Nobody Wants This More

I'm back to watching an hour or two of TV every night, right before I go to sleep. Partly that's because we're coming into the peak season for returning shows, when the days get dark before it's even nighttime and all the stations and platforms start to make a grab for attention by bringing back all those shows they think people liked last year. 

And it works! I can't say I've been losing sleep waiting for the next season of Hazbin Hotel but I was unironically delighted when I logged into Prime Video last night and saw the familiar logo splashed across the top of the screen, somewhat predictably just in time for Halloween.

It'll be a while until you see my review of that one here. Amazon has chosen to employ some faux-retro scheduling, dropping a pair of episodes every Wednesday for a month. Expect a review in December.

The returning show I'll be reviewing today, whose second season I've just finished watching, is Nobody Wants This, the Kristen Bell/Adam Brody romcom. It's on Netflix, who decided to let us have the whole thing at once in the equally old-school style of a DVD box set. I didn't binge but I did end up watching more than my regularly-scheduled one episode per evening, which may offer a clue as to how much I enjoyed it.

The other reason I'm back to watching TV at all, let alone having the time for two episodes of the same show some evenings, is that I've stopped making songs with Suno. For the last six months, I've spent two or more hours, pretty much every night, working on original material. It's been verging on an addiction.

The reason I stopped has nothing to do with losing interest or even feeling I ought to take a break. I just ran out of source material. In half a year I've completed "definitive" versions of well over a hundred original songs, for which I had to generate thousands of works-in-progress (All of which still exist because you literally cannot permanently delete anything you make on Suno.)

The first batch were all actual songs from decades ago that I pulled off of decaying cassette tapes but the great majority (And by far the better results.) are scores of new songs I created by cutting up prose I wrote in the nineties. About a week ago, I finally hit the point where I couldn't find any more sections or paragraphs that felt like they could be converted into lyrics. So I stopped.

I didn't plan on stopping. I was going to start going through the older, less-successful songs and work on better versions. I've found I have by far the best success with Suno v4.5Pro, which didn't come into existence until May and which wasn't as solid when it was introduced as it is now. (Don't talk to me about the downgrade that is  v5.0...)  

That hasn't happened. Not yet, anyway. I did spend some time playing around in Suno, getting Gemini to give me prompts for certain artists or bands, then having the AI do covers of my songs in those styles, but that was more of a party game than any kind of serious project. For the moment, I think I'm done with making new songs with AI. The next thing is to figure out what to do with the half-dozen albums-worth of material I already have. 

I was going to say that I've unsubscribed from the app but when I went to do it a few minutes ago, I got one of those "Please don't leave - we'll  give you a really good deal" offers and it was so good I took it. Suno is already ridiculously cheap at $10 a month but at half-price it seems daft not to keep the sub going for another month. Also, I'm curious to see how many times they'll try to bribe me to stay.

That's a long pre-amble to the substantive purpose of the post, which is for me to tell you what I thought of Nobody Wants This, Season 2. It's possible I might be playing for time. I'm not entirely sure what I did think about it...

I liked it. I enjoyed it. I'd watch a third season if there is one. It hasn't been confirmed but apparently the stars are up for it and "the writers' room is working" on one so the omens are good. I'm just not sure if I buy the premise that the central characters are made for each other...

Starting at the end, since that seems to be where I've gone, the season doesn't really finish with one of those annoying cliff-hangers, nor even with an obvious bunch of loose ends left blowing in the breeze, all begging to be neatly tied up next time around. There are plenty of unfinished storylines, for sure, but they all have more of a slice-of-life feel to them, the inevitable unraveling of lived lives we just happen to be seeing play themselves out, rather than anything that demands urgent resolution.

Time for the spoiler warning, I guess...

That final episode! Hah! I loved it! Also, it made me want to watch When Harry Met Sally again, which is never a bad thing.

Everyone breaks up. Well, the three central couples. Then one pair gets immediately back together, one goes "on a break" (We all know what that means...) and the third is fucking cooked - thank God! All so very satisfying. If you're going to invoke the spirit of Nora Ephron in your title you better have a goddam plan and they did.

So the wrap-up left me feeling like I'd gotten closure. Always what you want, coming out of a season. But how was the build up?

Hmm. Confusing, I'd say. I mean, come on, I love Kristen Bell. We all love Kristen Bell. But do we love Joanne? I'm not sure we do.

She's kind of annoying, isn't she? And a lot more so in Season 2 than last time. In the first season it seemed like sister Morgan was the self-centered, solipsistic one but this time around she came across as considerably more vulnerable and capable of self-analysis. Also sadder. 

Okay, the pair of them are terrifyingly judgmental and prone to acts of petty vindictiveness not usually seen outside of high school but at least Morgan seems to be learning something, occasionally. Joanne is mostly just doubling down.

And then there's Esther, the sister-in-law, who acted like such a terrifying hard-assed bitch in Season 1.  She's much warmer, more nuanced and yes, again, vulnerable. A lot of character growth there, too. Possibly more at times than seems entirely likely but then much of what was there before was obviously an act. Obvious now, that is.

Even Rebecca, the fiancee who gets dumped at the start of the first season and who just gets a couple of cameos here, even she seems to have grown. Joanne, though? She might have shrunk.

All of which is in the writing and the playing. It's a great performance as always by Kristen Bell but it isn't very endearing. There were multiple episodes where I didn't like Joanne all that much. Of course, she was frequently at her funniest when being at her least likeable and this is a sitcom so it's a valid trade-off. Plus "endearing" isn't really Kristen Bell's thing, is it, now I come to think about it. 

In the end, though, for a romantic comedy to work, the audience has to want the prospective couple to get it together and there were plenty of times I was rooting for them to realize they were dead wrong for each other and call it quits. 

Which, I think, might even be the idea. You're supposed to feel that until the very end, when they turn it around. And they do. It is, nonetheless, a lot of Shawshank before the redemption, as the saying goes. Also, it might feel a lot different on a re-watch. And no-one just watches these things once, do they?

So that's Joanne. How about Noah?  Geez, but he's infuriatingly un-ininfuriating! I feel like I ought to be able to say I wanted to punch him in the face but it would be like punching one of those inflatable bosses they supposedly have in the basements of office buildings in Japan. He'd just roll around a bit and come back up for you to punch him again and it wouldn't get either of you anywhere.

He's so fricken' unbelievably nice without really being very nice at all. He has so many barely-concealed anger issues with which he is not dealing at all but he has a seemingly-bottomless well of niceness he can smear all over any emotion he feels to tamp it down so he can pretend it isn't there. And it works! For him it works, anyway. Not so much for anyone around him or indeed anyone who has to watch him doing it.

The other thing about Noah is that he's hardly ever funny. He's mostly a straight man for others but he does occasionally do a kind of pained fish-out-of water thing, like when he's running about between the Strongly Agree/ Strongly Disagree markers with the teens at his new job and getting it wrong every time, something that passes for humor only until you think about it. 

Also, is he really that good-looking? I have issues with the scraggly facial hair but I guess I'm not the target demographic.

He does a job, anyway. It's fine. And he is good when it matters, in the non-funny bits. He convinces me every time he cracks and tells Joanne how he really feels about her. If Adam Brody couldn't sell that, the show would be in real trouble. But he can.

The really funny characters, though, are... all the others. Another generic problem with romcoms, of course. The couple at the center can't always be making it with the one-liners and the funny faces and the pratfalls. They have to gaze meaningfully into each others' eyes once in a while.

The show is full of hilarious couples that aren't Joanne and Noah:  Esther and Sasha, Sasha and Morgan, Morgan and Dr. Andy, even Joanne and Morgan's parents ffs. Every time any of those pairs gets going it's like someone switched the "Sitcom Filming" light on. 

I would personally love a spin-off starring Justin Lupe and Timothy Simons as Morgan and Sasha. They have a ridiculous chemistry that just burns off the screen. Not specifically a romantic one, either, although if the script took things that way it would be entirely convincing. It's the way they communicate so comfortably, intuitively and naturally that makes me want more of them together.

The whole dynamic between Sasha, Morgan and Esther in Season 2 is so unexpectedly lovely it almost overwhelmed the main plot for me. It's rare, even now, to see this kind of male/female friendship between characters, who could viably have a romantic relationship but have something different and deeper instead; to see it alongside recognition and acknowledgment of its value and purpose from a partner, who could very plausibly be expected to be threatened and concerned by it, is astonishing.

It is a clever show, though, which shouldn't come as any kind of surprise. The one thing that ties all Kirsten Bell's projects together is their intellectual rigor. They all make you think. Hard.

At which point I ought, I suppose, to say something about the central conceit, which is that he's Jewish and she's not. Only I'm not going to, other than to say I found it confusing and distracting in the second season in a way it wasn't (So much.) in the first. I feel as though it's adding something to the show that makes it harder to analyze and understand than a romcom normally would be and harder still to talk about. 

Did I learn anything from it? Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not. Except the bit about how you can apparently just decide to be Jewish. That was new. And some people make a big deal about gender!

What I would say is that regardless of whether Noah is a rabbi or a vicar or a policeman or the Wichita lineman, anyone who openly states that marrying them would be, first and foremost, marrying a job does not make for a very convincing romantic lead, even without all the angst over changing religion. There's a lot of talk about "red flags" in Dr. Andy's behavior that could easily apply here, too.

"Nobody Wants This" is a very interesting title. It's the name of the sisters' podcast but it also refers to the central relationship, in which it's never clear who actually does want it. The text is that even if the pair at the center do (And at any time one or both of them might not.) any number of outside forces certainly don't. The subtext is that all those outside forces might be right. Maybe the universe doesn't want it either.

I do, though. The show, that is. There were plenty of moments where what one or other character was doing annoyed me more than amused me but that's the grit that builds the pearl. I'm still not remotely convinced that Joanne and Noah ought to be together. As things are now, I do kind of hope that the series finale, when it eventually comes, sees them go their own separate ways. I think the prospects of them having a long and happy marriage are vanishingly small. 

Until then, though, I'm more than happy to watch them struggling with the same doubts for another ten episodes, this time next year. And for a few years after that, if Netflix so allows.

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

There was a whole introduction here, where I explained I didn't have enough to say about the shows I've been watching to make a post and how I was going to have to stuff what I did have into a grab-bag alongside a bunch of other odds and ends to pad it out. Then I started writing and the TV part alone came to almost two thousand words, which seemed like it might be enough after all. So that's what this post is now.

And even then it's only two shows. I was going to cover three because I thought that's what I'd watched all the way through to the end but it turns out I hadn't after all because one of them hasn't actually finished yet. It still has three episodes to go. That's what happens when Prime decides to switch things up and drop three episodes at a time. I'm not used to the cadence. It throws me off.

Nine did seem like a curious number of episodes for a full season but the last one, which obviously I know now wasn't the last at all, really did feel like a season-ending cliffhanger to me. I took it that way quite happily. I was only mildly disturbed it seemed to end on such a downbeat note. I thought it was quite brave, if anything.

I'd still be thinking of it like that if I hadn't just now decided to fact-check, ahead of writing this post, just to make absolutely sure there weren't any more coming. Only to find out that, yes, there were. Three more as of last night, in fact.

I'll hold off on that one, then, until I've watched those. Looks like the story might end differently to how I'd imagined. Now there's time for a happy ending, although I kind of hope that's not where it's heading, which sounds a bit mean but art can be unkind. 

I suppose I also ought to say what show it is. It's Vox Machina.

Another show I definitely have finished and will not be watching any more of is Kaos. Not because I didn't enjoy it. I liked it quite a lot. Because it's already been dropped by Netflix, who seem to have the attention span of a six week old kitten these days. 

Kaos is a mildly surreal, slightly disconcerting take on Greek myth starring Jeff Goldblum and an excellent supporting cast, including David Thewlis, who I have to admit I thought had died years ago. Must be confusing him with someone else. 

The eight episode first season very clearly sets up a second that's never going to happen unless someone else picks it up, which seems unlikely. There seems to be no obvious explanation for the decision, either, except that it didn't meet whatever criteria for success Netflix set. 

It was fairly successful in terms of viewer numbers and critical reception was fairly good but middling success doesn't seem to cut it with the streaming services any more. They do all need plenty of filler but they can buy those shows in from around the world much more cheaply than it costs to make their own. Kaos looks like it would have been expensive and expensive needs to be a big hit, not just to chart.

It ws also a hardish show to place, which probably didn't help. It was funny and scary and supernatural and romantic. More like a very long movie than a TV show. It's main strength was the acting, which was top-notch throughout. Jeff Goldblum was predictably mesmerising, shifting from affable bonhomie to chilling anomie with a deeply disturbing facility. He wasn't particularly likeable, though, and neither were several others in the main cast. That can't have helped, either. 

I liked just about everyone in it, as characters, but I found several of them uncomfortable to spend time with. It was never a comfortable watch. Unsettling, I think, is the word for it.

As well as a fairly large central cast, there were a lot of minor but significant characters too, all of them well-played. I could have used a little more of some, not least Suzy Eddie Izzard as the Fate Lachesis (Lachy if you prefer.) If I had to pick a favorite, though, it would be Thewlis's Hades, so underplayed he was barely there. A masterclass in subtlety.

The writing was mostly good, particularly the dialog, much of which sparkled. The plot seemed a little wayward at times. I'm not sure how much sense it would make if I watched it again, paying more attention. It seemed to be caroming along on impetus some of the time. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Visually, Kaos was sumptuous but also very distracting, for me anyway. I spent a considerable amount of time in the early epiodes not paying full attention to the story (Which might explain some of my issues with the plotting.) because I was trying to figure out if the Theban palace scenes had actually been filmed at Plaza de Espana in the Parque de Maria Luisa in Sevilla, a location I know very well.

It was indeed shot there. It could hardly be anywhere else. The place is nothing if not distinctive. In fact, pretty much the entire series was shot in Spain, much of it in other places I've spent time, although I can't pretend I spotted any other specific locations.

It's always distracting to see places you know turn up in fictional shows, especially when they're being used as stand-ins for somewhere else. I ought to be used to it, living as I do in a city where film crews closing off the streets for something or other is a near-constant disruption to daily life but I tend not to watch the kinds of costume dramas they're working on. 

In this case, though, the main effect the familiar setting had on me was to make me want to go back to Sevilla. It's been a while. It was good to visit again, even vicariously. Another reason to regret the untimely curtailment of what was a very enjoyable show.

In absolutely no danger of being canned after one season is another new Netflix show I've just finished: Nobody Wants This. If ever a show was named with unintentional irony, this has to be it.

Everybody Wants This would be a more appropriate title. As I write, it's sitting at 95% critical, 85% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, five stars on IMDB and #3 on the Netflix global chart after more than a month. Season 2 has already been commissioned.

It absolutely deserves all that praise and success. It's as close to flawless as anyone could possibly expect a sitcom about an agnostic podcaster who falls in love with a rabbi ever to be. 

I mean, come on! Look at that set-up. It stinks, doesn't it? Would you watch it? I wouldn't and I'm a huge sitcom fan.

So why did I watch it? Same reason everyone else did, I imagine. Kristen Bell.

Kristen Bell is a name I trust. I've yet to see her in anything that wasn't good or where she wasn't the best thing in it. She's a superb comic actor with a great deal more range than just that, as if just that wouldn't be enough. 

I'm currently watching another of her successes, The Good Place, several years after everyone else. I would have watched it sooner but for two reasons: the premise creeps me out and I had somehow managed to remain oblivious to her presence in the show, which must have taken some doing seeing she's the lead. It was only when Netflix helpfully recommended it to me as the next show I might want to watch after Nobody Wants This finished that I realised Kristen Bell was in it at all.

NWT Season 1 is ten episodes long and every one is a gem. Many of them would almost work as short stand-alone playlets, which is how sitcoms used to be before they turned into soap operas with gags. One of these days I might write something on situation comedy as a genre, in which case this show is going to be a case study. Is it a sitcom? Is there actually a definable situation here?

I asked myself that question a few times as I watched the series. It seemed much more like that misbegotten, bastard genre we blushingly call dramedy at times, especially when the seasonal arc seemed to be heading straight to the altar (Or wherever it is Jewish wedding ceremonies take place.) I was stumped, trying to figure out how a show based on the opposites attract trope could be expected to run for the six-to-eight seasons a hit sitcom requires, if the opposites turned out to be so very congruent by the middle of Season 1.

Turns out the writers had an answer for that, one which I won't reveal for reasons of spoilage. It's hard to imagine anyone hasn't already watched the show because why the hell wouldn't you but then I just admitted I'm five years late on The Good Place so go figure. It's always too soon for spoilers.

NWT is yet another show where the sheer quality of the acting is overwhelming. I swear, the older I get, the better actors become, most especially on TV. It's across the board, pretty much, too, domestic and international, broadcast and streaming. 

If I look back at shows I loved in the sixties, seventies, eighties and even the nineties I feel I have to make allowances for the time they were made. Individual performances match current quality standards and so do certain shows but the mean average bears no comparison. Actors are just better now. A lot better, many of them.

Or maybe directors are or writers or showrunners, a job that didn't even exist back then... Who knows? Maybe don't look for explanations. Just take the win.

The entire cast of Nobody Wants This shines throughout. Kristen Bell is exemplary as ever but so is everyone else. Structurally, the show manages somehow to be a star vehicle, a two-hander and an ensemble piece all at the same time. Adam Brody, who gets almost as much screen time as Bell, is consistently funny as rabbi Noah Roklov but his brother, Sasha, played by Timothy Simons, is funnier still.

But they're all funny. It's one of those shows where no-one is ever the straight guy and yet it very much isn't one of those shows where every other line is a zinger and it feels like the writers' room is right there on screen. I mean, I love those shows but they're one step away from stand-up. This is one step away from straight drama. And it's a small step.

It would be pointless to call out all of the cast members I particularly enjoyed because I particularly enjoyed just about all of them. I will say, though, that I hope the sisters' agent, Ashley, played with deliciously irritable elan by the surely-not-her-real-name Sherry Cola, gets more to do in the second season.

Other than to go on and on about how great it is, I don't have much more to say about this one so I'll leave it there. If you haven't seen it, rectify that immediately.

So that's television done. It turns out three shows, one of which I didn't even write about, was enough for a post after all. Who'd have guessed? Anyone who's been here before, I imagine.

It feels like the post is still missing a big finish, though. We need a tune and what could be better or more apt than Blondshell doing Veronica Mars? 

Yes, it may well be the third or fourth time the same song has appeared here. What of it? It won't be the last, either, I'll promise you that.

There are plenty of live versions on YouTube, not all of them with the greatest sound and few that can  replicate the emotionally evocative guitar squall of the studio ending. This one, from an Icelandic radio broadcast, comes as close as any and Sabrina just kills it. Best enjoyed very loud.