June Check-in

June is here! Happy June! Hope your June is going well and that you continue to have a good one! Here’s a check-in on a few smaller pieces that don’t warrant the sort of long ramble that you’re all subscribing for.

The biggest watch-project going on this month is I’m slated to finish catching up on my years-long project of watching all the things covered on Blank Check with Griffin & David. All that’s left is the little they’ve covered in this calendar year that I haven’t watched, specifically a couple of ancillary Spielbergs I never got to, the filmography of director Amy Heckerling, and the movie King Ralph. It’s a long road catching up on this show and I can’t describe how excited I am to have caught up on it and how broad the future looks with… not a lot of movies.

The other thing that came up is my partner’s list of a bunch of movies etc to celebrate Pride. It’s a list of 15 or so titles (and we watched the first last night: The Birdcage, a Pride tradition at this point) and it’s possible we won’t get to all of them, but it’s a great list, filled with stuff I’ve seen (Moonlight, Bound, Priscilla Queen of the Desert) and stuff I’ve not (D.E.B.S., Howard, Dicks The Musical). Let me know what you’re doing for Pride and share any good recs!

Anyways… to what’s been up!

The Studio

The first season of The Studio wrapped up recently. When it started, it was a show made for me and by the end it was… still a show made for me. It’s weird, though. There’s this thing in episodic comedy where the finales can be… just another episode.

It did a good job of wrapping up the storylines. Having the entire cast come together for the big CinemaCon presentation was a delight, and yet there’s this sense that the writers had an image of that final scene from an early point in the season. They certainly earned it, but it felt that the show had blown past needing that particular catharsis.

It’s not like the finale was bad! The presentation itself was a lot of fun, with the chaos backstage having to turn to picture perfect smiles whenever someone walks onstage and speak to the crowd. Zoe Kravitz was especially fantastic, tripping balls as she was on serious drugs and then going onstage to be a hype machine for Blackwing before getting backstage and then basically collapsing.

But it ended up being one the weakest episode of the season. It hardly harshed the buzz, and the season was still terrific. Can’t wait for season 2.

Poker Face

We’re about halfway through this season of Poker Face and my god what a show. The first season was great and this Columbo-inspired murder mystery-of-the-week has yet to drop the ball. Quick thoughts on each ep so far…

1. “The Game Is A Foot” - Cynthia Erivo times five made for a delightful start for the season. She’s such a terrific actress and seeing her play all these different, well-drawn characters, one of whom has to pretend to be different iterations of her sisters was a great showcase. Also every cut to DJ Erivo means she’s the mvp.
2. “Last Looks” - My partner pointed out that it’ll be hard to be in any funeral parlor in the future and not think about Charlie hitting that vape in a glass coffin.
3. “Whack-a-Mole” - God what a guest cast, and it’s great to have the show mine its own backstory for future premises. Just about any episode is watchable in a vacuum, but this manages to be an installment that utilizes it without getting overwhelmed. Just a great story.
4. “The Taste of Human Blood” - My vote for weakest of the season so far. Still worth it to see Kumail Nanjiani as a jacked cop influencer from Florida with a pet gator.
5. “Hometown Hero” - Every single cut back to the manager having to deal with his crumbling marriage was hilarious. “So You Find Yourself In an Open Marriage” absolutely killed me. But this is maybe the best example of showing how ruthlessly efficient this show is. Charlie is the only regular character in the show, and yet in the last scene they do an amazing job of putting you in the pitcher’s mindset so she can prove the crime.
6. “Sloppy Joseph” - It shouldn’t have, but the dark comedy of the gerbil dying in a plouf of blood had me cackling. Also amazing that the show managed to do one of these murder mysteries in an elementary school and have it work.

Back half of the season gonna be great. May this show run forever.

House (1977)

Watched this Criterion Challenge film while at a friend’s house over the weekend. It’s a Japanese horror film from the late 70s Nobuhiko Obayashi about a cadre of high school girls who go on summer holiday to an old haunted house. Chaos ensues.

It’s difficult to explain just how insane this movie is. Obayashi has a background in films that are allegorically about the lingering guilt of Japan’s role in World War II and the trauma of surviving the only nuclear attacks in history. I don’t pretend to know all the details of how this aligns into that ethos, but smuggling such grand themes into a psychedelic low budget horror movie is always a recipe for something interesting.

For all that high-mindedness, this movie is deranged as fuck. Decapitations, behandings, de-fingerings, dancing skeletons, possible cannibalism… this film is 100 minutes of drippy carnage. It’s impossibly deranged and comes with the sort of can-do attitude that values big swings that look shitty over conservative imagery that compromise the film’s own self-actualization.

Definitely going into the Halloween hat this year.

Survivor (48/50)

Another season of Survivor has come and gone and 48 wound up being a truly fantastic one. The double act of Kyle and Kamilla is the cherry on top of a sundae that started in the pre-merge and only dragged a little bit after Star joined the jury. Great characters. Great gameplay. Highly recommended.

Also last week they released the full cast list for season 50, bringing back a record 24 players for the first non-winner, all-returnee season in almost a decade. There’s no all-returnee cast list that is perfect (though Winners at War comes close), but this has so many hits that it’s easy to let some of the faults slide.

On the faulty side…

The return of Colby, Ozzy, and Joe is a focus on physical strength that’s never the most interesting thing in the show. There’s a reason Colby didn’t beat Tina and Ozzy didn’t beat Yul. It’s not like they’re gonna this time. By the same token, it’s the same reason Jonathan as the only representative for 41-44 is a complete mindbender. I guess Jeff just wants to see these dudes do some challenges?

I’m also not hot on the returns of Chrissy (it’s a rougher season, but I wasn’t hot on her game), Dee (amazing player but… she won already? Can’t we get someone else? preferably from 41-44?), and Kyle (love Kyle but see above re: Dee; he’s also a massive liability considering Kamilla is coming back…) but I’m willing to be surprised.

But on the great side…

I’m basically excited for everyone else. Q, Emily, Kamilla, Charlie, and Tiffany are all fabulous characters from their seasons and I can’t wait to see them again.

And then there’s the old schoolers. More Christian is always welcome. More Angelina? Hell yeah. More Stephenie? Give her another shot after she flamed out on Heroes vs Villains. More Aubry? Hopefully she’ll get more leverage than she did in Edge of Extinction. OR I WALK.

But more Rick Devens? Let’s freaking go. The chance to see Cirie play one more time (and maybe win)? Who is turning that down? And Coach is back? The dragon slayer himself? I’m gonna be sending eagle emojis. And Mike freaking White is back? Dude seriously might win this whole thing. Good god what a completely insane cast.

Man I can’t wait for 50.

The best thing about these returnee seasons is that new players come out of nowhere to surprise us. On their first attempts players can leave impressions, but they can also explode onto the scene in thrilling ways now that they’ve had a chance to think about how to improve things if they can do it again.

If there’s a problem, it’s that they needed 47 to be a season of all New Era returnees. There are so many people off the list, and while it’s fine to see a lot of New Era representation, it’s bad planning by the show to have a gap such that there’s been 14 seasons without doing this. The show might not like it, but returning player seasons are inevitable and should happen with some regularity so that we don’t get stuck with this season having to serve too many masters. Imagine if they’d gone with an 18-player cast. Yeesh.

This is the opposite problem of the state of most narrative storytelling in the current zeitgeist. While we do want new things in the world, fan service isn’t bad when it’s deployed well. We can love individual superhero movies, but there’s something magic about watching an Avengers team come together. That’s all a returnee player season is. We don’t need an Avengers movie every year, but we need one every few years to act as a signpost as time moves forward.

And sorry for this being a footnote, but 49 looks great as well. Can’t wait to see it.

See you, Space Cowboy…

Other stuff currently on the horizon…

• Mountainhead - New Jesse Armstrong movie on HBO? Sign me up…
• Hacks (Season 4) - Working my way through this. Really a terrific show and so funny. Also it has the Americana! What a delight.
• The Rehearsal - Just started this based around the buzz on season two. It’s already incredible to watch. There’s something wonderful about a show that spends a reckless amount of the studio’s money, but in a way that we see it all on screen at every moment.
• The Phonecian Scheme - Tickets to see this on Friday. Can’t wait.
• [Super Secret Project…] - If all goes well, at the end of the month I’ll be announcing a regular series that will take us to the end of the year. The first of it starts this weekend and boy is it exciting. More on that soon, though…
• The Leftovers & Watchmen - Starting a slow rewatch of these series soon. Unsure what the check-ins will look like if at all…
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen - Chris and I are through the first half of Gardens of the Moon. We just need the schedule the record and get it out into the world. Already chomping at the bit to finish the second half. We’ll see…

That’s all for now, but I’ll be back Friday with… something. What about you? Anything cool coming up?