Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at Ransom Canyon, the season finale of Abbott Elementary and the latest episodes of The Last of Us, Hacks and Good American Family plus the Emmys race for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series/TV Movie and the next show in My Top 25 Shows Since 2000!
RANSOM CANYON
TV has always been a copycat medium. When something breaks out in a big way in terms of ratings and/or culturally, it's followed by years of rip-offs. Think of how many Friends knockoffs there were in the 90s or how many times networks have tried to find the next Lost. There are some tried and true formats that often work for TV. But something that feels like a blatant rip-off almost never works. Which brings us to Ransom Canyon. Netflix's new Texas drama is very clearly their attempt to capitalize on the success of Yellowstone. Taylor Sheridan's drama may not get awards attention, but it's been one of the most successful scripted shows in the last decade. The expansive and picturesque western setting, the soapy melodrama, the "small c" conservative values. All those elements have contributed to the success of Yellowstone.
Ransom Canyon, starring Josh Duhamel and Minka Kelly, is not even trying to mask what it wants to be. It wants to be Yellowstone. I haven't watched Yellowstone but I watched the first episode of Ransom Canyon and that was enough for me. The show is so, so generic. The dialogue is bad, the tropes are all tired and familiar. Taylor Sheridan expanded his footprint yet again this year with Landman, which has a lot of similarities to Ransom Canyon except it was having a ton of fun and was just a bit crazy. Ransom Canyon takes itself far too seriously to ever have fun. Duhamel is as bland a leading man as you can find and while I still have a soft spot for Kelly from Friday Night Lights, she's really not a great actress.
This could be a big fat hit because it's on Netflix. But the best case scenario is everyone still likes Yellowstone better.
ALSO...
I couldn't get myself geared up to give Government Cheese a try. It just didn't seem like my kind of show and I might have been swayed had it gotten great reviews but it was more mixed so I didn't give it a try. I also still want to watch The Rehearsal but have never watched the first season so I want to do that before giving Season 2 a try.
Abbott Elementary (Season Finale)
I've been behind on Abbott Elementary but finally caught up this week to watch the season finale. Overall, I thought this season was an improvement for Abbott from an uneven third season. Janine and Gregory as a couple works way better than the "will they or won't they" the show ran into the ground. I also thought Janelle James had her best season since the first season as the show continues to make Ava a more well-rounded character. The sneaky MVP of the show continues to be Lisa Ann Walter. I thought the talking heads at the end of the season finale about the eighth graders moving on was very sweet and captured what it is like for a teacher to see students, even former ones, moving on.
The one knock I'll give Abbott is they struggle to wrap up interesting stories and they tend to do it too quickly to get back to the status quo. This was true in the third season with Janine working for the district. That was an invigorating story and one that could have lasted through the whole season. Instead, they awkwardly brought her back to Abbott halfway through the year. It happened again this year with the firing of Ava. They could have done a lot more with what Ava did in her time away and how it went for Gregory as interim principal. But instead, after just a couple episodes, they quickly brought everything back. I know sitcoms, especially network ones, do need to reset to what we know and love but Abbott seems to dream up these fun ideas and then struggles to see them through sometimes.
The Last of Us
SPOILERS AHEAD if you haven't seen last night's episode of The Last of Us. I never expected to be a fan of The Last of Us but once I got into it during the first season, I was very careful about trying to avoid spoilers from the video game about what might happen in the second season. And I truly still don't know much about the second game even now. But I didn't manage to avoid all spoilers. Somewhere along the way, maybe a tweet or a message board post, I learned that Joel dies in the second game so I knew Pedro Pascal's character was probably going to die at some point. However, I didn't expect it to be as soon as the second episode of the second season. Before getting into my feelings about the episode, I just want to say it was visually stunning. One of the best looking TV episodes I've ever seen.
This episode was a harrowing watch, one of the more intense hours of any show I've watched in recent memory thanks to twin disasters unfolding with Joel and in Jackson. The Joel part was devastating, of course, and exceptionally well-acted from both Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey but I do feel like it's a story that needs to move on and we don't need a rehash of what happened in the first season. Pascal will apparently continue to be appear, in flashbacks I assume, but I do think the story needs to propel forward. That is also true for Jackson but I found that to be almost more devastating in some ways. This new version of a frontier town managed to bring everything back to as normal a life as possible and everything was upended within a very short time. The years of work and plans all went up in flames when too many infecteds stormed the city. And at the same time, it was rough to think about the citizens of Jackson trying to destroy people who were once their fellow American citizens for understandable reasons. It's just a lot to think about and made me feel almost more uneasy than the Joel death. But both stories should propel the rest of the second season and now that this game spoiler is out of the way, I'm excited to see what comes next.
Overall, an excellent episode. One of the best of the year so far.
Hacks
I enjoyed this week's Hacks more than the two episode premiere. I thought it found a funny balance in the Deborah and Ava dynamic and the "retreat" was a great chance for the show to get back to its Vegas roots. I thought the first two episodes were a little out of bounds for Deborah and Ava because they seemed to be self-sabotaging to an almost unrealistic standpoint. The dynamics in this episode still had jabs but seemed to at least get back to some level of grudging respect. There was also a hilarious, scene-stealing moment from Lauren Weedman as the Mayor of Las Vegas and Michaela Watkins had some good moments in the end with the suggestion that she will continue to figure prominently into this season.
Good American Family
This week continued to focus on Natalia Grace instead of the family with a strong guest appearance by Christina Hendricks. Hendricks really hasn't been used enough since Mad Men. She had Good Girls but she's such a great actress, I feel like we should be seeing a lot more of her. Imogen Faith Reid has done an exceptional job becoming a sympathetic character these last two episodes after being such a monster for the first four.
THE EMMY RACE for LEAD ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES/TV MOVIE
The Lead Actor in a Limited Series/TV Movie race seems to be a two-handed race between Colin Farrell of The Penguin and Stephen Graham of Adolescence. Both are locks to get nominated but the question is who will win. Farrell won a couple winter awards over Baby Reindeer's Richard Gadd which seemed to make him a heavy favorite for the Emmys. But then Adolescence broke out and Graham has received a tremendous amount of praise for a huge hit. Right now, I still lean slightly towards Farrell because it's a baitier role but Graham taking over frontrunner status would not be a surprise at all. As far as the rest of the nominees, it's a little tougher to predict. I'm still down on Disclaimer but Kevin Kline was probably the most well-reviewed part of that show so he could definitely get in. Presumed Innocent moved back to the Limited Series race and Jake Gyllenhaal is a big name so he could get in even though there was mixed reception to his performance. Then there's the boys from Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story: Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez. Koch seems to be the more likely of the two but I wouldn't rule out both getting in from the well-viewed but tepidly reviewed show. Brian Tyree Henry has been getting a lot of acclaim for Dope Thief, but is anyone actually watching Dope Thief? Robert DeNiro is a huge name but Zero Day was such a nothing burger by Netflix standards that I'm pretty skeptical of him getting in. Then there's a bunch of movie contenders, though it is always hard for people to get in for movies. That includes Aaron Pierre for Rebel Ridge, Miles Teller for The Gorge and Steve Carell for Mountainhead. Some dark horses include Josh Andres Rivera for American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, Kevin Bacon for Sirens and Billy Crystal for Before but I'd be really surprised to see any of them actually getting in.
Projected Nominees (ranked by likelihood of a nomination):
1. Colin Farrell, The Penguin
2. Stephen Graham, Adolescence
3. Cooper Koch, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
4. Kevin Kline, Disclaimer
5. Jake Gyllenhaal, Presumed Innocent
Just Missing:
6. Brian Tyree Henry, Dope Thief
7. Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
8. Robert DeNiro, Zero Day
TOP 25 SHOWS SINCE 2000
#23 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (CBS, 2005-2014)
I had a very tough time deciding how to rank How I Met Your Mother because it's a case of two eras. The first several seasons of the show are Top 10 worthy while the last couple seasons wouldn't even crack my Top 100. Early on, How I Met Your Mother was such a unique treasure. It had a terrific ensemble and it had so many clever stories to tell and clever plot devices for telling those stories. But its cleverness was also its downfall. It went on way too long and then inexplicably stuck with its original plan for the finale even after miraculously finding the perfect person to play the mother in Cristin Milioti. I'm still mad about that finale and I hate the last couple seasons but there are shows that didn't run anywhere close to as long as this show on the list and if Mother had stopped after four or five seasons (which was still around 100 episodes!), it would be an all-timer for me. I can't knock it completely for going on too long and not knowing how to land the plane but because of its premise and its stubborn determination to land the plan as originally conceived, it drops all the way to #23.
COMING UP
There aren't too many premieres this week but the three shows that are premiering are all somewhat high profile. On Tuesday, Disney+ has the second season premiere of Andor. The first season was easily the best received critically of any Star Wars show since the first season of The Mandalorian so there's a lot of anticipation for the second season. I am the opposite of a Star Wars guy and never watched the first season so I will not be tuning in. I will be tuning into Etoile, which drops all eight episodes of its first season on Prime Video on Thursday. The ballet dramedy is the next project from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino after their acclaimed run on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and stars Maisel alum Luke Kirby. The series has already been renewed for a second season. Also premiering on Thursday is the fifth and final season of You, a show that famously had a lucrative Netflix run after not making it on Lifetime Network, way back when they used to air scripted shows in 2018. The show has quietly become one of Netflix's longest running shows.
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