Jan 26, 2024
Bingeing, microdosed: The Leftovers, s03e08, "The Book of Nora" (dir. Mimi Leder, 2015)
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Bingeing, microdosed: The Leftovers, s03e08, "The Book of Nora" (dir. Mimi Leder, 2015)
Bingeing, microdosed: The Big C, s02e03, "Sexual Healing" (created by Darlene Hunt, 2011)
The commercial success of the first seasons of "Weeds" (its astoundingly good season six) spawned "Nurse Jackie" and "The Big C," i.e. dramedies led by forty-plus renowned actresses who salvage, through their sheer awesomeness, plodding and mundanely structured storylines. When Cynthia Nixon's supremely annoying character gets pregnant, you know it won't end well. When Hugh Dancy's incredibly hot cancer patient shows up at the beginning of season two, you can bet he will be dead by its end: guest-star contracts work (or: used to work) this way. It's a low-key and frequently marred pleasure.
Series finale: The Good Fight (created by Michelle King, Robert King, Phil Alden Robinson, 2017-2022)
The superior spin-off of The Good Wife has ended with a potent climax to the paranoid simmering throughout this season, maybe even the whole series. Always massively entertaining and captivating, sometimes cringy and meandering, never stuck in a rut. I will miss you.
Season finale: American Rust (created by Dan Futterman, 2021-)
Long months after trying to watch American Rust for the first time, I got back to it, and it's finally grown on me. I still don't care about the central plot's crime or, more broadly, about anything that involves Daniels's and Neustaedter's characters. But since it's a series, there's time for what otherwise could be lost in the peripheries. Tierney's character gets more screen time, most of which revolves around her increasingly resolute determination to talk her workmates into unionizing. There are several scenes of women talking, still underdeveloped, yet already interesting and potent. Tierney is the most subtly expressive, empathetic, and present actor on the show, as, likely, is painfully underutilized Zenzi Williams, who's her great partner in the few moments they share. There's also Alvarez, whose runaway plot meanders at first (though he's partnered for one-two episodes with scene-stealing Nicole Chanel Williams), but then he has this sweet sex-working moment with an older guy, when he is caught by experiencing pleasure, which he grasps with an unexpectedly beautiful face expression. There's nothing special about what the series looks or sounds like, but there's also nothing that doesn't work. I'm looking forward to the second season, I'm happy it'll happen.
Series finale: The Staircase (created by Antonio Campos, 2022)
It's a smart series about a crime story and, increasingly so, about the making of the former. It started growing on me, probably as soon as Collette's character dies, again, on the titular staircase. The first time, happening at the end of episode 2, shocks, as it is horribly gruesome, upsetting, and fascinating. The finale brings everything to a climax, complicates it, and then meanders. Binoche, Posey, and Collette are standouts, amazing at communicating their convoluted relationship with the protagonist.
Bingeing, microdosed: Station Eleven, ep. 10 "Unbroken Circle" (dir. Jeremy Podeswa, 2022)
Second season: Sorry for Your Loss (created by Kit Steinkellner, 2018-2019)
Olsen taps into some unpleasant yet truth-ringing and well-acted characteristic traits and sustains them throughout the season, while McTeer just leaves mid-season in a wobbly plot twist and Tran has a pleasantly scripted queer-intimate moment. Meanwhile, Adepo and Athie circle each other in increasingly intense brother-to-brother exchanges. Lots of stuff doesn't work smoothly in this show's sophomore season, which somehow seemed easier and more creatively interesting earlier (cinematography, editing, and blocking in particular), but it still works thanks to its cast. I wish I could see what they do in the third season following that ending.
Bingeing, microdosed: The Great (created by Tony McNamara, 2020-)
A funny breezy quasi-historical fiction, with deliciously hammy and nuance acting of everyone involved, including the two leads. It's one of the series that, while punchy from the start, required a bit of time for me to get immersed in enough to properly binge. The most refreshing part comes along when the two protagonists realize that not only they are, in fact, antagonists, but also their feud is multi-faceted and affectively challenging. Alliances shift in surprising ways.