Author John Green provided the source material for Hulu’s Looking for Alaska, a story about a kid going to boarding school, falling in love and dealing with loss. It’s not clear who will be “lost”, but since it looks more like a mini-series than a series, I didn’t predict renewal or cancellation. It likely will be the narrator who is lost, so mini-series makes sense.
Charlie Plummer plays the main character, Miles aka Pudge, and generally speaking, he’s a wallflower to whom nothing ever happens. His father went to a boarding academy (which seems way more like a summer camp), and he wants to go too to experience SOMETHING (not for nothing, he had no friends at his regular school anyway). Plummer is okay, but the character is mostly a blank slate. I haven’t seeen Plummer before, but wide-eyed innocence is fine. In fact, the whole show feels a lot like Almost Famous, same outsider-looking-in vibe.
Except instead of Penny Lane, we have wild child Alaska Young, played by Kristine Froseth. Alone, no family seems to be in the picture back home, drinking, smoking, has some college-age boyfriend somewhere. But Miles is wowed by her. Yet for all the adoration, I didn’t see it. She seemed kind of average to me. There were no huge Penny Lane / bigger than life moments, and while she’s okay, I didn’t really see the wow factor.
Other citizens of the academy include Denny Love as Miles’ roommate, and Jay Lee as the cool kid who knows all the dirt on everyone. They were okay, but I didn’t care about either one until near the end of the episode.
There’s a sub-story about who ratted out two kids who were going to have sex for the first time, and if it wasn’t Alaska ratting them out, I’d be shocked. Everybody assumes it was the new kid (Miles) or his roommate, but that’s just a plot device to ramp up some tension with some other kids. Yawn.
I care not one whit about the show. I am however tempted to consider picking up the book and giving it a go.
The premise for the Netflix show, Living with Yourself, is a comedy about becoming a better version of yourself through some sort of cloning procedure. Just the weirdness of the premise alone led me to predict cancellation.
The show stars Paul Rudd as generic corporate drone who hates his life. He’s in advertising, hates what he’s doing, unmotivated, depressed at work; at home, his wife wants to have a baby but he needs to go find out about his motility, and he’s not feeling it. A guy at work who transformed his life tells him about an exclusive spa. He goes all in on it, even spending the money they have set aside for getting pregnant. As he’s entering the spa, he sees Tom Brady leaving, so he’s SOLD.
This is where it starts to go weird…the spa takes a DNA sample from his mouth, gives him some gas, and he wakes up buried in the forest in a diaper. He finds his way home, six hours later, to find he’s already home — another version of himself is in the house. Version 1.0 woke up in a grave; Version 2.0 woke up at the spa, went to work, and drove home. The spa never intended for Version 1.0 to wake up after the cloning and synaptic transfer (i.e. giving 2.0 the same memories), but well, they can offer a 20% discount with a referral fee.
So, the show has some things it can explore, sure. Lots of interesting threads to pluck at. But it failed at the most important factor. It’s not really funny. I smiled in mild amusement at the reaction of the spa to their return, but up until then, I hadn’t smiled at all. And I never laughed.
I don’t care if it is Paul Rudd. He’s watchable, sure. But I didn’t laugh once. I’m out. And I’m sticking with my cancellation prediction.
I’ve mentioned before that lots of shows want to introduce a mystery so they can be the next Lost. FaceBook Watch created a show this year called Limetown, and my notes from the launch notice say “Missing neuroscience community members”. Based on that, I predicted cancellation.
So the basic premise is that a bunch of neuroscientists and their family moved to a remote compound with very little info about what it would focus on or what it was going to do. It had opening day speeches, and lots of talk about the dream. But then sometime later a 911 call comes into a neighbouring area asking for firetrucks, ambulances and police to come, send everything, and to “turn it off”, whatever “it” was. The police and everyone arrived and found a private security force refusing to let anyone in (make a note of this, it’s important later). After three days, they opened the gates. Everyone went in, and found … nobody. Everyone was gone. Well, almost everyone. There was a single body in the square that had been crucified and burned at the stake (well, lamp post actually). But the other 326 people were just gone. Dun dun dun.
Fast forward fifteen years, and the people have never turned up. A journalist is writing a story about the mystery of Limetown that was never solved, and her editor is giving her a hard time about it because there is NOTHING NEW to say. She does have a personal connection to the story because her uncle was one of the people who went there and then disappeared.
So the first episode is about her doing interviews, generally being creepy (she records an audio track of herself having sex with a neighbour and then masturbates later while listening to it), and built into for tension, a flashforward to somebody banging on her door, telling her it’s a warning. Dun, DUN, DUN!
Except here’s the thing. Bottom-line, the people all went into the compound and then they disappeared, and NOBODY knows where they went. Not the FBI, not a journalist who had been there before, etc. Yet there WERE people inside, the security team. Remember I said they would be important? I did say that because they were inside, and wouldn’t let anybody in. But I don’t care who you are, if you are securing a compound, and the FBI shows up at your gate saying someone inside called 911, you’re going to go investigate. You’re going to see everyone is gone, or you’re already going to know they’re gone. Someone had to tell them something to get them to hold the gate. Or why wait 3 days? Regardless, there is an obvious lead there. Yet NO MENTION OF IT anywhere in the episode to explain it away.
In addition, the FBI did discover that under every house was a tunnel that connected to a huge network in the area — 80 miles of caves. So, the journalist rightly asks, “They must have all left through the tunnels, right?” Except there were no tracks to indicate where they went. Okay, but that’s hardly proof. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. So while the show likely intends that the people left through other-worldly means (something to do with dreams), the how is pretty well solved in the normal world — and they all left willingly. Why? That’s a separate issue. The How is solved. More or less. It will unravel, sure, but there’s no mystery for anyone to ask “How did they leave?”. There’s only one option — they left through the tunnels, mystery solved. Maybe not solved correctly, but solved in the eyes of the general public. So why is she writing a story about it?
The premise is interesting — a whole town disappeared — but there are too many plot holes there to take it seriously enough to watch.
On the acting side, Jessica Biel is a long way from 7th Heaven days, but honestly, she seems like she’s on meds the whole show. Numb, non-reactive, staring, little animation in her face or body. Yawn. Her uncle is played by Stanley Tucci, but there is very little of him to see in Ep1, so no idea if he has anything to do later (nothing really in Ep1). She has a partner writer assigned to her, and he does nothing but act dazed and confused (Omar Elba). Her editor is played by Sherri Saum but her role is minimal too. So overall, pretty bland in Ep1. If they didn’t add in the flash-forward to someone freaking out and banging on her door, you might not even finish watching the episode. It was the only ACTION in the whole show.
I’m sticking with cancellation as my prediction, and even that is generous.
When I heard there was a new show called Daybreak about a dystopian high school world, with gangs of 4Hers for example, I predicted cancellation. I didn’t notice it was Netflix, so the business model is different, but the premise was just too weird to renew. I figured it was probably some form of Divergent or Hunger Games.
Nope, the show draws from six separate sources:
The show takes place after a nuclear attack, which is generic for any number of sources;
It steals a page from Star Trek back in the Original Series, from an episode in season 1 called Miri. In it, all the grown-ups (called “grups” in the ST show) are killed by a disease. In Daybreak, they are either dead or have all turned into zombies who keep repeating the last thought they had which is annoyingly mundane (i.e., as one attacks, she keeps repeating a desire to get yoga pants at Lululemon);
Add in a little bit of Red Dawn, where the kids have to defend themselves;
Pull out the name-dropped Mad Max costumes, vehicles, and marauding gangs;
Drop a pinch of the Warriors (there is a direct homage scene where five kids are inviting them out to “play” in the streets); and,
Give it a light-hearted main character narrating directly to the camera like Ferris Bueller. They even have him in roll call having his name called…”Josh Wheeler? Wheeler? Wheeler?”.
That is one hodge-podge of a show premise. There’s even a backstory Princess Bride moment going on in there too.
So, fast plot…Josh was the new kid in town and fell in love with the girl who the Principal assigned to show him around, a human “sorting hat” to help him figure out where he fit in. Then the bomb went off, adults were killed, he was separated from the girl, Sam, and now he’s spent several months trying to find her. All the kids have divided up into varying gangs (kind of like high-school cliques on steroids) all over Glendale, and he is trying to remain unaligned so he can find the girl. Two kids he knew in high school, and never liked, join his quest.
Josh is played by Colin Ford, and while he has done lots of cameos in shows I’ve watched, none of them were memorable. He’s pretty good, has a bit of gravitas in the scenes, accentuated by his narration directly into the camera at times. It worked for Ferris Bueller, it works here. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s NOT super Josh, or some MacGyver getting by on his wits…he’s a C student, not super good at anything, but he’s looking for his true love, Sam, played by Sophie Simnett. A relative newcomer, I’ve never seen her in any of the handful of credits she has, but she sparkles in her limited role. The “English” accent doesn’t hurt.
The two people joining Josh on the quest are Alyvia Alyn Lind as a 10-year-old kid he used to babysit who is also a pyromaniac. I’ve seen her before as the young Amanda from the show Revenge, but she never had much to do in the show, it was almost all silent flashback. Here she has lines, but nothing exceptional or challenging, just watchable. Felt like I was watching Spy Kids or something. She’s joined by Austin Crute as a sword-obsessed pacifist who is along for the ride. Okay, not too challenging though.
Other people are running around, but hard to tell how big a role they’ll have. Matthew Broderick (yes, Ferris Bueller) is in the show as the Principal, and all of his scenes are in flashback (at least in Ep1). No idea what happens to him after the bomb goes off.
Sooooo, is it awesome? No. But it is certainly not like anything else on TV. And I have to confess, oddly watchable. The lighter side is eminently watchable, while the dystopian universe is kind of meh. Nevertheless, I’ll probably watch. But if it wasn’t on Netflix, I’d have to go with my original prediction of cancellation.
EPIX put out a decent amount of new shows this year, and one of them is Godfather of Harlem. Shows like American Gangster and Hoodlum have used some of the same real-life characters before, so it’s not unfamiliar ground for many, but there’s no telling how close it is to the reality of the era. Based on the premise, I predicted cancellation.
Ignoring the historical roots for a moment, the premise is a black crime boss returns from Alcatraz to his old neighbourhood in Harlem. According to the show, he went down on a narcotics bust that the mafia families had screwed up, and yet he took the hit and didn’t snitch. So he has some goodwill on his side. But he wants his business back. While he’s been gone, the Italians have taken it over, from 110th to 160th Street. I found two scenes particularly compelling in the opening episode.
First was his return to his old neighbourhood. His wife has a welcome home party for him, and as he wanders around the room talking to people, they all have the same pattern — welcoming him home and then mentioning business to him or asking indirectly for money. The local don is back, and everybody seems to want a piece of the action again.
The second was a scene where he makes a deal with Malcolm X and Reverend Powell to get something they each want. Yes, Malcolm X. And Malcolm isn’t too happy he’s being used by the crime boss, but if there’s a deal that furthers his agenda too, he’s open to it.
But what makes the show is a combination of the tone (earnest, aggressive camera angles) and the acting. Forest Whitaker plays Bumpy Johnson, the returning crime boss, and he is outstanding. I fell in love with Whitaker back in the day for Good Morning, Vietnam, although Platoon, Bloodsport and the Color of Money didn’t hurt either. Obviously, 30 years later, he’s more mature, and that older calmer man is capable of a much different, more nuanced performance. He’s got henchmen and family running around, but it’s when he’s working that he truly shines.
Vincent D’Onofrio plays his Italian counterpart who took over the business. He looks smaller and healthier than the behemoth that was Wilson Fisk (Daredevil), but I doubt he’ll ever match the magic of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That was just pure heaven in the early days. Here he does a great job of wheels within wheels of machinations.
Paul Sorvino has a small part as a mafia don, and he’s decent, while Giancarlo Esposito plays Reverend Powell well too. But in the opener, it was Nigel Thatch as Malcolm X who truly outclassed everyone in every scene. Part writing, part character, part actor, but it was awesome.
And while I was expecting The Sopranos with black people, the episode is so much more. And I’ll change my prediction. Now that I have seen an episode, I have to predict that EPIX will renew it. The actors are too good not to be renewed.
