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.
I must admit that I had an embarrassing moment when I started this show. The first scene shows a montage of different people with a voiceover. I definitely thought that was a commercial even with the word "irrational" so I only half paid attention. It wasn't until I saw the hostage situation that I realized we were already into the pilot. But the fact that I thought I was watching a commercial speaks to how cheap the show looks. At least I was able to laugh at myself for that moment. The show itself had no levity at all. Martin has been strong in other things but he's delivering a pretty blah performance and the supporting cast is equally forgettable. Even in a year with so few procedurals on TV, this is still a miss for me.
"THE MORNING SHOW" CONTINUES ITS UPS & DOWNS
There is more shows coming soon but right now, my week to week scripted shows are at a minimum. I'm basically watching the end of the third season of Only Murders in the Building and then the current season of The Morning Show as far as scripted shows releasing new episodes. So, I have more to say about The Morning Show after watching the third and fourth episode of the third season over the last two weeks.
The Morning Show has become a show that is always teetering on the edge of being insanely stupid. Sometimes it falls on the right side and sometimes it falls on the wrong side. In the third episode, it fell on the right side. So much could have gone wrong in an episode where network executive Cybil Reynolds (Holland Taylor) goes into damage control mode after the e-mail hack from episode two reveals that she referred to The Morning Show co-host Christine Hunter (Nicole Beharie) as "Aunt Jemima." The episode did not feature Reese Witherspoon at all and even Jennifer Aniston was a decidedly supporting character for the episode. While it stretched plausibility that the interview between Christine and Cybil would ever actually happen at a network, Beharie and Taylor crushed in the aforementioned scene. It was an episode dealing with race in many ways and The Morning Show surprisingly handled it well.
Then we got to episode four, an episode filled with dealmaking and upfronts, something with less high stakes so that should be more in the wheelhouse for The Morning Show. But no. First of all, if I wasn't as much of a TV junkie, I would not have understood some of their upfront comments. But that doesn't mean it was clever or fun to be on the inside. There were lines like "I miss Covid, why can't we do this on Zoom?" which induced a huge eyeroll from me - oh and by the way, this show is OBSESSED with mentioning the pandemic. Bad choice to do that since its second season was completely derailed by trying to incorporate Covid. All the upfronts stuff was an example of Hollywood's worst tendencies to think people at large care more about the ins & outs of their industry than they do. Of course industry specific shows can be great. But The Morning Show is sometimes simultaneously too broad and silly to have anything compelling to say about the industry yet too insider-y for the average viewer. I also just can't stress enough how much I don't care about any scene with Reese Witherspoon and Julianna Margulies.
So we're up and down, as usual, with The Morning Show. A show that is so capable of great moments (Beharie/Taylor) while also falling flat on its face regularly (Jon Hamm has not been used well to date). I'm sure I'll have more mixed feelings after a couple more weeks.
SOME LOVE FOR "SHARK TANK"
Shark Tank began its 15th season this week and I don't think it always gets enough credit for being such a durable concept that has allowed it to join Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother and others among all-timer reality shows and this one isn't even a competition where you get to know contestants for an entire season.
Thanks in large part to its very compelling group of sharks (it's always at its best when there are no guest sharks and just five of the six "regulars"), the show has really barely changed its format at all and yet it continues to provide great TV. I find myself equally interested when a deal goes through and when it doesn't, when the sharks are fawning and when the sharks are nasty and when the product would personally interest me and when I could care less.
I was late to the Shark Tank game (I watched an episode where I had a distant connection to one of the contestants several years into its run and was instantly hooked). It's like the procedural drama of reality shows. You don't need to have watched the previous episode. Heck, you don't even need to have watched the previous segment before the commercial break. Each pitch stands on its own as interesting television.
So congrats to Shark Tank on 15 years. I hope it runs for many more. I imagine the show will try to continue even when some of the sharks retire but that might be where I draw the line. I can't imagine the show without Mark, Lori, Damond, Robert, Barbara and Mr. Wonderful. And for those reasons, I would be out.
SCRIPTED SHOWS PREMIERING THIS WEEK
Although it's nowhere near the normal fall levels, we have a few more premieres trickling in as the calendar turns to October. On Tuesday, NBC has the second of its two new fall dramas with Found, a show that was originally slated to air last season (and even given a premiere date) but then held. NBC also has the second season premiere of Quantum Leap and the beginning of the back half of the final season of Magnum P.I. on Wednesday. Syfy has the third season premiere of Chucky on Wednesday while Max has the second season of Our Flag Means Death on Thursday. Both shows have a bit of a cult following but haven't really broken through. Probably the most anticipated premiere (not for me) of the week is the second season of Loki on Disney+, dropping its first episode Thursday night. While Marvel shows have had diminishing returns for Disney+, Loki's first season was pretty well liked and got a fair amount of buzz. It's also the first Marvel show to return for a second season on the streamer so we'll see if audiences can get back to being enthusiastic about Marvel TV after the bad taste of others, most notably Secret Invasion.
RANDOM THOUGHT TO END TODAY
ABC cancelled Home Economics after three seasons soon after the WGA strike ended. The show had been in limbo for months but now we know it will not continue. I am not really sad to see it come to an end but I did enjoy it. I thought the cast really gelled well and it got tighter and funnier as the episodes went on.
No comments:
Post a Comment