The 2022-2023 Television I Didn't Watch

In advance of my 2022-2023 television top ten list (I go by the Emmy eligibility calendar, because it's easier), I want to talk about some of the shows I didn't watch this year, for various reasons.  There are far, far more shows out there than anyone can possibly keep up with, so this is not a remotely exhaustive list.  The titles below are only the most high profile ones that I want to talk about why I skipped. 

I reserve the right to revisit these choices in the future, but I still haven't seen anything from any previous list.

"Succession" - I'm finally giving up on ever starting this.  There's been a boost in the show's popularity for its final season, but I can't bring myself to spend nearly forty hours watching these terrible people destroy each other for power, no matter how entertaining they are.  The clips and catch-up summaries I've seen have only cemented that the Roy family are simply too infuriating for me to take.  

"Yellowstone" - This includes all the spinoffs.  I'm glad that Taylor Sheridan and Kevin Costner have such a big win, but the more I read about the show the more it's clear that I'm not the target audience.  Westerns were always a challenge for me, and frontier narratives even moreso.  I might have fun picking apart the show's old fashioned worldview, but there are simply too many other options for me to bother. 

"Cunk on Earth" - I've seen the Philomena Cunk character a few times in some of Charlie Brooker's other shows, and I don't think I need to see one built around her.  I have a pretty low tolerance for comedians playing dumbell characters, and I'm not getting any novel vibes from Cunk.  The subject matter actually looks like a lot of fun otherwise - visiting historical sites and talking to various experts.  Too bad.

"Daisy Jones & The Six" - I like Riley Keough and Sam Claflin, but music biopics, even fake ones, are pretty rough for me.  I recently watched all of Danny Boyle's "Pistol," which was about a real rock band from the same period, so I think I've hit my quota for this genre anyway.  This is the show on this list I feel guiltiest about skipping, however, because it's a riskier project and aimed at an underserved audience.     

"Jury Duty" - The combination of a reality show with a sitcom format reportedly got some very good results, but this just isn't the kind of thing I enjoy.  Frankly, a whole series where everyone is fake except for the one guy who's being "Truman Show" -ed sounds bizarre, and not in a good way.  I'd be way more interested in watching a documentary about how this project was done than the actual show itself.  

"White House Plumbers" - I'd probably be watching this for the star-studded cast if it weren't for the fact that "Gaslight" got to the Watergate scandal first, with an even better cast last year.  I got really burned out on all those prestige miniseries in the spring of '22, so I've been cutting back.  "Love & Death" is another one I'm on the fence about skipping, which covers the same events as last year's "Candy."

"Dahmer" - Finally, I'm generally a true crime fan, and I like a lot of the people involved in this project, but I don't think I need to see Ryan Murphy's take on Jeffrey Dahmer.  If this were a movie, maybe it would have been more palatable, but ten episodes is a lot.  I like the idea of a macroscopic approach, looking at systemic failures as well as Dahmer's sociopathy, but the results were reportedly mixed.  

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A Rant About "Air"

2023 has the odd distinction of having several films built around business deals and products, such as "Tetris," "Blackberry," and even "Flaming Hot."  "Air" is one of these, which tells the inspirational story of how Nike, an underdog in the basketball shoe business back in 1984, managed to sign Michael Jordan to one of the most lucrative endorsement deals of all time and launch the Air Jordan brand.  Nike's talent and marketing folks, Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) are positioned as the heroes, with Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) grumpily supporting them as the risks they want to take keep compounding.  On the other side of the negotiating table are Jordan's formidable mother Deloris (Viola Davis) and agent David Falk (Chris Messina).  We only ever see Michael Jordan himself from behind or with his face obfuscated, like Jesus in "Ben Hur."

If you take the film at face value, it works perfectly fine.  The performances are all good, with Messina and Davis getting some of the better monologues.  Ben Affleck's direction is nothing fancy, but it does the job of resurrecting the '80s, with the help of nostalgic media clips and a soundtrack full of familiar hits.  The hero worship of Michael Jordan is laid on pretty thick, but comes across as genuine.  I'm sure there are sneakerheads out there who would enjoy learning how Air Jordans came about, and who the major players were behind the scenes.  I, on the other hand, have no particular love for professional sports, footwear, or self-congratulatory corporate hagiography, so I sat through "Air" trying very hard not to roll my eyes at certain points.  To be blunt, I didn't buy what it was selling.

The last time I saw Phil Knight onscreen was in the little-seen documentary "Claydream," where Knight ousted beloved stop motion animator Will Vinton from his own studio, eventually taking it over and turning it into Laika.  Knight gives a lot to charity, and I'm sure he's a lovely person in his private life, but as a businessman, the man is a shark.  There's no other way to become a billionaire.  Watching Ben Affleck play Phil Knight as this blustery, but benign eccentric rubbed me the wrong way.  And while I'm sure that "Air" resembles the truth, there's no doubt in my mind that this is a heavily prettied-up version of the real story, with all the rough edges sanded down.  Nearly all the major figures who appear in "Air" are still alive, and the script is clearly doing its best to show everyone in the best light possible so no one has any possible reason to take offense.

Frankly, "Air" is a story told from the wrong perspective.  Late in the film, negotiations hit a snag when Deloris Jordan asks for profit participation on the sales of the shoes, which forces Vaccaro to admit that endorsement deals don't compensate the players fairly.  Michael Jordan's Nike deal actually helped to change this, which only adds to his status as a legendary player.  However, Jordan also remains an extreme outlier in a sport that has systematically exploited its players.  This is acknowledged in the film itself, but far too late and far too little.  No matter how much the film tries to paint Nike as the underdogs, the stakes are undeniably higher for Jordan and his family.  So it feels incredibly myopic to be telling this story largely from Nike's point of view.  A similar shoe deal subplot in "King Richard" was handled far more appropriately.

Make no mistake that "Air" is about Michael Jordan through and through.  Screenwriter Alex Convery made it clear that he came up with the idea for the film because of a segment of the Michael Jordan miniseries, "The Last Dance."  But while "The Last Dance" was about the man himself, "Air" is about the legend, and the commodification of that legend by a shoe company.  Sure, the blow is softened by Vaccaro being portrayed as a basketball lover and an especially prescient talent scout, who is able to get the deal rolling by convincing everyone at Nike of Jordan's impending greatness, but in the end the deal is a triumph of capitalism, not sports, and not fandom.  And as fun as "Air" is to watch at times, especially when Chris Messina is going full tilt, it never stops feeling like a shoe commercial.     

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Down the "June's Journey" Rabbit Hole

What have I gotten myself into?

Picking up where I left off with my last mobile gaming post, I had tried a bunch of different mobile games with different gameplay, and the only one that I wound up keeping was the "mystery hidden object game" June's Journey.  I liked that I could go at my own pace, ad interruptions weren't mandatory to progress, and I enjoyed the gameplay.  The seek and find picture mechanics are very well done, and playing them oddly gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I'm tidying up the cluttered spaces.  

However, if you want to speed up the pace of the gameplay, get competitive, and get better rewards, June's Journey is an expertly engineered timesink.  Like most free-to-play games, the amount you can play is limited by in-game currency connected to a timer.  In this case, if you run out of little yellow lightning bolts, you have to wait for them to regenerate - at a rate of two minutes a bolt, and 14 bolts to play a game.  You can make them last longer by watching ads, reducing the rate to 10 bolts a game.  You can win more by participating in side games and receiving prizes.  

Of course, that just covers the ability to play.  In order to access more levels, you also have to decorate.  More specifically, you have to convert your winnings from each round of play, measured in coins, into buildings, trees, roads, and other decor for your very own digital Orchid Island.  Each decoration is connected to another currency, measured in pink flowers.  In order to move on to the next level, you need to hit a certain flower benchmark.  Of course, the decorations also have built-in timers, and the time between a purchase and actually getting the flower value of the item can be multiple days.  You can bypass this by spending another form of currency, the purple gemstones.  Coins, flowers, gemstones, and lightning bolts are prizes from a variety of different mini-games and side quests in June's Journey, often with their own currencies to keep track of.  At one point I was juggling gold bars, keys, tokens, tickets, cards, coins, gems, bolts, compasses, cups of coffee, flowers, bushes, building materials and more.  And of course there are randomized prize boxes and card packets in the mix to keep things interesting.    

The decorating part of the game is fun, even if you don't care for the cutesy design sensibilities of the game.   Because all the decorations have different flower values, and building space is limited (controlled by yet another currency!) you have to figure out how to best maximize your flower value while not making your island look like too much of an eyesore.  I buy a lot of trees, because they're easier to keep in scale, and good for hiding anything especially garish that comes out of one of the prize boxes. June's Journey is obviously aimed at female players, with a storyline that takes place in 1927, following the adventures of a mystery-solving adventuress and socialite, June Parker.  Orchid Island is a perpetually sunny, well-kept paradise of parties and holidays, where something is always under renovation.   The storylines are basic romance novel fodder, and I don't get much out of them, but I do appreciate that the cast of characters is diverse and there's a good variety of different environments.

I haven't even gotten into the social aspects of the game, where you can join teams and play group challenges against each other for bigger prizes.  Some of the competitive teams are pretty hardcore, requiring resource pooling and scoring benchmarks I have no hope of getting anywhere near.  Some players have been playing for years and have multiple islands, all decorated to the teeth.  Roughly two months in, I'm trying to keep my own playing casual, but it is very easy to get sucked into all the side quests and mini-games, which are frequently more intense and require much more time commitment.  

There's an extensive community around June's Journey, and this is one of the only games I've found where none of the other players appear to be bots.   That speaks well to the game being able to retain my interest.  I'm just worried it may be able to retain it a little too well.  To be continued…

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"Based on a True Story" is Killer

The popularity of the "true crime" genre has only grown in recent years.  I'm certainly guilty of contributing to this.  It's already spawned several pieces of media where newbie podcasters try to cash in on the craze, notably "Only Murders in the Building."  The latest entry is "Based on a True Story," which takes a novel approach.  Its podcasters, Ava and Nathan Bartlett, immediately ID the killer, and then go into business with him to produce their own true crime show.  Even better, the leads are Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina, who have both the comedic and dramatic chops to sell the comedy and the thrills - often simultaneously.

The Bartletts live in an affluent part of Los Angeles and are expecting their first child, but they're struggling financially.  Ava is a realtor with dwindling prospects, and Nathan is a former tennis star turned aging coach.   They hire a plumber, Matt (Tom Bateman), who Nathan befriends before Ava realizes that he's the local serial killer, The Westside Ripper.  Creating a podcast featuring Matt seems like the answer to their money troubles, but things quickly spin out of control.  It turns out that podcasting isn't as easy as it looks, especially when it comes to marketing and promotion.  Other characters, like Ava's best friend Ruby (Priscilla Quintana) and her younger sister Tory (Liana Liberato) become involved.

"Based on a True Story" works great as a fast-paced thriller, where the Bartletts struggle to stay one step ahead of the law and their dangerous new co-creator.  This is the kind of show that frequently indulges in narrative fake-outs, and every episode ends on some kind of cliffhanger.  However, it works even better as a spoof on the true crime genre, and especially poking fun at a particular breed of rich Angeleno.  Matt not only agrees to do the podcast, but he becomes so enthusiastic about it that the Bartletts constantly have to fight to keep him from taking it over completely.  They find themselves in competition with other podcasts, and other true crime entrepreneurs trying to cash in.  The show is very breezy, and light on gore, but it makes a point to show how the Bartletts become more and more morally compromised as the unstable situation goes on.  

I also appreciate "Based on a True Story" for being such a great showcase for its talented actors.  Ava is shown to be very pregnant, but Kelly Cuoco is still extremely attractive and charismatic throughout.  She's playing a more mature, responsible version of her usual persona, but is still horny and chaotic.  Between this and "Air," it's been a fantastic year for Chris Messina, who managed to get me to empathize with him in some truly absurd situations.  Tom Bateman is clearly having a lot of fun looking sinister, and walking that thin line between repellent and fascinating.  He reminds me a bit of  Villanelle from "Killing Eve," though the show hasn't gotten past his surface level schtick yet.  Even the minor characters get some great moments.  Ruby, for instance, is set up as a spoiled hedonist with a troubled marriage to Simon (Aaron Staton).  However, she gets a truly kickass moment in the finale that was so smartly done, I was honestly disappointed when it turned out to be part of one of the show's fantasy sequences.

  

At only eight episodes, "Based on a True Story" makes for a quick watch, and it ends exactly where it should.  I definitely wanted to see more the moment the last episode was finished.  I expect that the show can sustain a couple more seasons, but hopefully won't outstay its welcome.  The farce is a lot of fun, and I hope it can maintain the same energy and irreverence for a while.

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Hello "Mrs. Davis"

After watching the entire season, I still don't know if I like "Mrs. Davis" or not.  It's a wild swing of a show that mixes multiple genres and tackles some interesting topics.  I respect that it leans into being very weird, in a way that not a lot of shows are.  Co-created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, it stars Betty Gilpin as a renegade nun named Sister Simone.  She lives in a future where a superintelligent A.I. named Mrs. Davis has more or less taken over the world by taking charge of people's happiness and telling them what to do.  Simone hates her, but is happy to keep her distance, living in a remote convent, until one day Mrs. Davis contacts her with a quest and an offer.

The storytelling is done in a roundabout way, showing us wacky things up front, and then filling in the backstory to explain how we got there, and what those events actually mean in content.  This is one of those heightened comic book universes where the first episode involves a wild chase sequence with Nazis and a lot of physical gags, and Simone occasionally meets with her husband Jay (Andy McQueen) in a metaphysical diner.  Because of all the figures from Christian theology that keep popping up, and the wonderfully bizarre concepts, "Mrs. Davis" reminds me a lot of "Preacher," except much lighter and more earnest in its aims.  It's also like "The Good Place," except more anarchic and pulpy.  While on her quest, Simone gets a chance to work out her baggage with her genial ex Wiley (Jake McDornan) and her troublesome parents (Elizabeth Marvel, David Arquette).  Often, the supernatural shenanigans just feel like a distraction.

Maybe that's why I didn't connect to "Mrs. Davis" the way I was hoping that I would.  I love Betty Gilpin as a badass nun, and I love that the show takes its Christian theology fairly seriously, even though it's very irreverent.  However, in spite of flirting with some pretty heavy subject matter, it never stops feeling like a sitcom.  Mrs. Davis, for instance, is a pretty sinister creation, able to track down Simone wherever she goes, and manipulates just about anybody to do her bidding, but any darker implications of this are only threatened and never really carried through.  The characters feel emotionally genuine, but it doesn't feel like the show is taking them seriously.  Lots of time is spent on goofy situations like Simone getting herself swallowed by a whale, and Wiley taking part in an endurance contest to prove he isn't a chicken, but none of it feels consequential.  I kept waiting for Mrs. Davis to reveal that the whole quest had been a trick to get Simone to feel a sense of spiritual fulfillment and make up with her mother.  I couldn't bring myself to take most of the show at face value and I didn't find any of it funny.     

Still, I got through the whole season without much effort.  It's well made and easy to watch, with a fast pace and lots of good comic performances.  The show is also riddled with familiar guest stars, including Margo Martindale, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Chris Diamantopolous leading the anti-AI underground. And it never feels like the production is cutting corners at any point, the way it often felt in similar shows like "Preacher" and "Legion."  Clearly a lot of effort was expended on making "Mrs. Davis" the best that it could be.  However, I don't think I get what it's trying to be, and I'm not alone.  Every reaction to the show I've seen calls it very weird, which is fine, but it's not a very deep or impactful kind of weird, the way David Lynch films are.  It's more of a random, unfocused kind of weird, like the purposefully AI generated episode titles.  What put me off the most was when the show would touch on something interesting, like Simone and Jay's unbalanced relationship, and then never really engage with it to my satisfaction.  It felt like constantly running into narrative dead ends.

Everything does wrap up nicely in the end, and some of the twists are gratifying to see play out, though the mechanics of it are more interesting than any of the substance.  I guess I just wasn't on the same wavelength as this one, and I can't figure out if it's the show's fault or mine.  I suspect it's a little of both.  "Mrs. Davis" is wildly creative, completely unpredictable, and the kind of show I'd like to see more often.  This one just didn't do anything for me.  Oh well.        

  

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"Poker Face," Year One

Iconic detectives have long been a mainstay of television.  We watched Columbo and Jessica Fletcher solve dozens of murders in the '80s and '90s.  And now there's Charlie Cale, played by the gravel-voiced, big-haired Natasha Lyonne, a casino waitress and human lie detector, who is forced to go on the run after getting herself mixed up in a murder.  Created by Rian Johnson, and absolutely crammed to the gills with notable guest stars, "Poker Face" is designed to be a throwback to the glory days of episodic mystery shows, where every episode takes place in a new town, with a new cast of characters.  

Because "Poker Face" has more ambitions and more of a budget, each episode can feel like it's a different show from week to week.  Charlie has a knack for landing service jobs in all kinds of industries, so she can be a cleaner in a retirement community one week and a merch girl for a rock band the next.  She also has the uncanny ability to run across ne'er-do-wells, who end up lying to the wrong lady, and Charlie is compelled to call them out.  Most of the episodes follow the same formula.  First we watch the murder (or other major crime) of the week play out, and then we rewind to see the events from Charlie's point of view.  The mystery isn't who committed the crime, but how Charlie will eventually trip them up and discover the truth.

I appreciate that "Poker Face" is designed for casual viewing.  There's a scary enforcer played by Benjamin Bratt chasing Charlie across the country, but he only shows up in a handful of episodes.  There are a couple of fun characters that pop up again for the finale, and the show rewards you for sticking around, but you can absolutely enjoy each episode by itself.  I marveled over how the show had managed to land a cast list so varied and high profile - two of this year's Best Supporting Actress nominees pop up in different episodes - but then, it makes sense that they'd be more willing to sign on for one episode, often in a big, juicy role.  These include Chloe Sevigny as a washed up rock star, Tim Blake Nelson as a racecar driver, Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson as bitchy retirement home besties, and Nick Nolte playing a special effects guru based off of Phil Tippett. 

However, positioning Natasha Lyonne as the star is what really makes the series work.  Charlie Cale is a perpetually frazzled, scroungy, lovable soul who seems to be happiest around people, no matter what walk of life.  Her greatest strength and her worst fault is that she's empathic and cares about the victims that nobody else does.  The whole series kicks off because she won't accept that her best friend Natalie (Dascha Polanco) was killed in a domestic dispute.  And once she realizes that someone has lied to her, she's unable to let things go.  Many of the criminals she meets along the way are sympathetic and have good reasons for their bad behavior.  Charlie often acts as our moral compass, reminding us that no matter what the provocation or what the reward, justice has to be done.  Lyonne's performance is a delight throughout - her easy familiarity and rambling cadence immediately recall Peter Falk - she's the epitome of the tough broad with a soft heart.  

The production quality is very high, full of little homages to the shows that "Poker Face" takes its influences from.  The title screen features a blocky yellow '70s font and a copyright notice.  The score is bluesy, with a fun banjo theme announcing Charlie's arrival in every episode.  Her ride is a late '60s Barracuda, often the only recurring onscreen element from episode to episode, aside from Charlie herself.  Because she's staying off the grid, her world is full of lowlifes and society's rejects, but plenty of nice people too, who Charlie befriends along the way.  It helps to foster an old fashioned, analog view of the world that is very nostalgic and appealing. And unlike a lot of TV projects these days, "Poker Face" can go on for as long as it wants.  I'm certainly planning on tuning in for another season.  

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Rank 'Em: "Star Wars Visions," Vol 2.

This batch of "Visions" shorts is much stronger than the ones that premiered in 2021.  While the first set was done almost exclusively by Japanese studios, and the stories incorporated common anime and jidaigeki tropes, the participating animation studios this year are from all over the globe, and you'll probably recognize a few of them.

Even though I'm doing this as a "Rank 'Em" post, I want to stress that all the shorts in this collection are interesting and worth a watch.  The best of them rank among the most outstanding pieces of "Star Wars" media produced since the Disney acquisition.    

1. "Screecher's Reach" (Cartoon Saloon) - If you don't know about Irish studio Cartoon Saloon, this is as good an intro as any.  Despite the picture-book character designs and a passel of young protagonists, this short isn't what it seems, and may be the darkest and most sinister story of the whole set.  And while the animation isn't as showy, it manages some of the best visual storytelling.  The ending is a jawdropper in every sense.  

2. "I Am Your Mother" (Aardman) - By far the lightest and most kid-friendly short of the bunch, with a ton of clever sight gags and some appealing new characters.  I love the humor here, the way that the animators reference and spoof familiar "Star Wars" iconography, and find some novel things to do with it.  And there's plenty for Aardman fans too - check out the familiar looking droid at the race, who may have last been seen skiing on the moon.    

3. "The Spy Dancer" (Studio La Cachette) - A fantastic spy story that feels very WWII and very French, much like the studio that produced it.  The animation is old fashioned traditional 2D, but lovely to look at, and the story is a heartbreaker aimed at more mature viewers.  "The Spy Dancer" probably best fills the assignment of creating an engaging narrative that just happens to take place in the "Star Wars" universe, and manages to show us something new.   

4. "Aau's Song" (Triggerfish) - Many of the different animation studios showcase their country's culture.  In the case of South Africa based Triggerfish, the beauty and the vibrancy really come through.  Unlike some of the other stories starring younger kids, this one truly captures a child's-eye view of the universe and feels like it's calibrated for younger kids' sensibilities.  I love how the characters look, with their felt-like textures and bright colors.      

5. "The Pit" (Lucasfilm and D'Art Shtajio) - Has very strong  writing and story, so I'm putting this fairly high up in the rankings, despite the fairly mundane designs and animation.  I like that this is a Jedi-lite story, focusing on the evils of the Empire and the power of collective resistance over the fancy Force battles featured in most of the others.  This is also one of the only shorts featuring a fairly recognizable actor - Daveed Diggs - as the main character.  

6. "Journey to the Dark Head" (Studio Mir) - This short has a disadvantage, because it's the only one that I saw that was obviously dubbed into English.  It's also a very typical piece of anime, from the character designs to the quest-based story.  The execution, however, is among the very best of this group of shorts, with intense action sequences and beautifully fluid animation.  It's also set up like the first episode of an ongoing series.  Can we get a few more please?

7. "Sith" (El Guiri) - Feels very minimalist compared to some of the others, with really only three characters -  two very minor - and a very simple plot.  I like the way the Jedi/Sith dichotomy is explored, and the stylized CGI animation style, but there's just not as much here as there is in the other shorts.  I was surprised that this has a runtime over over ten minutes, because I was convinced that this was one of the shorter installments.   

8. "In the Stars" (Punkrobot) - I love the way this short looks, with its unique alien designs and the use of stop-motion.  The underlying message is also very strong, conveyed through an inspiration resistance story.  The trouble really comes down to the characters.  Both of the lowest ranked entries have leads who are mischievous little girls, and both of them got on my nerves a bit.  I enjoyed the short regardless, just not as much as some of the others.      

9. "The Bandits of Golak" (88 Pictures) - "Star Wars" through a South Asian lens is fascinating to see.  This is only at the bottom of the rankings because something has to be, and "Golak" has the shakiest production values.  The animation, particularly of faces, still needs some work.  However, it's still a perfectly enjoyable short with a unique point of view.  

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