Welcome to my Monday newsletter. This week I am looking at the third season of Hacks, the twist in Sugar and the Emmy race for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. I also have some brief thoughts on The Veil, A Man in Full and the CBS Fall Schedule.
Hacks returned to Max this week after a two year break and it was back in fine form. This is the role of a lifetime for Jean Smart and she continues to knock it out of the park every episode. The show thankfully gave a lengthy "previously on" to help me remember what was going on two years ago and then the series itself wisely made a one year time jump where Smart's Deborah Vance has reclaimed her superstar status without the fired Ava (Hannah Einbinder). The show was obviously going to bring the two stars back together but the first episode did a great job of building up to the reunion by quickly summarizing where they are in their lives. It's always amazing how a well done show can do so much in so little time while poorly constructed shows don't know how to do something like summarizing how a year went by in a few minutes without clunky exposition. In a matter of minutes, I felt like I fully understood what had happened in the last year to both Deborah and Ava. And of course, once Smart and Einbinder got to bantering with each other, it was like no time had passed at all.
I'm a little leery of the idea of the late night show plot that the show seems to be heading towards with the second episode of the season. While I know part of the whole show is that Deborah is from another era, this plot feels like it would have had more pizazz if it was set in the 90s or early 2000s. Late night TV isn't really the pinnacle it once was and it feels like Ava would be primed to want to go in a different direction and bring Deborah with her. Maybe that's still coming but a plot about possibly taking over a late night show felt a little too retro for me. I loved it as a standalone episode though, even if it strained a bit for believability about how it came about and how Ava factored into that (unions and contracts, anyone?). I just feel a bit nervous if this is a season-long arc.
The series has also made Paul W. Downs and Meg Stalter series regulars after they were recurring the first two seasons. Having them factor in more prominently into every episode is delightful because they are so funny with each other and Stalter has expert comic delivery. She grated on me a bit early on in the series but I'm fully on board with her character now. Despite any hesitations about where the show might be headed in its third season, I am so happy to have Hacks back. I love watching Smart and Einbinder work together and the show has always had a great visual aesthetic that continues in the third season.
Sugar is quite an interesting analysis of the pros and cons of being so plugged into TV. I don't get screeners but everyone who did and reviewed Sugar talked ambiguously about a twist at the end of the sixth episode. So then I watched the show with a completely different mindset than if I was just watching a show with no other information. And I think it has not been for the better as far as my enjoyment of the show. I won't get into the actual twist here in case people still want to watch it and not be spoiled but let's just say it wasn't worth it. A noir crime drama starring Colin Farrell is interesting enough on its own but I spent whole episodes just looking for little hints of the twist to come. It made me not care about the abduction plot that was the through line or the characters through the first five episodes.
But it also seemed like the creative team behind Sugar didn't care about that either. They were so giddy about their twist as you can tell from their interviews this weekend. They didn't care what they wrapped the show in, they just wanted everyone to be like "HOLY COW" when the twist happened. But there's a couple problems with that. For one, the lack of attention to anything but the twist led to a very half-baked show through six episodes. Secondly, the decision to let critics say there was a twist but not share the twist was a very conscious effort to have people experience the show the way I did. And I was in the ballpark of predicting the twist but I just had to laugh at it. When a show cares more about being shocking than telling a good story, it's never going to go well and that's what Sugar did. Maybe it has a plan for post-twist episodes and seasons but given how little they seemed to care about everything else so far, I'm not putting much faith in the creators.
While Comedy has a few solid contenders and Limited Series is a bloodbath this year, it is a vast wasteland for Drama. With Succession over and no new season from The White Lotus or The Last of Us, the trio of shows that took up most categories (including this entire category) last year are not around. There was also no Severance or Squid Game so there are exactly two eligible returning nominees from any year and that's Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass from The Morning Show. Crudup was the 2020 winner and 2022 nominee and is the frontrunner this year but that's almost by default. Duplass doesn't seem likely to get in even with this weak field. The more likely co-star of Crudup to get in is Jon Hamm, who joined the show this season. The Crown has been a huge player in the past but its final cast got very little attention last year. Still, I would expect Jonathan Pryce and Khalid Abdalla to be in the mix with a smaller chance for Salim Daw. It's hard to know how much The Gilded Age and Slow Horses will be in the mix but if they break through then there's decent chances for Nathan Lane and Jack Lowden respectively. The second season of Loki wasn't that well received but Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan could definitely get in with a lesser but not impossible chance for Owen Wilson. Another big wildcard is The Curse. Who knows how much the Academy will embrace that weird show but if they do, then Benny Safdie could get in. There's a whole list of dark horses and, unlike the comedy categories, these seem more likely possibilities. That list includes Jovan Adepo for 3 Body Problem, James Cromwell for Sugar, Wendell Pierce for Elsbeth, Aaron Moten for Fallout and, who knows, maybe even Morgan Freeman for Special Ops: Lioness.
Current Projected Nominees (ranked in order of confidence)
1. Billy Crudup, The Morning Show
2. Jon Hamm, The Morning Show
3. Jonathan Pryce, The Crown
4. Nathan Lane, The Gilded Age
5. Benny Safdie, The Curse
6. Khalid Abdalla, The Crown
7. Jack Lowden, Slow Horses
8. Ke Huy Quan, Loki
Possible Spoilers:
9. Mark Duplass, The Morning Show
10. Jovan Adepo, 3 Body Problem
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
There's plenty of finales but it's a quiet week for premieres as the Emmy window winds down. On Wednesday, Apple TV+ premieres yet another sci-fi drama in Dark Matter. They've had a lot of modestly received sci-fi dramas, will this be another one? On Thursday, Max has the season premiere of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School. The return of the Freeform series didn't get much interest in its first season in 2022. On Sunday, AMC has the second season premiere of Interview with the Vampire, a series that received some critical acclaim but hasn't broken through yet.
ODDS & ENDS
- I planned to do a longer blurb about The Veil but after watching the first two episodes, I don't really have much to say. I'm not going to stick with the show. There's been some talk about "mid TV" after a New York Times article and this is thoroughly mid TV. There's nothing horrible about it. It's competently done with good actors. But it all has a "been there, done that" feel to it. Between this, Shining Girls and the lackluster later seasons of The Handmaid's Tale, it's been an underwhelming ride for Elisabeth Moss lately.
- Similarly, I watched about an episode and a half of Netflix's A Man in Full before checking out. The limited series has a great cast but it's a mess of a show. Jeff Daniels is channeling his worst instincts from The Newsroom and overacting the crap out of his part. The side characters are uninteresting and the design element feels so undistinctive it could literally take place anywhere, anytime if not for some of the technology and Daniels' ridiculous southern drawl.
- I miss the days where every day of the first half of May was filled with news on renewals, cancellations, pilot pickups and passes and schedules. But it is still Upfront season and though it is a shell of what it once was, we'll still get a fair amount of news in the coming week. That started this week with the release of the CBS Fall Schedule. CBS is the most traditional broadcast network operating like it was a decade ago as evidenced by five new shows on the fall schedule. That includes two shows that were pushed from this year due to the strikes. The Damon Wayans/Damon Wayans Jr. comedy Poppa's House will take over the Monday 8:30pm slot after The Neighborhood (fun fact: Wayans Jr. was in the first show to follow The Neighborhood - Happy Together back in 2018). The Kathy Bates-fronted reboot of Matlock takes over the Thursday 9pm slot. Then we have two franchise shows in NCIS: Origins, a prequel that will follow NCIS on Mondays at 10pm, and Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage, a sequel to Young Sheldon taking over the Sheldon slot on Thursdays at 8pm. Finally, a new reality show called The Summit will air on Wednesdays at 9:30pm after Survivor. Midseason will see the newest Sherlock Holmes inspired show, Watson, starring Morris Chestnut as well as a reboot of Hollywood Squares with Drew Barrymore in center square. And the network already has Fire Country spinoff Sheriff Country on tap for 2025-26. It's all very safe, very CBS choices but that works for them and has for decades so why switch it up?
- As for my Tony predictions? I went 66% on musicals and 75% on plays with my overall score at 69.8%. Not too bad but could have been a bit better.
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