Between the holidays and my Covid downtime I went on massive TV binges. Get ready for a lightning round of reviews.
True Detective Season 1 -- I binged this while I had Covid and was in need of something familiar. This was the first time I had seen it since its initial run. My opinion hasn't really changed. The plot and action was marginal TV police procedural level stuff. Where it excelled was in the expression of the dark souls of the lead characters, both nihilistic -- one knowingly by choice, the other uncomprehending -- and the portrayals of those characters by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConnaughey. It was familiar but offered no comfort so I switched to…
Justified -- I think I watched seasons 1,3 and 5. Just wonderful as I remember. The dialogue sizzles, the plots are Elmore Leonard-clever, drama and comedy are perfectly balanced. There are subtleties like the protagonist and antagonist both having fathers that tried to kill them. The deft handling of the trope of the hero who does great harm in the course of administering justice. My favorite dramatic moment: the hard-won closure Raylan gets when he finally sees his deceased and hated father's secret cabin, a place of fearsome legend, only to find there is nothing to it. I get the feeling this series will eternally be my comfort food.
Trailer Park Boys -- I can't for the life of me remember why I started watching this. It's a very low budget, almost amateur level, schoolyard humor comedy about some lowlife white trash criminals in a trailer park in Nova Scotia. It certainly is not for refined tastes. Yet, in every episode I found at least one thing to laugh about, whether it was a sublime bit of character acting or a piece of outright slapstick. I'll also suggest that it is more accurate than most people would like to admit in its portrayal of lowlifes. Even when presented with straightforward and obvious ways to sort out their lives, they still choose to repeat the behavior that keeps them beat down. The show became a bit of a cult sensation garnering guest appearances from actual celebrities later in it's run. If you watch one episode, you will know if it's for you.
Squid Game -- This was the hottest show around a few weeks ago, remember? It's Korean with subtitles. A shadowy organization gathers up people who are desperately in debt and offers them riches in return for playing a series of what seem like kids games, but failure means death. It is a truly compelling watch. Alliances are built, and betrayed. Truly nail-biting stuff. The ending is a failure as we discover it's the most prosaic trope imaginable, all in the service of a sequel. Still, absolutely worth watching. It deserved all the attention it got.
Tiger King Season 2 - Could have been subtitled "The Insanity Continues". Those who came out of the first season OK and now in trouble. Stories flip-flop. Attention-whores of all stripes latch on to share the ride. And, dare I say it, it looks like Joe Exotic might actually find his way out of jail early. If you're the type who likes to settle in with a bowl of popcorn and gawk at the crazies, this is for you.
Hawkeye -- probably the best MCU series yet. It suffers from the inveterate pacing problems all the series have. It spends too much time on talking and not enough on resolving plots in a coherent way. But, in the absence of razor sharp writing or direction, these series live or die on the likability of the main characters and how well the actors portray them. In that category Hawkeye did well. Jeremy Renner did his fine reluctant hero stuff. Hailee Stienfield didn't really spread her wings but played the slightly daffy precocious upstart well. Some of the supporting cast, notably Tony Dalton (who you may remember as Lalo Salamanca) got to chew a bit of scenery. And of course, the mighty Vincent D'onofrio made his MCU Kingpin debut. All in all entertaining and nicely Christmas themed.
Aside: One final note about Hawkeye, there was the introduction of a character called Echo, who is deaf, and in the comics starts out as a Kingpin sidekick then eventually becomes entangled with DareDevil. There seems to be plans to build an entire series around her. This is horribly misguided. From what I saw she has only very rudimentary acting skills (she can make an angry face, and that's about it). Both D'onofrio and Charlie Cox (as DareDevil) will make her disappear in every scene they share. She is simply out of her league. Big mistake to make her the centerpiece of a series like that. I hope Marvel rethinks it.
Another Aside: Yes, I watch too much TV.
