psychiatrist. That's a pretty revolutionary idea for a mob character, going each week to spill one's guts to someone for mental health purposes. As you might imagine, a crime syndicate might be uncomfortable with one of its leaders talking in-depth to a civilian about his life. Tony's relationship to the woman, Dr. Melfi, grows increasingly complicated throughout the season and it's fascinating to watch the varying levels of openness and honesty he brings to their sessions.

The other characters are interesting to varying degrees. Carmela is compelling as a wife who seemingly simultaneously condones and disapproves of Tony's criminal activities. The two are only occasionally good together and it's a pretty damaged relationship, in no small part because Tony's cheating on her all the time. Tony's mother, Lyvia, is an absolute monster of an older woman whose bitterness and self-centeredness wear heavily on Tony emotionally -- and later tangibly.

The most interesting and well-developed of Tony's underlings is Christopher, your classic junior member of the crime syndicate who wants more respect among his peers. Christopher is much younger than the rest of Tony's gang and gets himself into trouble with his impatience and temper. Early on in the series, his loyalty to Tony is tested and he chooses the faithful path despite his apparent standing within the group.

Throughout most of the season, Tony's in a power struggle with his "Uncle Junior" a man full of hubris eager to lead the mob and command respect. Junior often makes rash decisions and it's usually on Tony to sway the gang in a more sensible direction without giving off the appearance of stepping on Junior's toes. It's a volatile dynamic that drives most of the conflict in Season One.

I'll list a couple of problems I had with this season. The first is that the word "fuck" (and its variants) are beaten to death so hard that by the third episode, the word contains about as much forcefulness as "toaster" or "grapefruit" or "the". Second, there is a scene involving a hit on Tony that is so poorly executed by the would-be murderers that it comes off as comedic rather than the heart-pounding climax of the episode it was meant to be.

Despite those flaws, the first season of The Sopranos is an addictive TV show and has a satisfying plot with some rich characters. The show does a good job with its supporting cast and there's so much depth to it that they have plenty of room to flesh out the ensemble over future seasons. I'm excited to see how this one will unfold. Only 73 more hours left!

Season Grade: A-

Essential Episodes: "Meadowlands" (s1.ep3), "College" (s1.ep4), "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano" (s1.ep13)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

From the opening "crawl" of Star Wars Episode IV:

"Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. 

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet."

Essentially, George Lucas & Co. wanted to extend the theatrical Star Wars saga and saw fit to make a movie out of the success of the aforementioned rebel spies. It's every bit the "Star Wars Episode 3.5" that everyone expresses in shorthand, with the plot leading directly up to the opening events of A New Hope. What makes it a little different than the main saga is the relatively small amount of character overlap. There's cameos here and there, but by and large we're focusing on a completely new set of people.

Without giving away too much, the plot focuses on Jyn Erso, a woman whose father, Galen, is one of the chief architects of the Death Star against his will (sort of). Early in the film, Jyn gets rescued by rebels who intend to use her as a means to get to Galen. What follows is an action-packed adventure as Jyn and various allies she encounters along the way combine forces to recover the Death Star schematics, hoping to later use them to exploit a flaw in the superweapon.

I suppose this is because this isn't an "official" episode of Star Wars, but I was a little let down that the opening didn't employ John Williams' original score. Despite that blip, Rogue One was entertaining and a worthwhile experience. I didn't find it as much fun as last winter's The Force Awakens, but it was certainly a more original story. All of the other Star Wars installments are Jedi-focused and it was interesting to see a story of heroes in this universe who lacked Jedi powers.

Anyway, my thoughts on this movie are a bit scattered, so I'll finish this off in bullet point format.

• K-2SO is probably the best droid of the Star Wars saga. Imagine C-3PO if he wasn't humorless, a wuss, or terrible. Definitely one of the film's highlights.

• The scene near the end of the movie in which the Death Star slowly emerges on the horizon as Krennic looks on was very well-shot.

• Despite playing a character that couldn't have been more different, Mads Mikkelsen will always be Le Chiffre to me.

• The dialogue and writing style were similar to that of The Force Awakens, and that's a good thing. These elements were very problematic in Episodes I, II, and III.

• I don't think that the film did a very good job with character work. This isn't a knock on the actors, who were generally good. The heroes could've been fleshed out significantly better, particularly Cassian, who was pretty damn nondescript for the person with the second-most screen time in the film. Chirrut and Baze will be remembered for their unique combat abilities, but little else.

Overall, it was a movie that held my interest and entertained me. However, outside of Jyn, it was hard to get too invested in any of the new characters. It's probably for the best that this was a one-and-done.

Film Grade: B-

Television Review - 2016 (Part 2): #5 TV Experience of the Year - Silicon Valley

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)

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.

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

You're the Worst (Seasons 1-3)

I've been curious about You're the Worst pretty much since FX and its related networks began running commercials for it. After a couple recommendations from friends and a clutch Twitter suggestion regarding how to watch it on the cheap (read: free), I was set to binge the first couple seasons and catch up to the third, which just wrapped up last week. I've had mixed reactions to the shows I've decided to pick up on a whim this year, but You're the Worst was a thoroughly rewarding experience.

You're the Worst is set in Los Angeles and follows Jimmy Shive-Overly (Chris Geere), a British writer whose arrogance and self-serving behavior would be downright horrible to encounter in real life, but is thoroughly amusing to watch on screen. In the first episode, Jimmy encounters a kindred spirit in Gretchen Cutler (Aya Cash) after being thrown out of a wedding. On the surface, the two are a near-perfect match in their crass dealings with other human beings. They wind up hooking up repeatedly and at least initially insist to one another that they have no desire for a relationship; each supposedly always has "one foot out the door". Fittingly, the only lyric of the show's theme song is "I'm gonna leave you anyway."

Jimmy lives with Edgar Quintero (Desmin Borges), the only of the four main characters who seems like anything resembling a good person. He's a war veteran but doesn't have much of a means to support himself, so he lives with Jimmy and repays him by performing household tasks. The core cast is rounded out by Gretchen's best friend Lindsay Jillian (Kether Donohue), an intellectually-challenged woman who's married to her nerdy husband Paul. Lindsay is dissatisfied with her marriage and spends most of the show oscillating between half-trying to be happy with Paul and seeking out sex with other men. Jimmy and Gretchen are the oft-selfish assholes from whom the show's title was coined, but Lindsay might really be "the worst".

At first, the show's humor is built around Jimmy and Gretchen's complete disregard for social convention and courtesy. It's a lot of fun to watch them troll around Los Angeles and be truly awful to everyone they encounter (Geere's British accent greatly enhances the comedic effect). However, it's tough to get three seasons of a good show out of just that premise, so You're the Worst is most effective when it begins to delve into the show's interpersonal relationships and serious issues that face the characters. If we've learned anything from the movies No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits (which were both released in 2011 and are the same movie), it's that it's difficult for fictional characters to continually hook up with one another without emotional attachment. Yes, Jimmy and Gretchen grow closer and develop a need for each other's emotional support, but that development is more complex than the predictable "happily ever after" from the Kutcher/Portman and Timberlake/Kunis relationships. These are two deeply screwed up individuals and even though each learns to (sometimes) put the other person before themselves, you rarely get the sense that they're on solid footing because of everything that's happened in their lives and who they are at their cores.

Much of You're the Worst is lighthearted fun, but the show also tackles serious issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (the "Edgar episode" in Season Three is fantastic), depression, and the fallout of awful parental relationships. I think that BoJack Horseman is probably the closest comparable show I can think of in terms of quick wit meeting dark emotions. Much like the animated show I've spilled far too many words reviewing, You're the Worst sucks you in with lighter episodes with clever banter before bringing out all the feels. Yet no matter how serious the subject matter gets, the show never loses its sense of humor.

Part of that sense of humor are the show's excellent running gags, which are used sparingly and subtly enough to avoid feeling gimmicky. For those who have seen the show already, Vernon's trash juice (Vernon is the stealth MVP of the show) and Jimmy stealing alcohol are two of my favorites. While not technically a running gag, I chuckle on the inside whenever I think of Jimmy's obsession with his "car booze" and "bed booze".

I've heard friends of mine say that Season Three is "over the top" and that the show loses itself, but I fully disagree with that, despite a shark-jumpy moment that takes place early in the season. "Twenty Two", "Seventh Layer" and "The Inherent, Unsullied, Qualitative Value of Anything" (penultimate episodes rule) are three of the series' best installments. If you called it quits early in Season Three, keep going. It's worth it.

There's so much more to discuss about this show, but I don't want to spoil anything in an overview post. I may have to write another at some point discussing the Season Three finale because there was just so much to take in. For those who haven't seen it, this is a really easy show to get into. Give it a try. Since you're reading this, I know you're not doing anything else important, so you don't have much of an excuse.

Season One Grade: A-
Season Two Grade: A
Season Three Grade: A