BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: January 27, 2025

Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This week, I am looking at Season 2 of The Night Agent and The Hunting Party plus giving thoughts on Severance, The Sex Lives of College Girls and Abbott Elementary.

"THE NIGHT AGENT" SEASON 2

The first season of The Night Agent was a real pleasant surprise for me. It filled the 24-sized hole in my TV schedule and was very addicting with its propulsive plot and cliffhangers with insanely high stakes even as I readily acknowledged it was all a bit silly. But I really did like it a lot, so much so that I nominated it for Outstanding Drama Series in my 2023 Benjamonster Awards.

The series returned for a second season this week with a bit of a "here we go again" vibe. I'm sure some people have already watched the entire second season but I am only three episodes in. It's still a good, old-fashioned action show but at least through three episodes, it is not working nearly as well as the first season for me. The first season case felt like it all really mattered and involved the highest levels of government while also being a personal crusade for Gabriel Basso's Peter. The second season has seemingly broadened its scope with a couple stories on track to collide with each other. But the stakes don't feel quite as high and it feels a little forced to keep Luciane Buchanan's Rose in the story.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: January 20, 2025

Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This week, I am looking at the second season of Severance and the documentary SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night. Plus I have thoughts on The Pitt and Hollywood Squares. 

"SEVERANCE" SEASON 2

Severance returned this week to much fanfare after a nearly three year break. I really enjoyed the first season of the show but I didn't remember a ton of the details, just the broad swaths and I was not about to rewatch the first season or even the finale because I just don't have the time. So I was very curious if I would feel confused or disoriented when the second season started. And the answer is... only in the ways I think I was supposed to. I think the show did a good job with bringing us back into the world after so much time off because the characters were a little disoriented too. So I felt like there was a conscious effort by the writers to sort of remind the viewers what was going on and not in a cheesy way, but in an organic way that makes sense for characters trying to make sense of things.

The episode started with some cool camera work of Adam Scott's Mark running through the halls of the severed floor of Lumon and it was very clear that this was a show that was more self-assured going into Season Two. The first season certainly felt experimental but not like it was a show that knew a lot of people were going to watch it. The beginning of this premiere felt like when a big show came back in the fall season after a summer off and knew everyone was going to be watching. It then smartly proceeded to reset a lot of things for the second season while still dangling some threads from the first season.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: January 13, 2025

Welcome to this week's newsletter! This week, I am looking at The Pitt, Shifting Gears and Doc plus thoughts on the Landman finale and the crossover episode of Abbott Elementary and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

"THE PITT"

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical of The Pitt going in. I thought it would be a serviceable medical drama but I also thought "what can a streaming version of a network procedural offer that a network can't besides some better production values and swearing a bit more often?" Well, at least with The Pitt, the answer is quite a bit. While the series is really just a traditional medical drama with the slight gimmick of being in real time (each episode is an hour in a 15 hour shift), the show feels better than anything a network can offer in this genre in 2025.

It's apparent in both big and little things. The show has an incredible attention to detail. They take the time to show doctors getting a squirt of hand sanitizer whenever they're about to enter the room. That might seem like a small example but as someone who spent some time in a NICU with my newborn son, that is something that happens out of habit for everyone working there. That tells me that the director has their eye on realism and the actors are fully immersed in the moment. I'm sure someone who actually works in an ER could tell you a bunch of things that the show gets wrong in specifics but, like Abbott Elementary is to schools, it feels like they at least got the vibe right. The Pitt (the location in the show) feels claustrophobic and busy. It doesn't feel like it was done on a Hollywood soundstage without enough extras (see the next show down for more on that). And the production value bells and whistles that come from being a streaming show really does make a difference, even in a medical drama. The show feels crisp and sharp in how it looks, how it's directed, how it's edited.

BENJAMONSTER NEWSLETTER: January 6, 2025

Welcome to my Monday Newsletter! This week, I am looking at my Top 15 Most Anticipated Shows of 2025 plus a review of Going Dutch and thoughts on the Golden Globes and the Shrinking season finale.

MY TOP 15 MOST ANTICIPATED SHOWS OF 2025

It's a new year so here's a look at my most anticipated shows of 2025! Some shows are dated and coming very soon. Others have much less information but here's my list based on what I know now. 

Close Calls: The Night Agent Season 2 (Netflix, Jan 23), Death by Lighting (Netflix, TBD), Mid-Century Modern (Hulu, TBD), The Artist (The Network, TBD), The Hunting Party (NBC, Feb 3)

15. The Four Seasons (Netflix, TBD)

Date Night reunion alert! This project puts Steve Carell and Tina Fey together in a comedy based on the 1981 film starring Alan Alda and Carol Burnett. There is very little known about this show, which also stars Will Forte and Erika Henningsen and it's not even guaranteed a 2024 premiere. But I had to put it on the list because of Carell and Fey. They may have a few misses in their repertoire but I like the chances of this being good when they are together.

14. The Pitt (Max, Jan 9)

The Pitt is one of the closer attempts to a network procedural that a streamer has done. It's basically 24 in a hospital with each episode of the 15 episode first season taking place over one hour in a hospital shift. Noah Wyle's putting on the scrubs again years after ER and this seems to hit a lot of the same beats as many broadcast medical dramas that came before it (just more swearing). I tend to check out quickly on medical dramas but I'm still interested in this one, or at least interested in giving it a try especially with the solid reviews it's gotten.

13. Grosse Pointe Garden Society (NBC, Feb 23)

I'm intrigued by this show because it feels a little different than the type of shows Broadcast TV have been offering us lately. It feels like it could be more like Desperate Housewives than yet another procedural drama. I wasn't really into Housewives but I'm still intrigued with a cast that includes Melissa Fumero, Aja Naomi King, Nancy Travis and others. If this proves to be something a little bit different, I hope it is rewarded by viewers so broadcast networks will branch back out a bit.

12. Etoile (Prime Video, TBD)

I'm not sure I would be into a show set in the ballet world except that Etoile is the follow-up to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. Maisel is one of my all-time favorite shows so I'm going to absolutely follow them to their next show, which already has a two-season order and stars Maisel's Luke Kirby. Consider me very intrigued.