Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at Apple TV+'s new drama The New Look, the season finale of True Detective: Night Country, the latest episode of Abbott Elementary and more!
For the first ten years on this blog, I mostly focused on broadcast shows. I watched a few cable and streaming shows but I watched broadcast with regularity. Over time, I started to have less patience for the shows that were doing something I'd see hundreds of times. Things like generic procedural dramas became less and less interesting unless they really offered something different. And I sometimes looked back at the shows I liked in the beginning of my blog days and thought "I can't believe how much I liked [any number of early 2010s procedural]" as my tastes evolved and sharpened.
I feel like I've had that reckoning with streaming shows recently. Some of the glossy streaming shows like Lessons in Chemistry and now The New Look would have excited me greatly a few years ago but now I feel like I've seen too many of them and they need to offer me something more than just strong actors and impressive visuals. I've always been a sucker for historical dramas but there's just so many of them that strike similar beats.
That's a long-winded way of saying I tapped out on The New Look after two episodes. The show is a worse version of Chemistry, which I liked but had some issues with. It approaches a historical piece with a modern sensibility, which always frustrates me. The performances are solid but fairly wooden and the writing and scenes are plodding. I don't quite see how this can be an ongoing drama because it doesn't even seem to have enough story to tell for one season. On top of it all, it's not even that visually stunning. So this is a big miss for me.
This winter marked the return of two anthology dramas that have gotten a lot of acclaim over the last decade: FX's Fargo and HBO's True Detective. I had more of a history with Fargo than True Detective. In fact, I hadn't watched any of the previous seasons before Night Country. I think the finales of both current seasons tied things up very well but I still prefer Fargo overall because the journey was a lot more fun. That's not to say Night Country, which ended last night, was not without its strengths. But I found it to be a very uneven season that did some things very well.
I've sang the praises of the mood setting all season and the finale got off to a great start with a truly impressive ice cave set that was full of drama and suspense and really stunning visuals. The show did a nice job of tying up the detective elements to the story as well with scenes that tied back to the initial murders and connected cases. The finale had time to deal with those things and still really give time to the relationship between Danvers and Navarro (Jodie Foster & Kali Reis). I wish there was a little more work done to tie up the story for Officer Prior but the stuff we did get was solid. While we're on that topic, Fiona Shaw was really strong but the show never really did her character any favors.
The supernatural elements that laced the entire season never really worked for me. I think it was enough to make a show set in a very unique setting and focus on the dynamic between two female detectives with a complicated history between them. I felt like the supernatural forces actually took away from the things the show did best and I really wish they had chosen to not tap into that as much as they did. That being said, I thought the finale was the best of the six episodes and I really enjoyed having this show to watch on cold Sunday nights this winter and it was worth it alone for Jodie Foster's performance, which made me wish she did more TV. Although some pieces didn't always work for me, I think this was a successful season as a whole.
I touched on this a little bit last week but putting Janine out of the elementary school and into the office is a great choice that shows the power of a broadcast sitcom. If they wanted to back out of the story quickly, they could, but I hope they don't. It's allowing for so many different dynamics to happen and for the show's world to expand a bit. I also really think it's a bold move because Quinta Brunson's Janine is the lead of the series. It had another great episode following its two-part premiere that had compelling stories at both the Abbott level and the district level with a seamless way to connect the two worlds too. Maybe some weeks the stories will be a little more separate and that's ok too. In fact, I think that will be necessary to avoid too many direct connections that it stretches plausibility.
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
It's a fairly quiet week this week with one high profile premiere. On Tuesday night, ABC has the premiere of a trio of procedurals: the second season of Will Trent, the sixth season of The Rookie and the seventh and final season of The Good Doctor. Will Trent seemed to get a little bit of critical love as far as broadcast shows go in its first season last year so we'll see if it gets any attention this time around. On Wednesday, Apple TV+ has the season premiere of its thriller space drama Constellation, which doesn't seem to have a lot of buzz. Also on Wednesday, Disney+ has the final season premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. The high profile premiere comes on Thursday with Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix. Though it's not something I'm interested in, there's a ton of interest in this one as the original animated series that ran on Nickelodeon is considered an all-time classic. Finally, Sunday has the series premiere of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live on AMC. It is the sixth spinoff of The Walking Dead but features some popular characters from the flagship show.
ODDS & ENDS
- Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show a week ago to start his run of Monday-only hosting duties. I was a little nervous he wouldn't still have the same zip and I thought he started a little slow. But once he got into his monologue, his comedic timing and ability to land a joke was as sharp as ever. He caught a little flack in some circles for drawing attention to President Biden's age, but as always with Stewart, he's forcing his core audience to look in the mirror a little but ahead of a very consequential election.
- Ghosts came back strong for its third season premiere, addressing the cliffhanger from the second season finale. The show is going to have to do some work to conceal star Rose McIver's pregnancy because it was pretty obvious (unless they plan to work it in). This show really does such an impressive job of creating new stories with such contained parameters.
- I don't really watch much unscripted stuff but I did check out the first episode of The Dynasty, Apple TV+'s new documentary series on the New England Patriots of the Brady/Belichick era. I am no fan of that team and the way they tormented the rest of the NFL for two decades but I do have respect for them and the documentary has some fascinating old footage. Kudos also to Drew Bledsoe and his family for participating.
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