#bingeingmicrodosed

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Bingeing, microdosed: Everything's Gonna Be Okay (created by Josh Thomas, 2020-2021)

I used to really like Please Like Me, Thomas's previous series, and at first I got weirded out by how similar tone-wise these two shows seemed, and how occasionally annoying Thomas's persona had become. Now that I finally went through the first season and a bit of the second (and the last, unfortunately), I came to really appreciate the storytelling and characterization of everyone involved. There's a sweet dryness to the overall tone, which navigates, increasingly throughout, the complicated family dynamics around a sibling in the spectrum. The ending of the first season and its immediate aftermath, coinciding with the COVID-19 outbreak in the second season's opening episode is particularly gutting. But also funny, tender, and smartly written. Great show!

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Second season: Hunters (created by David Weil, 2022)

While Greg Austin is again the series super-hot villain in an over-the-top muscular (and naked) body, it is Jennifer Jason Leigh and her virtuoso accent work, who's the only sustainable reason to watch it. While I am not a Pacino fan, this series uses him well, which is why the potentially risky gimmick of re-introducing him through an abundant series of flashbacks actually keeps the narrative running.

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On second viewing: Feud (created by Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen, and Michael Zam, 2017)

Susan Sarandon is the main reason to watch this, as of now, still one-season limited series, built around the infamous, legendary, and likely overblown year-long animosity between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The latter is played, also fantastically, by Jessica Lange, who adds a generous amount of empathy to the character, otherwise written as petulant, vindictive, and haunted by the painful awareness of Davis's acting talent. Sarandon, who consistently delivers great roles in smaller films, is breathtakingly luminous, while having less screen time but more potent scenes than Lange. It is particularly the intimate moments that stand out, presenting her character as way warmer than her screen persona: rehearsals with her untalented daughter (ironically unconvincingly played by Kiernan Shipka), hang-outs with her almost-out co-star, Victor Buono, chats with Olivia de Havilland. The supporting cast is uniformly good too, as are set design, makeup, and costumes, making this my favorite Murphy production.

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Bingeing, Microdosed: Hearstopper (created by Alice Oseman, 2022)

A perfect short series about a few queer teenagers freely relating and emoting, with the generous support of their parents and teachers. Sensitive, empathetic, playful, and smart. It would've been so great to have access to when I was a teenager.

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Bingeing, microdosed: Klangor (created by Tomasz Kamiński, 2020)

It's another out of many Polish crime limited series with great casts and twisty plots. Compared to Rojst and The Woods, it's exactly in the middle: with no major implausibilities or moments of creative bliss.

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Bingeing, microdosed: Reservation Dogs (created by Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi, 2021)

After hugely successful What We Do in the Shadows, Taika Waititi signed another FX series, which is not only politically potent, being written by and featuring almost exclusively Indigenous voices, but also warmly and (simultaneously) bitterly entertaining slice-of-life representation of subalterned (though not at all homogeneously) teenage coming-of-age experience. Though every episode slightly veers towards singular characters, it's a strong ensemble work, whose tone, warmth, political agenda, and collective spirit are akin to other "auteur" productions by FX.

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The latest season: Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 11 (created by Larry David, 2021)

The 6-year-long hiatus between this show's seasons 8 and 9 showed a change that is likely both within and outside my reception. Curb, to me, was a bit like 30 Rock: enticing in its toxicity and cringy laughability. Most likely, my favorite seasons (7 & 8) simply came during the time when I was most infatuated with this type of humor from which I now distance myself way more. The seasons released after 2017 are also differently paced: longer, slower, and somehow clumsier, bitchier, and even more misogynistic in a way that is just happy to be mean. That was particularly the case of season 9, which I find the least interesting out of the three. This one, however, brought one massive advantage in the form of Tracey Ullman's gassy Irma Kostroski, plus two other characters: Keyla Monterroso Mejia's Maria Sofia and Bill Hader's trio of not-cousins with non-descript Eastern-European accents.

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Bingeing, microdosed: Only Murders in the Building (created by John Hoffman, Steve Martin, 2021)

It's an old-fashioned, by-numbers-cliffhangery, and expensive-looking whodunnit, anchored by Martin, Short (both of whom are here at their most typical), and Gomez (who's disappointingly too one-note for her star turn), with playfully nuanced guest appearances by Ryan, Dominguez, Hoffman, Houdyshell, and Randolph (the MVP of the prematurely cancelled High Fidelity). When none of the latter is on screen, it's an uneventful watch.