Back at the beginning of Blaugust I posted a list of TV shows I was in the middle of watching. To recap, the shows were:
- Good Omens 2
- Two Broke Girls
- Edens Zero
- Young Sheldon
- The Owl House
As for The Owl House, until someone green-lights another series, which
will happen one day, I think I've probably
said all I want to say about show for now. There are four Owl House episodes of the
Disney series
Chibi Tiny Tales
I haven't yet seen, though...
I do have something more to add to my earlier observations on
Two Broke Girls. The show remained admirably consistent throughout. It started with a ridiculous
premise and a complete abnegation of any kind of logic or reason and kept up those stellar standards for the whole six seasons.
Every time anything threatened the "sit", like the girls actually
making enough money to stop being broke, the "com" asserted its authority
and reset things to where they needed to be. I found that adhesion to the
ur-concept in the face of all attempts to insert the least element of realism into the show to be one of its greatest strengths.
It's also a show that relies to the heaviest degree on repetition. Most of the
humor comes from internal references and running gags. One of the tropes of the
show that I particularly liked is the cash register that pops up at the end of
every episode to show exactly how much money the girls have saved.
In Season
One, Caroline sets a target of $250k as the sum required to turn
Max's Homemade Cupcakes into a viable business. At the time it seems like an unlikely goal but thanks to the sale of
Caroline's backstory to Hollywood (Probably the most realistic and believable
plot in the entire six seasons.) there is a point at which the cash register
dings up a quarter of a million dollars. Which, of course, disappears as fast
as it arrived.
The girls both have significant relationships, the show being sporadically and in some small
part a romcom, all of which are, inevitably and for sound
plot reasons, doomed to failure. Perhaps the one fortuitous outcome of the
unexpected cancellation of the series is that the final episode closes with
Max engaged to be married to her wealthy lawyer lover and Caroline in a firmly
committed relationship with her working-class, Italian-American boyfriend.
It's absolutely guaranteed that, had the series continued, neither of those
relationships would have neatly folded away into happy-ever-after but because
the series ends where it does it's entirely possible to imagine that's what
happened next. It makes for an oddly satisfying ending. I came away content.
Good Omens 2
This is an interesting one. I should probably issue a trigger warning for
fans of the show
before I get started.
That does make it sound like I must have hated it but that's far from the
case. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I just didn't think it came anywhere close to
being either as funny or as compelling as the first season.
I remember Season One as being quite complex. It had a lot of characters and a
number of sub-plots, all of which were fairly coherently coaxed together into
a finale that made some kind of sense of and brought some kind of resolution
to all of them. It felt quite novelistic, with its long-form heritage making
itself evident throughout. If anything, it might have been a bit baggy. It
certainly never felt like it was in any kind of a hurry.
Season Two, by comparison, felt short, rushed and incomplete. I found it quite
unsatisfying at times, particularly during the zombie episode, which made some
sense emotionally but just seemed to be quite badly done. I don't like zombies
at the best of times but comedy nazi zombies are really too much to take for a whole episode.
The core of the show is, of course, the relationship between the two central
characters, the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, as
portrayed so deliciously by Michael Sheen and David Tennant. In
the first season the performances of the two stars are exemplary but in the
follow-up I never felt quite the same chemistry between them. In narrative
terms, the relationship only becomes more complex but on the screen it seemed
just very slightly flat.
The cast as a whole is very good, with Jon Hamm appearing to enjoy
himself perhaps even more than he should as the memory-wiped archangel,
Gabriel. All the newly-introduced characters are interesting and/or
endearing, my particular favorite being Muriel, a somewhat naive, not
to say dim, angel played to perfection by Quelin Sepulveda.
The problem from my perspective wasn't really with the quality, for once, but
the quantity. As I started watching the fifth and final episode I literally
had to pause the stream and check it was the last one. It seemed the whole
thing had barely gotten started before it was over.
And yet, rushed as it felt, it also seemed as though too few ideas had been
stretched too thin. It was a very odd sensation, to be left wanting more but
not being able to say more of what.
I have a suspicion Good Omens 2 is one of those shows that might make a
stronger impression on a second watch than a first. I suspect much of my
dissatisfaction stems from expectations created by my fuzzy recollections of
Season One. I don't think the two seasons are as consistent in tone as I would
have anticipated. Season Two would probably benefit from being judged
separately rather than in comparison.
Whether I will ever watch it again is another matter. I can readily
imagine re-visiting Season One but I think it's going to be a good while
before I regenerate any enthusiasm for another sit-down with the sequel.
Which just leaves...
Young Sheldon
Young Sheldon is, of course, a sitcom based on the character played by
Jim Parsons in The Big Bang Theory. There's a lot I could say
about the show already but I'll hold back on most of it until I've finished
the run. I do have a few notes, though...
I'm going to say up front that I really like The Big Bang Theory. I know
that's a controversial stance to take in many quarters. I've read a number of
blog posts and web articles about why and how the show is disrespectful to the
various communities who see themselves stereotyped and ridiculed by its
characters and storylines and I don't fundementally disagree with some of
those interpretations and reactions.
The thing, I think, that almost all of those analyses omit to recognize is
that most sitcoms are reliant on stereotypes, which they ridicule. It
underpins the whole genre to some considerable degree.
I suspect the issues some have with this particular sitcom stem from an
unfamiliarity with the form as a whole. As I was reading some of the
commentary, it was noticeable how often the alalysis was prefaced by an
assertion that the writer didn't usually watch sitcoms, or not sitcoms like
this, successful, popular, mainstream, network half-hour shows. I also suspect
that being confronted with a stereotype someone feels might be applied to
themself makes that person less amenable to finding said stereotype
amusing. Few people appreciate being seen as the butt of a joke.
What good sitcoms do, however - and I would argue The Big Bang Theory is
a good sitcom - is to make stereotypes feel more nuanced over time. Good writing and
especially sympathetic or complex performance can cause a general audience to
warm to personalities they would otherwise shun, simply by allowing viewers to
get to know the characters as individuals, not just as representatives of a
type.
I'm considerably more inclined to listen to the arguments of those who
seek to explain why the writing or acting in TBBT fails to open up the
stereotypes it plays upon, thereby revealing the human beings inside, rather than
those of the faction that thinks the show fails out of the gate just by
trading in stereotypes in the first place. There's a very supportable case to
be made that the writing and acting across the long run of the show is
inconsistent, self-indulgent and sometimes lazy. Not every episode is good,
let alone great.
Even though I very much enjoyed the parent show, however, I did not
immediately warm to the idea of a spin-off featuring its most obviously
annoying character as a ten-year old. It seemed to me that the kind of manic
self-absorption exhibited by the adult Sheldon Cooper, manifesting
primarily as it often does as a collection of tics and tropes, while it might
be humourous in an adult character, would most likely be just disturbing and
uncomfortable in a child.
For that and other reasons I didn't rush to find out if the writers managed
somehow to avoid the very obvious pitfalls of the concept. It was only a
combination of a gap in my sitcom dance card and a news item that said the
show was - astonishingly - starting its sixth season that got me take it out
of my watchlist and actually start watching it.
Honestly, it was the six seasons thing that did it. I just couldn't believe it
had lasted that long. We all know how mercilessly fast shows get canned these
days. For any show to get that far had to mean there was something
there worth checking out.
There is and it's very simple. Like Two Broke Girls, Young Sheldon
is just a plain, old-fashioned classic sitcom. There's nothing remotely fancy
or clever about it. It relies wholly on sound charecterisation, consistent
writing and some very solid acting by a strong, ensemble cast.
As with many of the best sitcoms, there's an extended family at the center.
The set-up is instantly recognizeable no matter that most of the viewers will
never have set foot in East Texas. All the storylines revolve around the usual
quotidian concerns of growing up, going to school, making friends, working and
getting along with the neighbors.
The two things that most suprised me about the show, of which I have now seen
the first two seasons, were firstly how unfocused on the
titular character it is and secondly on how quickly it foregrounds Sheldon's
meemaw, superbly played by the wonderful Annie Potts. If I didn't know
the provenance of the show, I might have assumed she was the well-known
character from a previous success, around whom a spin-off had been built.
Two seasons in, no-one appears to have aged. I am curious to see how that
changes. One of the big problems all successful sitcoms starring child actors
face is how to keep the storylines cute as the actors grow less so.
It's a particularly pointed issue in this show because Sheldon is already
running well ahead of the usual developmental markers. He's a ten year-old in high
school, being courted by Universities. There's already been a storyline
concerning the difference between his intellectual and emotional maturity and
how it predicates against him moving away from home to take up the
opportunities already coming his way. That's not going to work so well when
he's fourteen, which I assume he will be by Season Six.
Or maybe the whole thing doesn't unfold in real time. I can't say I've been
keeping track. Maybe he'll be ten until the show ends and we'll just have to
look at him like we look at the adult actors playing high school kids in
Grease; with wilful suspension of disbelief.
It's not something I need to think about just yet. I have four more seasons to
watch before I get there. I'll keep whatever observations I may have on what I
see along the way for another time. For now, I'll just say it's another good
sitcom. I'm enjoying it.
Glancing ahead, my current viewing slate looks like this:
- Young Sheldon
- Arrested Development
- Carole and Tuesday
- Captain Fall
- Riverdale
Where last time everything was on Amazon Prime, this time it's all on
Netflix. Again, I don't think that means anything, other than that
obviously one streaming channel isn't enough any more.
I'll get to my thoughts on those shows when I get there. I also have a post
I've been wanting to do for weeks now about
Cannon Busters, a show I finished watching a good while back. I'm not sure I ever even
mentioned it until now.
So many shows; so much to say about them all; so little time to get it done.
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