BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: October 30, 2023

Welcome to my Monday newsletter. This week, I am looking at the second season of The Gilded Age and the latest episode of The Morning Show, catching up with Frasier and paying tribute to Matthew Perry.

A RETURN TO "THE GILDED AGE"

I was really excited for The Gilded Age when it premiered in January 2022. Although I never watched creator Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey, I was intrigued by this take on an interesting, and somewhat underrepresented time in American history. While the production values were spectacular and there were things to like in the performances, I ended up feeling a bit cold about the first season. It felt a little bit too stuffy and I felt as though the large number of characters led the plot to meander quite a bit.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: October 23, 2023

Welcome to my Monday newsletter. After a busy week last week, it was a quiet week so here are some thoughts on the latest episodes of Lessons in Chemistry and The Morning Show as well as brief thoughts on the rest of The Fall of the House of Usher.

"LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY" HITS ME RIGHT IN MY WEAK SPOT

I don't know exactly why, but for some reason I just can't handle dogs in distress on TV (or in real life, obviously). Now I know what you may be thinking. That's not really a hot take. No one likes to see that. But it's very out of character for me when it comes to fictional properties. I can handle sad things, I can handle scary things. I don't get emotionally overwrought about sad or heavy TV scenes. I don't have any trouble in general separating fiction from real life so deaths of human characters generally do not put me in a very emotional place. But I can't watch or read anything where a dog dies or gets hurt or feels sad without crying. I actually actively stay away from things like that because I don't want to cry. 

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: October 16, 2023

Welcome to a busy Monday newsletter. This week, I am looking at three big premieres - Frasier, Lessons in Chemistry and The Fall of the House of Usher. I also look at the latest episode of The Morning Show, the return of Saturday Night Live and more!

"FRASIER" RETURNS 

If Frasier was a brand new show in 2023, and not a revival, there is no chance it would have been a multi-camera sitcom. It came from a veteran multi-camera creative team and originally premiered in an era where single camera comedies were few and far-between. But even then, it had a different sensibility than a lot of the "live studio audience" shows. With its high-brow humor and theatrical sensibility, it always felt like the upper class of its genre that eventually moved into the single camera realm. It would be even more of an outlier now with the multi-camera comedies getting dumber and dumber as the years go on.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: October 9, 2023

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! Today I am looking at NBC's new drama Found, THR's Top 50 Shows of the 21st Century, the most recent episode of The Morning Show and more!

NBC "FOUND" A SERVICEABLE DRAMA

After The Irrational was a big stinker that couldn't pass muster by procedural drama standards, I'm happy to report that NBC's other new fall drama, Found (Tuesdays at 10pm), is an improvement. It's not amazing, mind you. But it has enough qualities that made me at least interested in possibly watching more episodes.

There have been many missing persons series on network television over the years and the problem they all run into is the stories get very repetitive. Unlike other crime dramas, it's hard to stray too far from the "locked in the basement" or "we have [blank] hours to find them" tropes. Because of that, it's very hard to find a harrowing or interesting case that can transcend the restricting subgenre. 

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: October 2, 2023

Welcome to my Monday newsletter! Today, I am looking at NBC's new drama The Irrational, the latest episodes of The Morning Show, Shark Tank and more!

"THE IRRATIONAL?" MORE LIKE "THE ILLOGICAL" AMIRIGHT

Watching NBC's newest procedural drama, The Irrational (Mondays at 10pm), it was almost refreshing in this fall of limited scripted options and tons of reality and game shows on broadcast. Almost. There were still quite a few eye-rolling moments in the series, which stars Jesse L. Martin as a behavioral science professor helping solve crimes. The leaps in logic and the fastest hostage negotiation I've ever seen on TV are to be expected but it still makes me shake my head because procedurals do have the ability to bring something new to the table and not be uber-dumb. So often they just don't take the time to be a well-crafted version of what they're trying to be and this one seemed to distill the complications of behavioral science into the simplest concepts possible.