THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup November 2021

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

As the TV year is picking up this fall, I don’t have time to do full conversations on everything I’m watching but I’m going to keep doing these roundups each month for the rest of the year. Some mild spoilers for shows that are not in season 1, including a play-by-play of the series finale of Lucifer.

Foundation (Season 1)

If you watched Dune and thought, “I liked that but damn, I wish it was a TV series with more time to explore the intricacies and nuances of its vast world”—let me point you to Foundation on AppleTV+. Based off a different groundbreaking sci-fi classic novel from the middle of the century, the show follows the creation of the Foundation, an organization designed to preserve the most important elements of civilization in preparation for the inevitable collapse of the Galactic Empire. It’s a great balance of fate and free will and since it’s a TV show, it has the time and space to explore characters on multiple worlds, and observe the developing collapse in all of its glory. Plus it’s escapist sci-fi—the crumbling from within of an empire definitely isn’t relatable to us Americans, right? Right??

Friday Night Lights (Season 1)

I haven’t made a ton of progress in Friday Night Lights but I’m blown away by how melodramatic the show is and how much of a product of its time it was. Actual quote from a sympathetic character, “I don’t mean gay as in homosexual. I mean gay as in ret****d.” The mid-2000s, what a time.

Inside Job (Part 1)

This Netflix animated show from Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls) and Shion Takeuchi is a fun workplace comedy based on the fictional Cognito, Inc., a shadow world government. Every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard of is real on Inside Job, and the show really finds a great balance between satirizing those conspiracy theories while also indulging that part of us that maybe secretly believes a little bit of some of them. The voice cast and group dynamic are top-notch, especially our tech-genius Reagan Ridley and yes-man Brett Hand: she’s the brains and he’s the charming face of a white man that you need to get anything done in this world.

Lucifer (Season 6)

It took me a little while to get to the finale of this show but it is absolutely bonkers. Like truly unhinged. I looked around on the internet for reviews that would confirm that I wasn’t hallucinating but most they mostly just praised the show for delivering for its fans. Here’s the spark notes:

Lucifer decides not to become God because he doesn't feel like it and instead goes back to Hell to help the damned souls rehab, abandoning his lover (the detective) and their unborn child (who time travelled in this season to confront/kill Lucifer but then decided actually it was good that he abandoned her). Amanadiel becomes God but still is able to like commute to the LAPD to keep tabs on how they're cleaning up their corruption and also be friends/family with everyone. Why can't Lucifer commute? Because reasons. Everyone's happy I guess, whatever.

There is a choral rendition of Champagne Supernova played in its entirety (about 6 minutes) over a wordless montage that showed us where our characters ended up. It was a lot, but cool, it’s how we say goodbye to our characters, right? WRONG. The show flashes forward to the detective's deathbed. She dies and then miraculously de-ages and talks to AmanaGod who's like "are you ready to go home?" And she's like yeah bro.

Then "Welcome to the Black Parade" starts playing. She swoops into Hell where Lucifer is holding a therapy session with some of the biggest villains of the show, who apparently have made zero progress in millennia (time passes more quickly down there, a month is like 1000 years). She's like "thought you could use a partner" and then the door closes as we hit the rock part of the song and the credits roll. Riverdale wishes.

Servant (Season 2)

I watched the first season of this AppleTV+ show from M. Night Shyamalan back in 2019 when it came out but only just now got around to season 2. It follows a couple whose baby has recently died, and in the mother’s denial, they’ve replaced it with a very creepy and lifelike doll. They all do the song and dance of pretending it’s real, including hiring a nanny, until the doll comes to life. Season 2 picks up right after the nanny and baby have disappeared, and while it loses a little of the what-the-fuckness that made the first season truly captivating, by the second half of the season, the show finds a new stride and now looks like it can be an actual multi-season show as opposed to a fun premise that could have just been a movie.

Squid Game (Season 1)

Oh Squid Game. I’m not sure I have much new to say about this show that you haven’t heard before, but it’s pretty solid! I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, and its message is a little heavy handed and simple, but it’s good and I’m glad people really liked it. It’s great to see TV become more multi-national and it’s also great to see class consciousness across borders. Now if we could just do so without exploiting the fuck out of the creators who made it.

Succession (Season 3)

I made a video about it and I’ve been writing recaps for each episode since I finagled my way into some screeners (because I’m a very serious TV person), so I’ll keep this short. Succession is quickly becoming not just my favorite show of the year, but one of my favorite shows ever. I said what I said.

Ted Lasso (Season 2)

I like Ted Lasso! Ted Lasso’s second season spent a lot of time developing its characters and trying to build lasting and more deep-rooted conflicts that could power the show for seasons to come. It remains a show devoted to exploring the nuance behind stereotypes (of masculinity in particular), and while its approach has been a little uneven in some characters, I think that the show did a lot to course correct in the areas it misstepped in season 1. Sam was given a ton of time to shine and to speak on issues of racism and colonialism at a time in which the Premier League is facing a crisis on just that issue. However, some of those representations left a lot to be desired. Dani Rojas, the only South American in a show about soccer, remains a punchline. There is a troubling power-dynamic at work in a relationship the show wants us to root for. And crucially, Nate remains the subject of a number of East Asian stereotypes when it comes to fecklessness and sexuality. The show has laid some groundwork to possibly write its way into richer material, but I think there’s a lot of work still to be done. If you want a more in-depth discussion of some of these issues, I highly, highly recommend this podcast.

What We Do in the Shadows (Season 3)

I don’t have a lot of interesting things to say about What We Do in the Shadows, other than that it is just a consistently fun time. It has been my most reliable laugh factory in 2021, and it’s a blast of a place to hang out in. Check it out if you haven’t already.

You (Season 3)

Oooooh baby. I watched the first season of You with a kind of distant, ironic appreciation. The second season weaponized that attitude against me and the third season doubled down on everything I loved about the show and then some. I genuinely just love this show now. It’s clever and delicious and batshit in all the best ways. I remain impressed with the way the show has commented on the difficult men archetype that American audiences have lapped up for the past two decades, and now with the show moving to France, I am kind of hoping they take the opportunity to turn that sharp criticism towards Americans at large, seeing as we have thought of ourselves as the antiheroes of the world ever since 9/11.