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.
As for Palm Royale, that show went from being somewhat disjointed to really getting on my nerves as the season continued. For much of the first half of the season, I thought the show just couldn't figure out what tone it was. Was it a satire? A dramedy? A surreal period piece? But at least there were some entertaining elements at the beginning. I thought the second half of the season a complete mess. What little definition the characters had went out the window. Laura Dern and Allison Janney's characters seemed to not even be the same person in the second half of the season (and by the way, Dern was shockingly bad in this). Julia Duffy's Mary Jones Davidsoul was suddenly going to try to assassinate Richard Nixon? The show seemed to completely forget about Leslie Bibb for a large swath of the season only to make her a key player again towards the end. Even Carol Burnett, who was easily the best part of the series, didn't really become more interesting when her character started talking. The show felt like it was pulling plots out of a hat and nothing was focused or insightful. If it meant to be a comedy, it wasn't funny. If it meant to be a dramedy, the dramatic scenes didn't land. If it meant to be surreal, it only leaned halfway into that. It felt like a vanity project run amok. Unlike The Girls on the Bus, I think this will get renewed but I don't think I'll watch Season Two.
Hacks continues to fire on all cylinders in its third season. I thought the two episodes released this week - "The Roast of Deborah Vance" and "Join the Club" were even stronger than last week's two episode premiere.
"The Roast of Deborah Vance" featured a great return appearance by Kaitlin Olson as Deborah's estranged daughter, DJ. Olson was great casting here because she can capture the same self-absorbed and dry humor as her on-screen mother but she's basically a messier and more emotional version of that which is appropriate for that type of mother-daughter relationship. The show has done a tremendous job of building out their story even with few appearances by Olson and never going into any type of flashback or anything like that. So many shows feel like they need to fill in every gap. A great show like Hacks gives us what we need in a relationship and trusts us to piece it together. I feel like I fully understand what it was like for DJ growing up with Deborah as a mother without having to actually see it. But then for the show to turn around and have DJ kill it at the Roast was a great call. All signs pointed to her bombing and the show wisely chose to take it a different direction.
"Join the Club" split up a bunch of the main characters for the episode and each of them had compelling or fun stories. It was great for the show to depict the way Ava has changed Deborah when Deborah stood up for bisexuals at a "colonoscopy party" with a bunch of old comics. I like that she made the right moral choice btu then was mad at Ava for "changing" her. That was totally in line with Deborah's character. Ava at trivia night was good for a few laughs and the show needed to move on from Ava's relationship though I do feel like that story possibly got shortchanged a bit. Maybe the repercussions will continue for future episodes. Then we also had Jimmy and Kayla playing pickleball with Helen Hunt's Winnie Landell and that provided a lot of the comedic juice for the episode. In the first season of Hacks, spending a lot of time with Deborah and Ava a part or without either one of them in the scene would have not worked as well but the show has done a great job with building out its world. I'm still a little mixed on the late night story arc but warming up to it more.
The Drama field may be getting a boost to its barren situation with reports that Shogun may be getting renewed for a second season and heading over to the drama field. But for now, it has not officially made the move so these predictions will not include Shogun actresses and we should know more by next week. With so much turn over, there's just one previous nominee eligible this year and that is Elizabeth Debicki for her second and final season as Princess Diana on The Crown. Debicki is probably the frontrunner at the moment. Despite mixed reception to the season, Debicki's performance drew a lot of praise again. Her co-star, Lesley Manville, will also likely secure a nomination for her role as Princess Margaret. The younger versions of the character earned nominations for Vanessa Kirby and Helena Bonham-Carter in previous years. After The Crown, it's probably best to turn our attention to The Gilded Age and The Morning Show. Many are expecting The Gilded Age to be in the mix for its second season and that could lead to nominations for Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon with a smaller but not impossible chance for Audra McDonald. As for The Morning Show, it hasn't been a player in Supporting Actress before but with a weaker field and beefed up supporting roles, there are a bunch of contenders: Greta Lee, Nicole Beharie, Holland Taylor, Julianna Margulies and Karen Pittman. I'd probably put their chances in that order. So what are we looking at outside of those "big three" shows? Many think this will be the year that Slow Horses breaks through and if that happens, expect a nomination for Kristin Scott Thomas. After that, I think it's a real guessing game of what shows will get noticed by the Emmys. Sugar has gotten a mixed reception but people generally seem to like Amy Ryan's performance. Silo seems unlikely to break through but if it somehow did then Harriet Walter would be in the mix. This category feels ripe for a surprise nomination so some dark horses include Rosalind Chao for 3 Body Problem, Sophia Di Martino or Gugu Mbatha-Raw for Loki, Nicole Kidman for Special Ops: Lioness and Adelaide Clemens for Justified: City Primeval.
Current Projected Nominees (ranked in order of confidence)
1. Elizabeth Debicki, The Crown
2. Lesley Manville, The Crown
3. Christine Baranski, The Gilded Age
4. Greta Lee, The Morning Show
5. Cynthia Nixon, The Gilded Age
6. Kristin Scott Thomas, Slow Horses
7. Nicole Beharie, The Morning Show
8. Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Loki
Possible Spoilers:
9. Holland Taylor, The Morning Show
10. Audra McDonald, The Gilded Age
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
There's many more finales than premieres this week but still a few high profile premieres. On Thursday, Netflix has the third season premiere of Bridgerton. As is the case with high profile Netflix shows, the season will be split into two parts with four episodes arriving Thursday and the rest coming on June 13. The first season was a phenomenon and the second season still did quite well. It's been off the air for over two years though so it will be interesting to see if it can recapture the magic. Also on Thursday, Prime Video drops the second season of Outer Range, which also hasn't been seen in over two years. On Friday, Apple TV+ has the premiere of the limited series The Big Cigar, centered on the manhunt for Huey P. Newton.
ODDS & ENDS
- NBC became the second network to release a fall schedule. There will be three new shows on the fall schedule including two medical shows. The medical drama Brilliant Minds starring Zachary Quinto takes over the Monday 10pm slot while medical mockumentary St. Denis Medical starring Wendy McLendon-Covey will lead things off on Tuesday nights. The third new show is the Reba McEntire-fronted Happy's Place, which will lead into Lopez vs. Lopez on Friday nights and NBC attempts to dip back into scripted programming on the night. With seven new fall shows between NBC and CBS (and more to come on the others), it feels a little bit more like a normal fall even though the new show volume is still nowhere near where it used to be on the broadcast networks.
- One of the joys of being an amateur critic instead of a professional one is I don't have to stick with shows I don't like. Sometimes I stubbornly do it anyway (see Palm Royale) but others I don't give nearly as much time. So I was out on Apple TV+'s dour Dark Matter after about 20 minutes.
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