Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at the season finales of The Girls on the Bus and Palm Royale, the latest episodes of Hacks and the Emmy race for Supporting Actress in a Drama Series! Plus I have some brief thoughts on NBC's fall schedule and some VERY brief thoughts on Dark Matter.
The Girls on the Bus and Palm Royale reached the end of their first seasons this week. When they premiered less than a week apart back in March, I was sort of equally intrigued and annoyed by both of them. Over the couple months that followed though, they started to trend in different directions with The Girls on the Bus starting to win me over and Palm Royale making me increasingly annoyed.
It felt like nobody was watching or paying attention to The Girls on the Bus over the past couple months so I'd be surprised if it got a second season. While I still stand by my feeling that it was basically a pipe dream for liberal Politico junkies from the early 2010s, the performances and camaraderie among the four main women (the titular "girls on the bus") made it compelling at times. Melissa Benoist was probably the most consistently strong performer but Carla Gugino, Christina Elmore and Natasha Behnam all had their moments. The candidates in the fictional race were supporting players in this story but I still felt like they were a bit underused and a bit misused. The big story culminated in Benoist uncovering information about Scott Foley's Hayden Wells Garrett but Foley was so in and out of the story that I don't think the revelation packed as much of a punch as it could have. The show occasionally got a little self righteous but it never got as preachy as I feared it would. Most of the opinions and the monologues they gave were justifiable for characters who were super plugged-in media-types. Like I said, I don't expect to see a second season of this show but I'm glad I watched it.