Welcome to my Monday newsletter. Today I am looking at Nobody Wants This, Doctor Odyssey and Grotesquerie plus I have a few thoughts on Saturday Night Live and a host of other new shows that premiered last week.
It feels like we don't get too many true rom-coms on TV anymore but Nobody Wants This certainly fits into that category. Netflix's new series, starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, has the very rom-com plot of an agnostic podcaster who loves to talk about sex (Bell) who has a meet cute and then very quickly a relationship with a young, unconventional rabbi (Brody). In less capable hands, this would be a Hallmark movie with a whole bunch of eye rolls. But in the very capable hands of Bell and Brody, it's mostly a delight.
It's always weird to talk about Netflix shows since they drop all at once and some people have surely finished the series. I've watched the first four episodes. The show is absolutely at its best when Bell and Brody are together. The two have an easy chemistry and have a lot of fun together on screen. Close behind are times when Bell is with Justine Lupe as her sister and co-podcaster. Bell and Lupe certainly have a sisterly dynamic and have some funny moments with their parents. The show falls apart a little bit for me with Brody's on-screen family. Besides being a bunch of thinly drawn Jewish stereotypes, there also just isn't the easy camaraderie or chemistry, at least through the first four episodes, that makes me believe them as a family. They seem more about punchlines and broad caricatures.
But none of that matters when Bell and Brody are together. Bell is always likable on screen and she's very convincing as an adult with a life that seems to oscillate between having it together and being a complete mess. I knew Bell would be strong in this setting but I think Brody is the best part of the show so far. I finally gave The OC a try this past summer and am still (very) slowly making my way through it. So it's fun to watch a grown-up version of Seth Cohen and he's still just as likable as he was then. I don't think this is reinventing anything but it does have a bit of a prestige shine to a regular old rom-com. I'm excited to watch the rest of it.
Last week, I praised shows like High Potential and Matlock for being lighthearted versions of network procedural dramas. They have joined a trend of shows not taking themselves too seriously and it's been mostly refreshing in a sea of Law & Order and FBI shows. But then we get to Doctor Odyssey, which takes things just a bit too far in the other direction.
Doctor Odyssey is a very, very unserious show. I think the show is sort of going for "9-1-1 on a boat vibes" with the outlandish cases that seem too insane to be real. But 9-1-1 has always been grounded by some solid character work and an all-star cast that makes the implausible seem plausible. It has always had arcs for the characters that feel real and moving even when they're carrying out the most outrageous rescues. I know it's early, but I really don't get the sense that Odyssey is going to strike that balance nearly as well.
Why do I think that? Because of the love triangle the show is already trying to shove down our throats between Joshua Jackson's Dr. Max Bankman, Philippa Soo's Avery Morgan and Sean Teale's Tristan Silva. Couple that with Don Johnson phoning it in and the unusually dour COVID backstory for Jackson's character and I have very little confidence that the acting and writing will be good enough to offset ridiculous cruise ship medical cases. I don't blame Jackson, Soo and Teale much for the problems (maybe I blame Teale a little bit) but they're certainly not elevating the show the way the 9-1-1 cast does on a regular basis.
And it's not like the cases were all that interesting. Of course someone went overboard after saying "I'm King of the World." Of course. I don't think there's enough good stories to tell on a cruise ship medical drama even on a show that has a better head on its shoulders. I never expected the show to be a great drama but I at least hoped it could be campy fun and it even seems to be holding back on that, at least with the first trio of cases. One final complaint, why is that cruise ship empty all the time? You can definitely tell what a network budget in 2024 looks like with a severe lack of extras. They don't even have COVID to blame anymore for that.
It's been a very Ryan Murphy fall with four shows debuting in two weeks. Last week, we got American Sports Story and Monsters from him and I was lukewarm on both but liked parts of each. This week, he gave us Doctor Odyssey and Grotesquerie.
If both of last week's shows could have been seasons of American Crime Story then Grotesquerie could have easily been a season of American Horror Story but maybe even Murphy knows that brand is pretty damaged at this point with diminishing returns. So he gives us another eerie, creepy show with his parade of stars including Niecy Nash-Betts, Courtney B. Vance, Lesley Manville and, yes, Travis Kelce. He just doesn't make Grotesquerie a subtitle of American Horror Story. He makes it its own story but it's not all that distinguishable.
There's some things to like here but nothing that makes it seem like essential viewing. Nash-Betts is giving a good performance but I found her more compelling as one of the best (only good?) parts of Dahmer. Her scene with Micaela Diamond (who seems to be becoming an it girl for the Kings and Ryan Murphy) was fun to watch. But everything just feels so reductive. If I never have to see gross imagery from a Ryan Murphy show again, I'll be just fine. Two episodes aired last week but I only watched one. We haven't even gotten to see Kelce yet as he doesn't appear in the first two episodes but I don't think I'm interested in sticking around with the show until his arrival.
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
After two very busy weeks, we have a quieter week for premieres. There's a few co-productions like Sullivan's Crossing and Joan premiering on The CW but I don't really get into secondhand shows. Thursday is really the only day during the week for premieres with the third season of The Legend of Vox Machina on Prime Video and the third season of Zatima on BET+. Then on Thursday night, we have the NBC lineup returning which includes the 24th season of Law & Order (its fourth since being revived in 2022), the 26th season of Law & Order: SVU and the second season of Found. The week ends with a high profile premiere in HBO's The Franchise, a comedy about a troubled superhero movie that comes from the minds of Jon Brown, Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes. It will be interesting to see what the reviews say about this one. It was highly anticipated but buzz seems to have cooled a bit since the trailer dropped.
ODDS & ENDS
- I was out real quick on FOX's lifeguard drama Rescue: Hi-Surf and NBC's medical drama Brilliant Minds. I made it slightly longer on Minds but didn't finish the first episode of either. With less time than I used to have and with broadcast shows generally being less ambitious, I'm not going to waste my time on something that doesn't grab me and spend precious time trying to come up with a review that basically says it's "fine." I'm not someone who will stick up his nose at all Broadcast TV, it was the bread and butter of this blog for a decade. But some shows just don't merit a full review and these two shows were good examples of that. I can't imagine either show will ever be much better or worse than the few minutes I saw. They're perfectly mediocre. As for FOX's Murder in a Small Town, well I fell asleep less than ten minutes into it and didn't desire to re-start when I woke back up.
- Saturday Night Live kicked off its landmark 50th season this week with guest host Jean Smart. Smart didn't seem completely in her element in this setting so that was a little underwhelming. But, as expected, Maya Rudolph returned as Kamala Harris with new appearances by Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz and Andy Samberg as second gentleman Doug Emhoff. It seems like Rudolph has sharpened her Harris impression and there should be plenty of good material for her and of course Jay Armstrong Johnson's Donald Trump between now and the election. And Bowen Yang, who sometimes is a little too much for me, delivered a very memorable Weekend Update appearance already with his portrayal of Moo Deng the hippo. It was very fitting for the historical season for the SNL premiere to be what it has always been: inconsistent. But I look forward to a season where each episode seems like it will be a bit of an event.
- I don't have too much to say about Bad Monkey this week except that Meredith Hagner is delivering week in and week out. She has been so funny in the show and I hope this propels her to new career highs and opportunities.
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