Welcome to a fairly short newsletter as it's been a busy week. Here are some thoughts on the new season of The Righteous Gemstones plus the latest episodes of The White Lotus, Paradise, The Pitt and Severance!
The Righteous Gemstones made a very unusual decision for its fourth and final season premiere. The series did an origin story of the Gemstones set in 1862 and featuring none of the regular cast members. It instead starred Bradley Cooper as the first Gemstone preacher, a Civil War-era criminal who pretended to be a minister (yes, the Gemstones were scammers way back then).
This was certainly a big swing for the series. The series has done "prequel" episodes before but it's always been directly related to the main characters. Some of those break-from-form episodes have been the best of the series. This was probably the biggest swing and it didn't totally work for me. I think it's rough to do for a season premiere of a show that drops weekly episodes after nearly two years away. I was ready to see Danny McBride, John Goodman, Edi Patterson, Walton Goggins and the rest so it felt like a letdown. I think this probably should have been a two episode premiere if they really wanted to do this episode.
I also didn't find the episode all that funny and I don't really think it intended to be. The Righteous Gemstones can be dark at times but it always has a good sense of humor and absurdity and we only got bits and pieces of it in this episode. The end of the serious actually felt quite genuine and earnest, which is not the tone this show usually strives for, at least not without some serious humor sprinkled in. That being said, I thought Bradley Cooper was strong. If this was a pilot to another series starring Cooper, I would have definitely been on board. But as an episode of Gemstones, it didn't quite land.
The fourth episode of The White Lotus definitely felt the most episodic to date as most of the main characters got away from the hotel for the day. It also ended with the most tension to date as the season continues to have a darker streak than the first two seasons. The boat ride was a great chance for the show to start mingling some characters. I feel like this season definitely has more of a feel of something bad could happen at any moment with any character. There's so many pots simmering to a boil, mostly involving the older white male characters, which might be intentional from Mike White. Of course, Walton Goggins' Rick is the most obvious boiler plate because of his behavior and his motivation (which he shares with his girlfriend this week) but the circumstances for Jason Isaac's Timothy also are leading us to believe he's about to blow.
Yet, I think both those characters might be a bit of a misdirect. Whatever the gun violence is in the flash forward (and we had a lot of guns in this episode), I just don't believe Timothy or Rick are directly responsible. I do think the darker shades of this season and the fact that it sounded like a mass shooting and not just a dead body is making me a bit more interested in the mystery of the season than the first two seasons. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I wouldn't rule out Greg being involved and I'm getting very interested in how he and Belinda are going to come to blows.
If anything got short-changed this week, it was the three friends. They were sort of siloed off into their own story and it didn't totally work for me this week, as much as I've liked those characters up to this point. It felt like they were treading water this week and we didn't really get to know anything more about them or see any new dynamics. Hopefully they have more coming next week. Mike White has a lot of characters to service and it feels like he usually gets them all in an episode, but there have been a couple episodes where certain characters have felt underused this year.
SCRIPTED PREMIERES THIS WEEK
It's a quiet week until the end with a flurry of premieres. On Thursday, Prime Video has the third season premiere of The Wheel of Time. This is a big budget sci-fi franchise but it doesn't feel like anyone watches it. Also premiering on Thursday is the Peacock limited series Long Bright River starring Amanda Seyfried. The series doesn't seem to have much buzz at this point. Also premiering Thursday is the Netflix limited series Adolescence, a four episode series where each episode is single-shot. Premiering on Friday is the Philly-set crime drama Dope Thief on Apple TV+. Starring Brian Tyree Henry, the series could be a critical hit.
ODDS & ENDS
- After a really strong seventh episode, I was less impressed by the season finale of Paradise. This is a show that had one really great episode in its eight episode season. Like truly great. But everything else was just not that interesting. This show managed to make a "world ending" moment such compelling television but that really isn't what the show is about. And the premise of the show just isn't interesting as evident by how underwhelming the finale's many reveals were. I appreciate that the show didn't leave us hanging in too many areas. It did answer a lot of questions. But nothing was very interesting. I also think, despite what others are saying, Sterling K. Brown and especially Julianne Nicholson are nothing to write home about in this show. Brown's emotional intensity doesn't really work in a plot this absurd and I actually think Nicholson has been straight up bad. I can see myself not watching the second season whenever it comes around.
- The Pitt had another strong episode from top to bottom. It's easily been my favorite show of the year so far (The White Lotus could surpass it but for now, I'm giving the nod to The Pitt). The ending of the most recent episode featured a standout scene between Noah Wyle and Patrick Ball. It was sort of the thing no fans wanted to be true about Ball's Dr. Langdon so it was interesting to see the show actually go there with Isa Briones' Dr. Santos being right despite being such a blowhard. I don't think this was the show misreading the audience's loyalty. I think this was a great example of people's exterior not always matching the interior and I think it's truthful that we don't always know what's behind the facade, for good or for bad, in our colleagues.
- I've been growing increasingly mixed on Severance as the season has gone on but this week's episode was probably my least favorite of the season. I'm not that interested in Patricia Arquette's Mrs. Cobel as a character and now we got an extensive (and, frankly, unnecessary) solo and background episode on the character, who we've barely seen all season. And this came in the eighth episode of a ten episode season after a three year hiatus. Sorry, Severance. If you're producing 13 episodes a year you can get away with us. But not when you only have ten episodes after such a long hiatus. It is one step forward, two steps back for the show this season for me and I'm not quite getting the intense acclaim some are giving it. I still have hope for the final two episodes but so far, this season has been a disappointment despite some very notable bright spots.
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