Welcome to a delayed but very full newsletter. Some of these thoughts are dated back a bit as I am still catching up from my busy week but things I don't get to today, I will get to when the newsletter returns to its regular Monday spot next week. Today, I am looking at A Murder at the End of the World, The Crown, The Curse and more!
"A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD"
After a delayed premiere, A Murder at the End of the World premiered last week on FX/Hulu with its first two episodes (the third episode is out now but I haven't watched it yet). The psychological thriller has vibes of an much eerier version of the Knives Out films with Emma Corrin playing an amateur detective trying to solve a murder at an Icelandic retreat where an eccentric billionaire (Clive Owen) has brought a very select group of guests.
The first episode had an extremely long prologue of sorts. By halfway through the first episode, we were not even to the Icelandic retreat. I'm all for setting the stage but I felt like that was a little long to not even have a sense at all of what the actual show is. At first I thought this show was making a conscious effort to not do flashbacks, which I can get on board with since that's an overused mechanism in prestige TV. But then the second episode had a ton of flashbacks so that wasn't it. It wasn't that it was uninteresting but I just felt like I was watching a different show entirely.
Once we got to the retreat and the title murder happened, then it started to take the shape of the show I thought it would be and I am all in on that show. The ambiance is really strong in this episode. Much like The White Lotus, it feels like the setting is a character. The other reason I'm on board is Emma Corrin. After her strong turn in the third and fourth season of The Crown as Princess Diana, she is really strong here. Every time she's on screen, the story is more captivating.
I did think the second episode spent too much time in flashbacks with Corrin's character though when we needed to get to know the other guests. This is obviously a "who done it" of sorts so it's important we get to know the other characters for the stories to pay off. I think the flashbacks, while they were well-done by Corrin, could have been half as long and still been effective. What little we've seen of the other guests is promising but I'd like the show to stay a little more in the moment. Check back next week for my thoughts on the third episode, which dropped yesterday.
"THE CROWN" RETURNS
The sixth and final season of The Crown returned last week with its first four episodes (the remaining six will drop in December). I have watched the first two and I'm sure many of you have already seen all four but I still have a few thoughts to share. It's clear the first part of the season is all about the summer before Diana's death. The first episode starts with the fateful night in Paris where a bystander sees Diana's car speeding into the tunnel then backtracks a few months earlier.
The whole opening sequence, from the flash forward to the use of Chumbawumba as a soundtrack, made The Crown's sixth season premiere feel like a Ryan Murphy production. The regality of the series was nowhere to be found with an odd emphasis on the paparazzi and sensationalism through the first two episodes. I get what the show is trying to do, it's trying to make a commentary on how the toxic paparazzi culture directly led to Diana's death and indirectly led to some of the ills of society. But it felt a little beneath a show like The Crown.
Despite covering one person's life, The Crown has always been episodic in nature. One of the show's strengths has always been picking little (or big) moments and using those moments to weave together a narrative or theme. It never felt like it needed to cover every moment in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. So the sixth season, which is basically covering every little thing Diana did in the Summer of 1997, does not feel like the approach the show likes to take. As great as Elizabeth Debicki is as Diana, I am feeling more and more ready for the show to move past Diana's death to see what the final stretch of episodes looks like.
SOME PRAISE FOR "THE CURSE"
I'm continuing to enjoy The Curse quite a bit with the second episode giving me a little bit more of a sense of the characters while continuing to be cringetastic. I feel like it's not quite clear yet how sympathetic Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone's characters are supposed to be. They mostly seem to be annoying and privileged but the show also seems to be just a little sympathetic to them. The show also has a very unique blend of humor and drama. Much of the episode is dark humor with Fielder's patented brand of awkwardness permeating every scene he's in. But the final scene, which takes place in a doctor's office and delivers some bad news to the main characters, is played like a straight drama. Like that scene could have come out of This is Us if the family drama had a bit more awkwardness in its delivery. And This is Us is a show that is tonally different in every way possible from The Curse. I think I'm really drawn to not being hit over the head with how I'm supposed to feel about characters or a plot. The show is allowing me to figure it out.
THOUGHTS TO END TODAY
I'll get to Fargo next week as well as more coverage of some of the ongoing shows. In the meantime, here's a few quick hits on shows I didn't get a chance to write fully about:
Bebe Neuwirth livened up Frasier last week with a guest appearance. She is as strong as ever as Lillith, a character created on Cheers almost 40 years ago, and the chemistry between her and Kelsey Grammer felt like old times. However, it further showed how weak the current cast is around Grammer.
I am now two episodes into For All Mankind and still struggling to fully get on board with the season. I know I mentioned last week that the show always takes a bit to tune up for the season so I'm hopeful that will happen again here but so far, it feels like familiar story beats are being hit and nothing interesting is really happening.
Lessons in Chemistry, which is one episode away from its finale, seems intent on continuing to dull any momentum it has with any given episode. It's like they tossed their episodes into a blender and are dishing them out in any order. But this isn't a 1950s sitcom, this is a prestige drama. We get a whole bunch more of Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman in the penultimate episode just when the show was finding its voice without Pullman. I don't really understand the narrative structure they are using (and would be curious how that compares to the book).
Happy Thanksgiving!
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