Kicking off today with some new shows and season premieres. First, I have to say how delighted I was when I found out Trying (Apple Plus) had made it to a fourth season. I love this show, I don’t know anyone who watches it, and I would easily recommend it. It follows along the same lines as another one of my favorite shows, Breeders, but with a much more optimistic and light approach. The season finale does a bit of a time jump,so the kids are a little bit older, and they’re saying goodbye to their grandmother who was introduced last season. Really, Princess’s grandmother. She left some gifts behind, but one gift is likely going to be a big focus of the new season. If you aren’t watching Trying, go back and start it from the beginning. It’s so wonderful, and the audio description is so well done.
I was also really excited to see that Netflix had a sequel series to Camp Cretaceous, which was an experience I genuinely enjoyed more than some of the actual films. So, now with Jurassic World Chaos Theory (Netflix), we get the Nublar Six as they are much older. This series has a Y7 rating, I believe, but really is more of a TV-PG. The driving plot behind the show is that the dinosaurs are now on the mainland (as this series takes place in between Fallen kingdom and Dominion), and someone seems to be trying to kill off the Nublar Six. So even though we see Darius in the beginning of the first episode, and he’s later joined by Ben, we’re told that Brooklyn is dead. She died after being attacked by a dinosaur, and then a bunch of raptors attack Darius and Ben, and we’re left at the end of the Series premiere wondering if they are OK. The fact that they killed off the character voiced by Jenna Ortega really feels more like her schedule didn’t allow for her to return to this show. She’s a much more sought after talent now, than when the other series started. But still… damn. I’m gonna love this show though, I can feel it.
Evil (Paramount Plus) is also back, and this series has played around with levels of my desire to see it since the first season. I thought the first season was so incredible because it wasn’t so obvious all the time, full of demons, and this huge story arc that Michael Emerson’s character has to anchor. but, they walked into situations really trying to figure out what the evil is, or what was causing it. It felt like there was going to be more push and pull. Now, every single episode is somehow related to hell, demons, and satan, and it’s just way less engaging. I do love the addition of Wallace Shawn, who joined late last season and seems to be the guy sending them off on their missions, and Michael Emerson is always great as a bad guy, but I’m tired of their plot. I miss season 1. The audio description here, which is Media Access Group, is pretty solid considering now we always have crazy shit going on. They literally never have an episode anymore where you don’t NEED audio description.
What I didn’t like, and might not go to a second episode of, is Shane Gilles’s new comedy “Tires (Netflix), which I was already tired of. The show feels like someone watched The Bear, and wanted to do that, but didn’t understand it. So we got tires. There’s no laugh track here, so you never laugh. this is the kind of show that really needs certain jokes punctuated by a track, because they are only borderline funny. I’m not even sure Shane is really the star here. The pilot didn’t do a great job of introducing the cast, and there wasn’t anything I actually liked here. I know Shane has had problems before with his choices of jokes and cancel culture and stuff, but you’ve gotta go for it, or don’t. This feels like something where he’s gotten so much feedback about what to say, and not say, that the show has defaulted into being this quasi-misogynistic mess. It’s not that I don’t like “bro” shows. I loved Entourage. It had clearly defined characters, and a dynamic that worked. This doesn’t. It is possible that I might need to watch more than one episode to figure that out, but honestly… look at a show like Hacks or Abbott Elementary, and you get those characters in the pilot. You know who they are, what they are doing, their relationships to other characters, etc. It’s really about being able to structure your show in a way to make people want to come back for more, and I’m not sure they did that here.
Speaking of, I checked off another episode of Hacks (MAX), which let me down a bit in the audio description department. My problem is also with the show, as it likely put them in a “rock and a hard place” scenario. But, it’s this roast that they are putting together, and the problem I had was that they have real people playing themselves, like Mario Cantone. But, they had to introduce this generic comic to further the plot about gunning for the late night spot. So, obviously not a real comic, but someone playing a character. but, what about the other people in the roast? I heard a few voices I recognized, like I think Patton Oswalt, but he wasn’t name checked in the AD. This could be because the narrator was unclear if Patton was playing himself of not, but it would have been really nice to know all these comics at the roast. Mario was playing himself, so there’s no reason to believe the other comics weren’t doing that as well.
A Man In Full (Netflix) is such a weird show, because it is running two storylines that started off much closer together, but seemingly have divided quite a bit. Jeff Daniels is still the character I want to see on top at the end, because who roots for the bank? But, the guy isn’t even fun to root for. He’s just angry most of the time. The audio description here is fine. I actually didn’t think about it that much. It wasn’t intrusive. I had to think about thinking about the audio description, if that means anything.
And lastly, Loot (Apple Plus), had Maya Rudolph’s character have to go through all this de-aging crap for this fashion show. I know this upcoming Emmy’s season is a bit all over the place, but a nomination for Rudolph here would be nice. I love MJ Rodriguez, but she’s clearly the straight character here.
