Fall TV and general malaise
I didn't do a fall TV post this year the way I normally do, because...::shrug:: There's too much TV to fit into a tidy post anymore, and I don't care about most of it anyway. Here is the short list of things that I am watching:
The Good Place!!!!! Feel free to picture a bunch of little heart emojis here. Its warm, humanist vision of becoming a better person through community feels like the most fantastical thing about it these days.
Murphy Brown - I did watch the first two episodes, and I'll probably keep watching for a while at least, because it was one of my favorites back in the day, but man, the political jokes feel hacky and tired in a post-Daily Show/Colbert world. The one thing that they've done exactly right is the casting of Murphy's son, Avery. The two actors have great chemistry and their relationship is easily the best thing about the reboot so far.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hasn't started back yet. Jane the Virgin is a midseason show this year. I'll check out the Charmed reboot when it airs. I watched about an episode and a half of Manifest, the "airplane goes missing for five years" show, and didn't find any of the characters interesting enough to stick around (say what you will about Lost, but it did a great job of getting you interested in the characters, at least to begin with.) I watch Superstore, and enjoy it, but it has a little too much of that Office-like cringe humor for me to fully embrace it. (CEG also has cringe humor, but the song-and-dance numbers alongside the depth of emotion balance it out for me.)
What else? I watched one episode of Maniac, the Emma Stone/Jonah Hill series on Netflix, and I'll try at least one more, because maybe I was just in a bad mood, but mehhhh so far. The trippy/dreamlike vibe in the trailers seems like it would be right up my alley (if you'll recall, Restless is my fave Buffy episode), but the first episode didn't hold my attention at all. I've gone full curmudgeon: I just don't like much of anything anymore.
The one new-to-me show that I have been enjoying? Bojack Horseman. I've just started the fourth season. I had watched the pilot at least a year ago and not really liked it at all, but a couple of critics I read on Twitter were talking about it and reading them convinced me to try a couple more episodes, and now I'm hooked. It's very funny, but also dark, dealing with situations like addiction, depression, suicide, and, uh, just very poor decision-making by the titular horse. Man. Horseman.
Other than that, I'm rewatching episodes of Brooklyn 99 and Daria on Hulu, and in the mornings, after the news fills me with rage (approximately three minutes into any broadcast), I usually turn the TV to the ION channel, which airs reruns of Leverage for three hours Mon-Thurs. For some mysterious reason, I find its vision of telegenic thieves dismantling corporate capitalism a soothing contrast to the news. (On Fridays, I turn to FXX, which shows Parks & Rec every morning, but the hopefulness of that vision of government is actually pretty heartbreaking to me right now.)
The Good Place!!!!! Feel free to picture a bunch of little heart emojis here. Its warm, humanist vision of becoming a better person through community feels like the most fantastical thing about it these days.
Murphy Brown - I did watch the first two episodes, and I'll probably keep watching for a while at least, because it was one of my favorites back in the day, but man, the political jokes feel hacky and tired in a post-Daily Show/Colbert world. The one thing that they've done exactly right is the casting of Murphy's son, Avery. The two actors have great chemistry and their relationship is easily the best thing about the reboot so far.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hasn't started back yet. Jane the Virgin is a midseason show this year. I'll check out the Charmed reboot when it airs. I watched about an episode and a half of Manifest, the "airplane goes missing for five years" show, and didn't find any of the characters interesting enough to stick around (say what you will about Lost, but it did a great job of getting you interested in the characters, at least to begin with.) I watch Superstore, and enjoy it, but it has a little too much of that Office-like cringe humor for me to fully embrace it. (CEG also has cringe humor, but the song-and-dance numbers alongside the depth of emotion balance it out for me.)
What else? I watched one episode of Maniac, the Emma Stone/Jonah Hill series on Netflix, and I'll try at least one more, because maybe I was just in a bad mood, but mehhhh so far. The trippy/dreamlike vibe in the trailers seems like it would be right up my alley (if you'll recall, Restless is my fave Buffy episode), but the first episode didn't hold my attention at all. I've gone full curmudgeon: I just don't like much of anything anymore.
The one new-to-me show that I have been enjoying? Bojack Horseman. I've just started the fourth season. I had watched the pilot at least a year ago and not really liked it at all, but a couple of critics I read on Twitter were talking about it and reading them convinced me to try a couple more episodes, and now I'm hooked. It's very funny, but also dark, dealing with situations like addiction, depression, suicide, and, uh, just very poor decision-making by the titular horse. Man. Horseman.
Other than that, I'm rewatching episodes of Brooklyn 99 and Daria on Hulu, and in the mornings, after the news fills me with rage (approximately three minutes into any broadcast), I usually turn the TV to the ION channel, which airs reruns of Leverage for three hours Mon-Thurs. For some mysterious reason, I find its vision of telegenic thieves dismantling corporate capitalism a soothing contrast to the news. (On Fridays, I turn to FXX, which shows Parks & Rec every morning, but the hopefulness of that vision of government is actually pretty heartbreaking to me right now.)