Screen Time

About time I did a TV catchup, I think. Seems like it must have been a while. For once, I'm going with "What I'm Watching" not "What I've Just Watched". I usually like to wait wait until I've seen a whole season before attempting any kind of serious, critical assessment but that does tend to miss out on the immediate, emotional reaction, which is kind of the point of tv.

A sober analysis of a full season arc often focuses on flaws that get overlooked in the passion of a first watch but tv's not about what lasts, it's about what's there. Good television rides the moment, just like good pop music does. Or should.

And now, having set out my stall, I'm going to begin by kicking it over. Here's one I've already watched all the way through. 

Uncoupled is a six-episode romcom that debuted on Netflix earlier this summer. The setup is simple: in the first episode, Michael is dumped by Colin, his partner, on the latter's 50th birthday. The rest revolve around Michael's struggles, as a gay man in his late forties, to come to terms with his newly-single status and the huge changes dating culture's spun up during his seventeen years of monogamy.

I only started watching this because it stars Neil Patrick Harris, best-known, depending on your age and tates, either for playing the titlular teenage physician in Doogie Howser, M.D. or the teeth-gratingly mysogynistic Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother. I have a love-hate relationship with HIMYM, which I only started watching because it stars Alyson Hannigan, best known for playing Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anyone sensing a pattern here?

As Barney Stinson, Harris was unbearable but also disturbingly compelling, something that applies almost equally to the whole cast and the show itself. I thought it would be interesting to see what he was like in another role (I confess I hadn't realised he was also Doogie Howser. It was a long time ago and we were all a lot younger then, none more so than Neil Patrick.). I didn't expect to find him sympathetic, relatable and above all convincing as an actual human being with recognizeable emotions.

I also didn't expect to see the actor who played the pathologically heterosexual sex addict reframed as possibly the gayest man on television. Indeed, the whole show is probably the gayest thing I've ever seen, if not the campest. Just to have lived through a change in the culture that accomodates such a show on a mainstream television platform fills me with vicarious pride. I mean, I know I didn't do anything to make it possible, but at least I was there, dammit!

It's a very funny show with a lot of shard-sharp dialog coming in hard from every direction. It also has a lot of pathos and some genuinely emotional moments. I felt the eight episodes stood well as a completed narrative, not needing any further explication. No second season has been announced and I didn't feel it begged for one. I'd watch one if it came, though. Recommended. 

If Uncoupled is the gayest show I can think of right now, Bee and Puppycat is the most surreal. Someone hold the net, while I attempt to describe it.

The first episode opens almost normally, with Bee losing her job as a waitress when the kitchen of the restaurant where she works catches on fire. A dog-cat hybrid, Puppycat, who only speaks in incomprehensible gibberish, rendered into English by subtitles, falls on Bee's head out of thin air. 

The two of them travel to another dimension, where a talking television set called Tempbot changes Bee's clothes and sends the pair out on temp assignments to other planets. Everywhere they go, rubbery arms like Mr Fantastic's try to grab them but never quite do. After that it gets weird.

I had never heard of the show but it has a long and extremely complicated history, none of which I intend to go into here. If you're interested, go read the Wikipedia entry like I did, or ask Xzzysqrl, who I'm absolutely sure will be all over it.

When I clicked on Bee and Puppycat it was purely because of the name, which could have been designed specifically to draw me in. I knew nothing about it at all other than that it was an animated show. I also thought it was anime and since I'm very slowly beginning to educate myself by experience in that culture (See next entry.) it seemed worth a shot.

From the get-go, Bee and Puppycat felt decidedly western in orientation. It's hard to say why. It's not the American/English voices. All dubbed shows have those. It's something about the expectations it sets up but I can't quite tell if those are visual or cultural. Even the hyper-trippy imagery feels very "western", somehow.

Despite all the weirdness, there are some very solid characters and storylines fighting for attention. Bee needs to take the temp jobs to make rent. Her child landlord, Cardamon, needs the money to care for his sick mother. Bee's relationship with her friend Deckard is awkward-sweet and borderline unhealthy but I want to know where it's going. So does Deckard's sister/roommate, Cass, who I actually thought was his girlfriend until I learned otherwise from Wikipedia just now. That explains a lot, actually...

The Netflix show is some kind of remake/mashup of some of the earlier versions. Once I found that out I watched one of the originals on YouTube but it would be too confusing to watch them all mixed together so I'm going to finish up the Netflix episodes then go back and watch the rest, like I did with Cowboy Bebop. I hope it turns out as well as that did. Reccommended. 

Rilakkuma's Theme Park Adventure might be even weirder than Bee and Puppycat. It's hard to say. I can't stay awake long enough to tell.

Seriously, I've tried to watch three episodes so far and every time I fall asleep. It's like a drug.

I had no idea who (Or really what.) Rilakkuma was until I wrote this post, when I looked him up and found he's basically the bear version of Hello Kitty. He did start in a comic but his fundemental purpose is to sell stationery and merchandise, something he's turned out to be really good at: $10b so far.

This is Rilakkuma's second outing on Netflix, his first being Rilakkuma and Kaoru. Kaoru is his - I don't know - owner? Friend? Roommate? They live together, anyway. She's "an office lady in her thirties" and she shares her life and her home not just with Rilakkuma but with another bear, a smaller female called Korilakkuma and a yellow chick called Kiiroitor. 

What Kaoru did to deserve this isn't explained but it seems like it must be a difficult life. All of the plot I've managed to stay awake for so far seems to consist of Rilakkuma blundering around like Paddington on downers while Kaoru desperately tries to keep him fed and safe. 

I feel like I need to keep watching this if only to work out what the hell is going on but so far I haven't even made it all the way through a single episode before keeling over. I'm going to have to go back to the beginning and start again. Neither reccommended or not reccomended until I can stay awake long enough to decide.

Lost Ollie is a show I've mentioned in passing already. It's also another I've watched all the way through, not a great commitment since it's only four episodes long. It's a complete-in-itself mini-series based on a children's book I've never heard of by an author I don't know.

I watched this one because I have a major thing for toys that come alive. (Also imaginary friends, although there aren't any here so I don't know why I even mentioned it.) It's the old story: Boy Loses Toy, Boy Looks For Toy, Boy... oh, come on! You think I'm going to tell you how it ends?

Something you should know about Lost Ollie: there's a surprising amount of violence for a PG rated show described as "family entertainment". It's also bleak as hell most of the time and the themes are painfully "adult", grief, loss, bereavement, sexual jealousy, memory loss, psychosis... some of it, especially all of episode three, is bloody terrifying, frankly.

Also almost everyone speaks in a very strange accent. I found it highly offputting at the beginning, to the point where I almost gave up on the whole thing. I persevered, though, and after a while I stopped noticing.

The visuals are very satisfying, an excellent blend of live action and stop-motion animation and the whole southern gothic aesthetic is compelling. The central toy characters are all very strong, particularly the deranged, damaged Zozo and the weary, wary Rosie (voiced by the ever-excellent Mary J Blige.) Ollie himself I found quite annoying at first but he very much grew on me over the course of the four episodes.

I would be very cautious about recommending this to its supposed target audience, children. It strikes me as having the potential to be the kind of thing people refer back to in later life as a traumatic experience that changed them, like the death of Bambi's mother. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one having to deal with the nightmares.

For adults who like their whimsy lit by lightning and drenched in floodwater, not to say blood: recommended.

 

And finally, the show I'm keenest on right at this very moment, The Imperfects.  I had no idea what this was when I spotted it on Netflix but it looked like the kind of thing I watch so I watched it. 

Wow, talk about high concept! It just starts and there you are, in some version of the world where scientists (Say it with sneer, like you'd say "vivisectionists", because isn't that what all scientists really are, when you come right down to it?) run undocumented trials on sick children without any informed consent then abandon them when the results don't go as planned.

Naturally, when the drugs are withdrawn, there are side-effects and naturally, those side-effects are super powers. Why wouldn't they be? 

The first episode is a real firecracker of set-up, character introduction and action. It moves at the speed of hysteria and every scene is over-the-toppier than the last. When the baddest of the maddest scientists, Dr. Alex Sarkov, made his first appearance I just sat there in awe.

Remember David Bowie in Twin Peaks? That's what it reminded me of. Is that a good thing? You be the judge. I only hope the fact that Sarkov looks several years younger than the test subjects he mistreated as children turns out to be some kind of plot point. Also that accent...is it Australian?

I'm three episodes in now. The show doesn't quite keep up the pace of the first but it's not far off. The three lead characters have already been abducted and tortured by a whole new bunch of mad scientists before killing them all (Self defence! Accident! Suicide! Murder!) and escaping. Now there are at least two more hostile factions in play, one of them hunting the very scientists our heros need to persuade to "fix" them. No explanation for any of it, of course.

The Imperfects is absolute tosh. I love it. It makes absolutely no attempt to tie up any of the countless loose ends that fray from the ever-unravelling plot. There's no concession whatsoever to realism, naturalism or logic. The core three act like they're in some kind of avant-garde theater troupe all of the time. Everyone says things that make them sound cool, whether they're things anyone would say or not. 

I like all three of them a lot. They're cartoons but they're very well-drawn. I particularly like Abbi, the Indian girl with the genius IQ and the pheromones that make her the (Ironically asexual.) equavalent of the Mandrill. Obviously, I also have a strong regard for Tilda, the foul-mouthed, leather-wearing lead singer of an alt-rock band, who (Equally ironically) gets super-hearing and super-screaming as her power-set - sorry, side-effect. She's pretty much from my personal central casting. All she needs is a chainsaw.

And Juan, the diffident, curly-haired hispanic comics creator who turns into a werewolf (Chupacabra! It's a chupacabra!) and just happens (Ironically!) to have a girlfriend who's been obsessed with human-monster relationships since her dad took her to see Beauty and the Beast when she was a child (The Cocteau, not the Disney.) - well, who could dislike loveable little Juan? Just don't let him near your dog. (He eats them.)

Best of all, though, is Italia Ricci as Dr. Sydney Burke, the only good-bad-mad scientist. She's trying to help the Banshee, the Chupacabra and the Succubus (Not their official super-hero names because they're not super-heroes. Yet.) I spent much of the first two episodes trying to think who she reminded me of and then it finally came to me: Dr. Linda Martin from Lucifer! Looks a little like her (The glasses, mostly.) but sounds almost exactly the same.

It's always a good sign when I can remember the characters' names without having to look them up. For the Imperfects I can remember whole lines of dialog, too. That's a strong indicator I'm going to come back to this again and again just to watch individual scenes on YouTube as though they were songs I like. Speaking of which, the show has some great music choices. Recommended!

And I think that's about it for now. Oh, there's that show on Prime that all the fuss is about, isn't there? I guess I should at least mention it. Hang on, let me check the name...

The Rings of Power. That's it. Yeah, I don't have much to say. I watched the first episode and it was... alright. That was a week ago and I haven't gotten around to watching the second. I guess that probably tells you as much as you need to know.

As for all the controversy... seriously? What is wrong with people? I swear, if I hadn't known there was something "different" about it I'm not even sure I'd have noticed. And I've read the bloody books three times. Some of those celtic accents though...

No, don't let's even go there.