THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup October 2021

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

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (season 8)

Obviously you can find my most in-depth arguments about Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s final season in the latest episode of copaganda, but I’d like to take a minute to talk about it a little less as a reflection of our modern day hellscape and more as a TV show. I think what makes its flaccid message about the police and police reform in the final season so frustrating is that the show had already clearly lost its fastball. The season was underwhelming from a joke-writing perspective, and some of the episodes were straight-up duds (“Game of Boyles” especially). In the past the show could always default to arguing that police brutality isn’t funny, but when the show has already run its course on so much of its humor, why exactly couldn’t it try something new?

Reservation Dogs (season 1)

As real Skip Intro-heads know, I have a soft spot in my heart for the individual episode as an artform. Every December I take time to write about my favorites of the year, and because of this I keep a list of “circled episodes,” a throwback to when I logged every episode of TV I watched in a notebook, and circled especially moving episodes. While I’m not ready to join the chorus dubbing Reservation Dogs the best show of the year (The White Lotus is still my pick), its sixth episode “Hunting” is at the very top tier of TV episodes of 2021. It encapsulates everything special about the show—from the way it sheds light on a forgotten and marginalized community; to the way it makes us laugh about a big deer named Chunk; to the way it makes us cry with its raw heart-on-its-sleeve honesty; to the way the spiritual and supernatural ambiguously hangs over the entire story.

Rick and Morty (Season 5)

Although it’s not the same cultural juggernaut it once was and while its fans are arguably the most insufferable people in all of TV fandom, Rick and Morty’s fifth season was pretty interesting. As always, the show bounced back and forth between getting high on its own supply and actually touching on the profound in its hit-or-miss episodes (“Mortyplicity” and “A Rickconvenient Mort” stood out as my favorites). But what interested me the most was the way season 5 represents a pivot point for the series. Long loath to get too bogged down in the tedious and complicated nature of worldbuilding, but pressured by its fans to get more into the weeds, the season featured a lot of character building and growth for its central Morty as he sought to forge his own identity. The two-part finale might mark the point where the show stopped being a series of standalone adventures and fully embraced serialized storytelling.

Sex Education (Season 3)

I still have two episodes to watch in this season, but Sex Education’s third season is my favorite of the series thus far and one of the more enjoyable watches I’ve had this year. I’ve always admired the way the show is able to build a safe space to explore sexuality for both its characters and its audience, but what I’ve been most impressed with this time around is the way the show is able to hold empathy for all of its characters at the same time. Whether we condone or condemn any of their actions, the show always avoids making any character a rote villain and continuously adds depth to characters who could easily be tropes in the hands of a lesser show (and as characters like Ruby were in the first two seasons of the show).

Succession (Season 2)

Succession is probably the best show on TV. I’ve been rewatching the show for the video I’ll be making on it this month and, let me tell you, it still slaps. It’s been just about two years since the second season ended, so you’d be forgiven if you’ve forgotten just how hard it slaps but it SLAPS. I’m not sure I’ve ever been at a loss for words in the way I have been with this show. I can’t fully explain why the show is so excellent just yet, but I better figure it out soon.

Ted Lasso (Season 2)

There has been a lot of internet DiScOuRsE about Ted Lasso’s “disappointing” second season. In my opinion, that’s mostly garbage. The show was very good with some flaws in its first season and remains very good with some flaws! I especially like this podcast’s evaluation of the first season and the ways in which it radically deconstructs some conventions while sticking to others, particularly in the realm of masculinity. I think the second season has largely built a great base for a long running show while maintaining the good vibes that made the show a hit last year. Do we need a nice white guy saving everyone with kindness and compassion? Your mileage may vary.

What We Do in the Shadows (Season 3)

The sitcom is just as good in its third season, poking fun at its central cast of all-powerful, immortal vampires by applying their mystical abilities to the mundane like a road trip to Atlantic City or trying to hit on the receptionist at the local 24-hour gym. The highlight of this season has to be the kickball game between our vampire coven and a rival pack of werewolves (first introduced in the first season) over the heart of Nandor’s longtime lover Gail. The entire thing is a beautifully silly riff on this iconic scene from the cinematic masterpiece that is Twilight.

Y: The Last Man (Season 1)

Mileage may again vary on a show about a pandemic that suddenly wipes out roughly half the population of the world (all mammals with a Y-chromosome), and I certainly don’t recommend binging it. But Y: The Last Man, the long anticipated FX series based on the award winning graphic novel, has obvious potential. The show has added layers to the comic by featuring trans men and challenging conventional ideas of who “men” are, but there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, and that’s that the titular “last man”—Yorick—is insufferable. Did we really have to pin the hopes of our species on this dude?