Fall 2021 TV Shows
Brooklyn 99 (Hulu, Season 8) - This had to be a really, really hard year for sitcom writers doing “current-day” stuff. B99 does a one-year time skip that covers both Amy’s maternity leave and several waves of covid, with a throwaway line that “all first responders are vaccinated” so they only have to wear masks for flashbacks. Then we got several episodes actually dealing with shady things the police and police unions do (desperately trying to keep the main characters separate from the uniformed officers), a bunch of parenthood and relationship shenanigans, and ending on a big two-part heist episode. Then the crew goes their separate ways, with Holt and Amy championing police reform, Rosa as a private detective, Terry and Charles manning the shop and Jake as a stay-at-home dad. Honestly, this feels like an epilogue more than anything else, a “once more ‘round the block” to wrap up the character arcs. The fact that it’s barely a half-season doesn’t help (their filming schedule was a mess because of covid, and apparently the writers had to throw out an entire planned arc when the BLM protests happened) and honestly the tone hasn’t been quite right since the network switch last season anyway. I’ll miss this cast and the cleverness of the writing of this show, but it was time. I’ll look out for whatever this creative team does next.
The Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix, Seasons 1-3) - After seeing a lot of gifsets of this on Tumblr that made it look really funny, I finally gave it a try...and it is, in fact, pretty funny. Also, Drew Barrymore is only a few years older than me, which I hadn’t realized. It gets a fun vibe going of mixing overdone suburban drama with bloody violence and moderately realistic reactions to things. The third season gets a bit long in the tooth with a lot of the gags, honestly, though I realize it was intended to be watched a year or so after the second, rather than binged straight through. And clearly they wanted to get a fourth season, in that they wrapped up things in a maybe/sorta/kinda way. Abby and Eric sorta got together and the Mr. Poplovic plotline got finished, but we never did find out what was up with Mr. Ball-Legs and Joel’s undead life is just beginning. (And Sheila has a cult, but that was coming sooner or later; Ann can just come back and join it.) I don’t think a fourth season would actually have brought better closure, mind you, and this is somewhat acceptable to end on.
Titans (HBOMax, Season 3) - A melding of “A Death in the Family” coupled with the immediate return of Jason Todd as evil Red Hood. They made an interesting choice to have Scarecrow be the inmate who’s helping the police, instead of the Riddler, though that all ends up making sense in the end. They didn’t quite know what to do with Superboy or Blackfire (Superboy never having been a core member of this team of Titans in the comics-he’s basically taking Cyborg’s seat since Cyborg is off with the Doom Patrol) so they paired them up in a romance arc that only sorta-kinda works. I think the writers realized they had too many characters to try to shoehorn in, so they resolved Hawk and Dove, then brought back Blackfire, then only brought Donna and Raven back for the last third of the season. This season has much more of a proper ending (whether or not they’re getting a fourth season), as all the major plotlines are resolved (Oddly, they never addressed the fake Bruce from S2) and the gang is getting back out of Gotham. I think I maintain my stance that they’ve done some interesting things mashing-up comic plotlines and character beats, but the cursing/violence/sex angle often feels gratuitous and unnecessary and some of those plotline mash-ups work better than others.
The Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix, Seasons 1-3) - After seeing a lot of gifsets of this on Tumblr that made it look really funny, I finally gave it a try...and it is, in fact, pretty funny. Also, Drew Barrymore is only a few years older than me, which I hadn’t realized. It gets a fun vibe going of mixing overdone suburban drama with bloody violence and moderately realistic reactions to things. The third season gets a bit long in the tooth with a lot of the gags, honestly, though I realize it was intended to be watched a year or so after the second, rather than binged straight through. And clearly they wanted to get a fourth season, in that they wrapped up things in a maybe/sorta/kinda way. Abby and Eric sorta got together and the Mr. Poplovic plotline got finished, but we never did find out what was up with Mr. Ball-Legs and Joel’s undead life is just beginning. (And Sheila has a cult, but that was coming sooner or later; Ann can just come back and join it.) I don’t think a fourth season would actually have brought better closure, mind you, and this is somewhat acceptable to end on.
Titans (HBOMax, Season 3) - A melding of “A Death in the Family” coupled with the immediate return of Jason Todd as evil Red Hood. They made an interesting choice to have Scarecrow be the inmate who’s helping the police, instead of the Riddler, though that all ends up making sense in the end. They didn’t quite know what to do with Superboy or Blackfire (Superboy never having been a core member of this team of Titans in the comics-he’s basically taking Cyborg’s seat since Cyborg is off with the Doom Patrol) so they paired them up in a romance arc that only sorta-kinda works. I think the writers realized they had too many characters to try to shoehorn in, so they resolved Hawk and Dove, then brought back Blackfire, then only brought Donna and Raven back for the last third of the season. This season has much more of a proper ending (whether or not they’re getting a fourth season), as all the major plotlines are resolved (Oddly, they never addressed the fake Bruce from S2) and the gang is getting back out of Gotham. I think I maintain my stance that they’ve done some interesting things mashing-up comic plotlines and character beats, but the cursing/violence/sex angle often feels gratuitous and unnecessary and some of those plotline mash-ups work better than others.