Welcome to my Monday newsletter! This week, I am looking at Murdaugh: Death in the Family, DMV and Boston Blue plus the finale of Task and the latest episodes of The Lowdown and The Morning Show. I'm also continuing my Top 25 shows Since 2000 with #7 and doing a Pilot Re-Review of Better With You!
WHAT'S NEW
One of the (many) benefits of me not being a true crime afficionado is that when a TV series adaptation arrives on a high profile crime, I so often know little to nothing about what happened so I am left guessing and curious about the plot. I think that helped me enjoy Good American Family more in the spring and now we have a show about the Murdaugh family. Maybe I've been living under a rock but I literally don't know anything about this story or this family besides what I learned in the first three episodes which dropped on Hulu last week.
I thought the first three episodes were a solid version of the show it's trying to be. It didn't feel like it was offering any new on the well-worn true crime genre. But it is competently done with good performances so maybe it will become more clear as time goes on what it's trying to say. Or maybe it doesn't really have anything to say and just wants to tell the story straight forward. One of the things that stood out to me was just how utterly unlikable most of the characters are, especially Jason Clarke's Alex Murdaugh. It's a good performance from Clarke but yikes, he is so frustrating to watch. If the show is going to really dig deeper, it's going to most likely come from Patricia Arquette, who had good moments in the first three episodes but it feels like there's a lot more to come from her. Despite the flash forward to start the series and the poor title, I do plan to keep watching.
Workplace sitcoms have been a part of the TV fabric forever and nearly every workplace has had a TV show set there from newsrooms to cab companies to elementary schools. But I don't think there's ever been one set at a DMV until, you guessed it, DMV premiered on CBS last week. I always try to go easy on early episodes of sitcoms because we all know most of them take a little while to gel and find their voice. So I definitely grade on a curve and this one certainly gets a passing grade. It's not without its problems (hello Tony Cavalero - I loved him on The Righteous Gemstones but he realllly didn't work in the pilot) but I think the show is off to a solid start.
Harriet Dyer, who was great on the underrated American Auto, is the lead here and she does a really nice job. She is effective at being a character who is awkward and has a lot of things go wrong for her without stooping to the level of being pathetic. Tim Meadows was charmingly understated and I'm sure he'll have more to do. Molly Kearney worked most of the time for me although she came on a little too strong in places (I get that was the point but still). I hope the show continues to start with driver's test clips because that's a great opportunity for some little character bits the way Superstore would have cutaways to shoppers. I look forward to seeing how this show grows over the season and, since it's a broadcast sitcom, it will have enough episodes (assuming no early cancellation) to actually grow!
Have you ever had the experience where you find out that something you always thought was normal within your family turns out to be not so normal when others who didn't grow up with you hear about it? I sort of had that feeling watching Boston Blue, the new Blue Bloods spinoff on CBS. Through 14 seasons of Blue Bloods, their unique quirks just sort of worked for that show. The family dinner scene in particular, which happened in every episode, always was cheesy and sometimes a bit forced with discussing the plots of the week. But I just went with it each week because the cast sold it and it was just part of the fabric of the show. I never really questioned it. But now, we head to Boston with Danny Regan (Donnie Wahlberg) and meet a new law enforcement family similar to the Regan empire in NYC. And, guess what, that family has family dinners too and all of the sudden, I realized what a trainwreck those scenes could be and how awkwardly forced it could feel. The plug and play that so many shows like CSI and NCIS have done with spinoffs works because the format is so standard. And Blue Bloods was standard too but it always felt fronted by its characters more than a lot of the other franchises. So plugging and playing with a new family in Boston felt so weird. I'll give it some time but I hope they realize this needs to be its own show or its going to very much feel like a retread of a much better show.
Also...
There was just too much to watch this week so there's a lot I haven't seen yet. I haven't gotten to Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy, Season 3 of The Diplomat or Season 3 of Loot yet. I'm encouraged by the reviews for Devil while I'm hopeful The Diplomat builds on a so-so second season. I've always been mixed at best on Loot so it's not a high priority for me to get to it. I watched the second season premiere of Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage. It's basically the same show that is always going to be mid. I haven't watched the Ghosts premiere yet but look forward to it. I didn't get to Sheriff Country yet and may never get to it. I don't watch Fire Country so I don't see myself getting into it.
LAST WEEK ON...
Task came to an end last night and while it didn't quite reach the highs of the incredible two episodes that came before it, it was still a great finale. I thought the episode took awhile to get going but once we got to the scene at Maeve's house, it really picked up. The sequence through the house was tense at every turn and because the show has proven that it's not afraid to kill off characters, it really felt like anything could happen. Then the show pivoted to resolving things for a lot of the surviving characters. That led to finally coming back around on the story of the adopted son and the court hearing. Mark Ruffalo was absolutely brilliant in that scene and I hope he's remember come awards time (really, this show should be in the conversation for a lot of acting nominations - I'd also like to give a shoutout to Martha Plimpton who just got better and better as the show went on). There's been some chatter about it becoming an ongoing show recently with it moving from Limited to Drama at the Golden Globes. But I really want this to be it, just like I did with Mare of Easttown. I want to see Brad Ingelsby do more shows for HBO but I don't need more Task because I loved it so much as a contained story. This will definitely be in the conversation among the best shows of the year as far as I'm concerned.
The Lowdown
One of the (many) things I love about The Lowdown is how much it likes to ignore the overarching mystery and case of the show. So many shows that run 8 or 10 episodes have just enough real estate to tell the mystery they want to tell and they live from episode to episode on twists and hooks. The Lowdown has a decent mystery and has its tense moments but it loves to spend large swaths of each episode messing around with Ethan Hawke and his buddy for the week. It was his on-screen daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and Michael Hitchcock two weeks ago. Last week, it was Jeanne Tripplehorn and this week it was Peter Dinklage in a great guest turn as Hawke's frenemy, Wendell. There was some plot advancement (the final sequence was great) but so much of the episode was Dinklage and Hawke in a buddy comedy that could be an entire series itself. But I also felt that way about the father-daughter dynamics two episodes ago or the twisted one night stand of last week. I love how episodic this show is too. This is TV done right. A compelling overarching story that isn't always the focus or where the bulk of the enjoyment comes from.
The Morning Show
I haven't written about The Morning Show much this season. It hasn't really grabbed me much (yes, I have a lot going on but I have to admit I fell asleep twice during the show this season). Anyway, Nicole Beharie was back in the spotlight this past week after being in the best episode of the third season. I wish the show did more with her than give her one showcase a year. But while her performance was great, the plot really doesn't hold up to scrutiny and her monologue being on a Joe Rogan type show was just so far removed from reality. Also it's interesting how unimportant Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon are feeling this season. I care so little about the Billy Crudup/Reese story and Crudup is one of those characters who has worn out his welcome a bit for me. The dramatic monologuing that worked so well for awhile is just not landing anymore.
TOP 25 SHOWS SINCE 2000
Friends was a tough show to slot because more than half of its run aired in the 1990s. Since I wanted this to be about the 2000s, I really only considered the show from halfway through Season Six to the end. If I was considering the whole series, it would have been higher, probably #3. Most of the very best days of Friends were during the 1990s but this is not a show that fell off precipitously even with a little bit of messiness in the last two seasons. To the end, it remained funny, clever and interesting. I think Friends has suffered a bit from the internet culture that has been obnoxiously obsessed with it for years now (think all the annoying Buzzfeed articles for example) and then led to the inevitable think pieces from snooty TV critics of it being overhyped. Take away all that annoying discourse as well as the myriad knockoffs and the insane paydays for its stars and just look at it as a TV show and it's a darn good TV show that deserves to be considered among the all-timers.
PILOT RE-REVIEW
This season, I am traveling back in time to the 2010-11 season, the first season I did this blog. I will be re-reviewing the pilots from that season, at least as many as I can find!
Original Review: Click Here!
What I Think Now: This show had some promise because there was a good cast and it's a very simple premise that can be explained quickly. Sitcom pilots are always tough to judge because the cast takes some time to gel. This wasn't one like Modern Family where everything clicked right away but it wasn't hard to get through like plenty of sitcom pilots I have seen in my time. It went down easy. The pilot did a nice job of introducing the three couples right at the top of the show without the need for a voiceover or anything like that. But then I felt like they took too long to bring back the show's clear MVPs - Debra Jo Rupp and Kurt Fuller. They didn't appear again in a regular scene until more than halfway through the episode, which I think was a mistake. Rupp is playing a similar character to Kitty Forman, but she makes her different enough while still nailing the impeccable comic timing. Of the four younger characters, A differing thought from my take in 2010, I thought Jake Lacy was the most likable as a carefree goofball who had shades of Chris Pratt in Parks and Recreation (though not as strong as that character). The show also was very obviously taking a lot of its DNA from How I Met Your Mother with the hybrid approach and tons of quick jump cuts. Those only work when the jump cuts are worth it and aside from the opening scene, it wasn't really worth it in this pilot.
What Happened to the Show: Better With You made it a full season on the air, nestled between The Middle and Modern Family on Wednesday nights. The ratings were not terrible but nothing to write home about it and ABC decided they could do better in the slot (and they did, at first, with Suburgatory the next year). It was cancelled after 22 episodes but it went down to the wire with a chance of renewal all the way until two days past its season finale. All six actors have continued to work steadily from Debra Jo Rupp returning to her previous role in That 90s Show to Jake Lacy getting an Emmy nomination for the first season of The White Lotus. I watched the entire series but have very little memory of the show beyond this first episode.
COMING UP
After a very busy week of premieres, it's quieter this week but there's still a couple high profile debuts. On Wednesday, Prime Video has the premiere of its limited series Harlan Coben's Lazarus. Coben has had a few other books recently adapted including Shelter on Prime and Missing You on Netflix but none of them have been huge players. On Thursday, Netflix has the second season premiere of Nobody Wants This. The romcom was a big hit last fall and earned a Comedy Series Emmy nod. We'll see how it does for its second go round. Also premiering Thursday is the sixth season of The Family Business on BET+. Finally, Sunday is a busy night led by the high profile premiere of It: Welcome to Derry on HBO. The show has been on the docket for forever and it will be interesting to see if it can match HBO prestige with horror and such a big franchise IP title. Also premiering Sunday is the fourth season of Mayor of Kingstown on Paramount+ and Anne Rice's Talamasca on AMC. This is the third show in the Rice universe alongside Mayfair Witches and the critically acclaimed Interview with the Vampire.
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