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 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.
Hopefully the show will pull it together a little bit more but I was already hooked by the third episode of the first season and I'm not hooked here. I'm also a little miffed that (SPOILER) they killed off Brittany Snow in the first episode after advertising that she was joining the cast (I've been a fan of Snow ever since American Dreams). I like the settings of New York City and Thailand (getting me ready for The White Lotus) but I need the story to congeal a little bit more and start to become a little more thrilling.
I've always considered my TV palette to be pretty sophisticated as far as comedies go. As a kid, when my friends were watching TGIF, I was watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Nick at Nite. I knew what quality comedy was on TV from a pretty young age. But I'll fully admit that my drama palette has only caught up in the last few years. As recently as pre-pandemic, I was still mostly watching network dramas with the occasional cable or streaming show thrown in. So I not only loved shows like Criminal Minds, I thought they got a bad rap from TV critics. But then I caught up on a whole bunch of shows when the world was shutdown and I feel a bit of embarrassment about the shows I used to trumpet as good dramas. That's not to say I don't still enjoy a show like Chicago Fire, because I do. But I now understand why it has been ignored by critics for over a decade and I wouldn't argue. I watch every new episode of Chicago Fire but you never see me talk about it on here because I know it's an enjoyable, but ultimately very slight, network procedural.
Which brings me to The Hunting Party, NBC's new serial killer drama that got a preview after football last week and will have its timeslot premiere one week from tonight. This is a show that probably would have intrigued me quite a bit ten years ago. The show gives off some vibes of Alcatraz and The Blacklist where each week there's a new killer to track down from a list. In this case, they are some of the most dangerous killers of all time so there's also a Criminal Minds element to the proceedings with the "unsub" discussion and (likely to mostly be) women in peril. There's also a bit of a mythology with the question of why all these prisoners, who were presumed to be executed, were kept alive and why the escape happened.
I don't think this show is any good. It's generic and predictable. The stars, led by Manifest star Melissa Roxburgh and Revenge alum Nick Wechsler, aren't bringing anything to the table. The production values are serviceable for a network drama but nothing special. And the killers are going to be exactly what you think they will be unless they get a particularly strong guest star of the week. And yet, there's a little bit of it that's scratching the Criminal Minds itch for me. I probably won't stick with this show in the long run. I ultimately gave up on Alcatraz and The Blacklist eventually even in my less cultured days and I don't think this has an interesting a premise as Alcatraz and it certainly doesn't have a dynamic performance like James Spader in The Blacklist. But I'll probably give it another couple weeks assuming the risk that it becomes a guilty pleasure.
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
- There's a solid amount of premieres this week starting on Tuesday with Paradise on Hulu. The show reunites Sterling K. Brown with his This is Us creator Dan Fogelman in a thriller that apparently has a big twist (should we be surprised with Fogelman at the helm?). The series will also air its premiere on ABC on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday is the 7th season premiere of All American on The CW. It's the last surviving show from the previous CW regime and probably is not long for this world. Wednesday also has the fourth season premiere of Mythic Quest on Apple TV+, a show that's never gotten bigger than its niche audience. Also premiering Wednesday is the animated Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney+. Another trio of shows premiere on Thursday, all returning ones. Mo returns for its second and final season on Netflix while the streamer also has the second season premiere of The Recruit. Both shows have not released new episodes since 2022. Paramount+ has the second season premiere of one of its few non-Taylor Sheridan shows, School Spirit
ODDS & ENDS
- The second episode of Severance was definitely a two-hander with the first episode as it centered on what happened to the Outies immediately after the Season Finale events (while the premiere was about the Innies). I understand why Apple didn't premiere the first two episodes together because it was fun to sit with the chaos and unease of last week's episode. However, this week did not feel like it moved the story forward much because of the need to go back to where the first season ended for a second straight week. It's something that worked a little better for me in concept than execution. It was necessary to set up the rest of the season but I'm ready for the new season to start moving forward a bit more.
- The third season of The Sex Lives with College Girls came to an end this week. The show has not, and probably will not, be a player in my yearly awards and it certainly won't be on a Top 10 list for me. But it is a real solid show. Even with the loss of Renee Rapp, the show retained its strong leading ensemble (new cast member Gracie Lawrence fit in well). The show is not a laugh out loud, joke-filled comedy but it certainly has enough comedy to not feel like a dramedy. I hope it gets renewed for a fourth season, I'll definitely keep watching. It's also a show where the title is far raunchier than the actual show. I always feel weird saying I'm watching it but it's really just a solid hangout comedy.
- I really enjoyed this week's episode of Abbott Elementary. It was a chance to address remote learning and the challenges that come with that without having to wade into COVID, something the show has completely avoided (which, as an educator who lived through that, I am totally fine with). There were some very true moments in the struggle to try remote learning and even the more absurd plot points (Janine driving the bus) were funny even if I have some questions (isn't she still sort of a scab? Wouldn't you have to get some kind of license?).
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