| | | | | | Welcome to Now See This, THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg’s weekly viewer guide newsletter dedicated to cutting through the daunting clutter of the broadcast, cable and streaming TV landscape! Comments and suggestions welcome at daniel.fienberg@thr.com. |
Easter Hamm What is the secret to being a show that I’m very mixed on, yet still leading this newsletter? The fourth episode of the second season of Apple’s Your Friends & Neighbors is one of the most in-depth Passover-set installments of TV I’ve ever seen, complete with a “kid sings the 4 Questions poorly” joke, a “finding the afikomen” joke and a full rendition of the Kiddush. Mazel tov! As for the rest of the new season? I’ve watched half and it’s very similar to the first , insofar as Jonathan Tropper’s dark comedy remains wildly overpacked with storylines and rarely focused, much less focused on the right storylines — a condition made all the more precarious with the addition of James Marsden at his most James Marsden-y as a new billionaire in the neighborhood whose wealth catches the attention of Jon Hamm’s gentleman cat burglar. The series is still a great showcase for Hamm and Amanda Peet’s Mel has a top-notch menopausal arc, but I found it harder to invest in the “Will the teenage daughter go to Princeton?” and “Wow, the mopey teenage son is in a love triangle!” plots. Once again, I wanted more of Aimee Carrero’s Elena and much more of Randy Danson as snarky fence Lu, but at least this one has more of a sense of humor than most of TV’s crime-among-the-affluent shows. |
Thoreau-ly Modern Henry Come for Jeff Goldblum’s trademark ironic wonderment voicing Henry David Thoreau, stay for the myriad pronunciations of “Thoreau” in Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers’ three-part Henry David Thoreau, which premiered on PBS this week and is available on various PBS apps and OnDemand platforms. The biographical portions of the Ken Burns-produced Henry David Thoreau are dry and fail to live up to the goal of demythologizing the revered 19th century thinker — I already had a pretty good sense that Thoreau wasn’t the least bit isolated or self-sufficient during his tenure at Walden Pond — but the parts where narrator George Clooney and the assortment of familiar talking heads connect Thoreau to various modern movements, from civil rights to environmentalism, are persuasive enough. I’ll be honest, though: I only have room in my heart for one interpretation of Henry David Thoreau and that’s the one played by John Mulaney in Apple’s Dickinson. Watch Dickinson , people! |
| | | ‘Paradise’ Lost Me The second season finale of Hulu’s Paradise is a fine example of an episode that was breathlessly exciting at times, while also leaving me generally uninterested in watching the show going forward. It turns out that what I liked best about the show’s early run was the contained, claustrophobic and very human-oriented nature of the core premise, while what the writers like best is a big and twisty mythology involving quantum physics and high concept silliness and rather ruthlessly killing off one complicated character after another, leaving Sterling K. Brown and a bunch of people I’m not nearly as invested in. The second season was perplexingly disjointed, with certain standalone backstory episodes working well in isolation but not cumulatively, since the overarching “Who is Alex?” mystery came to the least satisfying conclusion imaginable. It isn’t just that Alex was basically what I figured he/she/it was, but that the thing Alex turned out to be didn’t feel especially connected to the show I thought I was watching in the beginning. I’m positive some viewers will have the complete opposite reaction, though, so I’m not spoiling anything. (OK, fine. I’m gonna spoil that the bunker had two Arby’s, which is funny, but that neither Arby’s got anywhere near the screen time that the Martian Domino’s receives on For All Mankind this season.) |
Fudd, Glorious Fudd The college basketball season is nearing its conclusion, and if you’re a fan of the University of Connecticut, it’s a particularly busy weekend. The Huskies, men and women, make up 25 percent of the two Final Fours, with the women going on Friday and the men on Saturday. The women’s side is all marquee names, since South Carolina/UConn and UCLA/Texas are a pair of matchups of top seeds. The men have Arizona and Michigan, both top seeds, with UConn and Illinois as relative “dark horses.” I’m skeptical that any of these games will rise to the level of drama set by the Duke/UConn game from last Sunday, but we live in hope. |
From UConn to He Con Since this is a slow week for new streaming features — I reviewed Netflix’s emotional but surface-deep documentary The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson out of SXSW, while Hulu has something called Pizza Movie — let’s go back to Your Friends & Neighbors. One of my favorite things about the show is playing the “What classic movie will Jon Hamm’s character watch THIS week?” game. The dude likes movies so much that he drinks his coffee from a You Must Remember This mug, in a nod to the Karina Longworth podcast that tends to be the only podcast I’m reliably caught up on. Because Hamm’s “Coop” likes vintage crime dramas, most of what he enjoys is only limitedly available to stream. But the half of the new season that I’ve watched thus far features, among other favorites, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (YouTube with ads), Sweet Smell of Success (Kanopy, Hoopla, YouTube) and To Live and Die in LA (Tubi, Pluto TV and more). |
Honoring Mary Beth Hurt Three-time Tony nominee and longtime spouse to writer-director Paul Schrader, Mary Beth Hurt died this week at 79. My favorite Hurt performance is in George Roy Hill’s imperfect but ambitious adaptation of The World According to Garp, which unfortunately isn’t streaming anywhere. Interiors was a very impressive film debut and if you’re still watching Woody Allen things, it’s on Hoopla and Roku Channel, while Hurt’s Indie Spirit Award-nominated performance in The Dead Girl can be watched on Plex and Amazon with ads. Hurt appeared in several of Schrader’s films, including Light Sleeper (streaming with ads on Amazon) and the miserablist masterpiece Affliction (Kanopy and Hoopla). |
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