Welcome to my Monday newsletter. This week, I am looking at The Curse, For All Mankind, The Morning Show, Lessons in Chemistry and more!
"THE CURSE" EMBRACES THE CRINGE
I'm not directly familiar with Nathan Fielder's work because I haven't watched Nathan For You or The Rehearsal but I am broadly aware of his brand of humor and how much he enjoys making people squirm. Now he has a new satire on Showtime with Emma Stone and Benny Safdie. Fielder and Stone play a married couple and hosts of a problematic HGTV show. The show gives off the vibe of an improvised show and one that's not afraid to have awkward silences or moments where you can't tell if it's supposed to be comedy or not.
I don't really know what to say about The Curse after one episode. Being familiar with Fielder's work only in passing, I feel like I don't really know what the vibe of this show is. Yet, I am more in on this show than I have been on many other shows this fall. The reason is it has me intrigued. As I've watched more and more shows in the Peak TV era, I've come to recognize familiar beats. That's why a show like Lessons in Chemistry is only sort of grabbing my attention. It's very polished. It has strong actors, beautiful cinematography and pristine direction. But it visits so many story beats of so many prestige TV shows (more on that below). A show like The Curse has none of that and that's precisely what makes it so interesting. It feels raw and almost dangerous.
Now, we'll see where this show goes. Shows that are ambitious and different sometimes cave in on themselves. They have higher ceilings and much lower floors than a show like Chemistry. But I'm definitely going to keep watching. Fiedler is a master at making you feel awkward when you're watching him and Emma Stone is an interesting player in this type of world. I'll certainly be reporting back on this one.
"FOR ALL MANKIND" RETURNS
For All Mankind returned for its fourth season on Friday and I plan to do weekly recaps of a show that I have found to be very underrated. After a first season where it was still finding its way, the second season was a spectacular season of television. I thought the third season was a little more up and down but I continue to be gobsmacked that this show doesn't get itself into any awards conversation with its compelling stories and stunning production values.
In addition to the technical challenges, the show is ambitious by jumping forward many years in between each season. They don't try to force the whole cast staying together for implausible reasons. We're at the point now where there are only two major characters left from the first season and yet it still works. That's because the show puts in the work to catch us up without going deep down the exposition road. However, I do feel like it takes awhile to get your bearings and tune up for a new season so the first episode is never the best one.
That's the case again for the fourth season of For All Mankind. There's the requisite alt-history catch-up to open the episode. I feel like sometimes they try to be a little too cute about it with inconsequential things (does it matter to the mythology of the show that Harvey Weinstein was in legal trouble 15-20 years earlier than he was in real life?) But I think it's all about world building for them and helping us understand what is valued and what backdrop the new era is playing with.
I don't know if I loved the choice of a major NASA tragedy opening up the fourth season after the very dramatic third season opener. The show has dipped back into that well quite often. I know the work they are doing truly can be a matter of life and death I must say the "saying goodbye" scene in space felt a little bit like we had already told this story only this time it wasn't with as important of a character. That being said, I do think the show set itself up well for the season. The series did a nice job of establishing new characters for the season and showing us how they were going to integrate to the plot. I just don't care that much about them yet but I'm sure I'll get there. Look for regular check-ins and recaps of this show!
"THE MORNING SHOW" ENDS ITS ROLLER COASTER SEASON
I have harped on the many issues of The Morning Show for much of its third season and it's well-deserved. It put Reese Witherspoon in space, it awkwardly included January 6 as a major storyline, it can't stop talking about COVID. But let me at least say the best thing it has going for it. It is incredibly watchable. There are shows I think are way better, but very few keep me as interested throughout the entire episode or season.
The season finale, titled "The Overview Effect," kept the momentum going from the penultimate episode and it also channeled the Succession finale with a board vote at the center of the episode (along with some dramatic, violin-infused scoring). Of course, The Morning Show is more like a trashy cousin of Succession but that didn't mean it didn't still have a dramatic effect. The heart of The Morning Show has always been the performances. The murderers row of cast members makes this whole thing work more than it deserves to. And Jennifer Aniston, Billy Crudup and Jon Hamm continued to be great in the finale. Even Reese Witherspoon had some moments and the two leading ladies had their most substantive interaction of the season by far.
This was a roller coaster of a season. Sometimes I forget how absurd it was that they put Reese Witherspoon into space in the first episode. Yet, I do think the season as a whole was an improvement on the second season though it came nowhere close to the very compelling first season, back when it was closer to prestige TV than a ridiculous soap opera. I will never be ok with the January 6th storyline and they really boxed themselves into continuing that in the fourth season with how the season ended. Maybe they can pull a "Landry's a killer" and just find a way to wiggle out of it, but I doubt it. They seemed to think it was a good idea all the way through.
It will be interesting to see if this show can be a player at the Emmys in a year where most of the contenders have either ended or will be delayed by the strike. The show has never been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series and it's hard to believe that could really happen with how ridiculous the show is, but has gotten its fair share of acting nominations and in a lesser year, that might be enough.
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
It's a busy week of premieres, a rarity in recent months. On Tuesday, FX/Hulu premieres A Murder at the End of the World, a thriller limited series that was originally slated for August but then pushed back. There's been a fair amount of critical interest in this one, we'll see if it translates to viewers. On Thursday, Netflix brings back The Crown for its final season. The first four episodes drop Thursday with the remaining six in December. Max also has the return of Julia on Thursday. The show had its fans but was a bit of a surprise renewal. Finally on Friday, Apple TV+ has the premiere of its big budget Godzilla series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. We'll see if it can tap into an audience that isn't really affiliated with Apple's original programming.
THOUGHT TO END TODAY
I really enjoy listening to "The Watch" podcast. Recently, they talked about Lessons in Chemistry and how they get annoyed when characters from another era seem to exist to have 2023 values in a 1950s setting. This week's episode of Chemistry particularly struggled with that but I think that's a problem so many glossy prestige shows like Chemistry have. They want to be important. They want to show enlightened views so contemporary audiences can nod in agreement. It's such an echo chamber and it stretches plausibility.
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