Tag Archives: premiere

Series premiere: Call Me Kat

The PolyBlog
January 19 2021

I’ve mentioned previously that I like to try out new shows every fall, almost like a fantasy sports league for TV shows. I have my favorites that return, but I try just about everything and review it. An episode of this, an episode of that, sometimes I find magic. Most of the time I don’t. But this past year has been a dumpster fire for TV shows, along with everything else. So I didn’t really track new shows. I gave Connecting a try for about 5 minutes, which is about how long it lasted before being cancelled too.

Call Her Kat

But in passing the other day, I saw a reference to the fact that Mayim Bialik had a new show, which I had not seen mentioned or advertised previously. So I gave it a go tonight. For those of you who saw her on Big Bang Theory, you likely saw an episode or two where she was fantasizing out loud, acting like a princess or queen, with a tiara as a running joke. Well, think of that with about 30 minutes per fantasy.

Let me back up a second. The show starts with her explaining what the show’s premise is. No, I’m serious. She looks at the camera, says she bought a café and gave it a cat theme, hence “Call Me Kat” as the name of the show, and she plays a 39-year-old single girl trying to make it through life. It is supposedly a comedy.

But is filmed with a narrator track that is literally Mayim turning to the camera to explain what she’s thinking. Like Herman’s Head without the head, it is relentless. She has a conversation with a would-be boyfriend, and it is 2 lines by her, 1 line by him, narration by her about what she’s thinking, 1 line of response by her, laugh, more narration. The show is shot like a play, with all the actors coming out at the end of the episode and waving.

In a year that included Connecting, I am hard-pressed to say which is a stupider premise. There is ZERO rhythm to the show because it STOPS EVERY 10 SECONDS to explain what is going on. Except I’M ALREADY WATCHING, I know what’s going on. I feel like I’m watching with closed captioning on. Or you know those people who have to explain jokes that everyone already gets? Yeah, 30 minutes of THAT. OMG.

If they got rid of the constant narration, or at least made it Doogie Howser-style diary or Sex In The City writing entries, you could live with it. Something to set the scene, something to end the Ep? I don’t know. I thought she was okay as Blossom and I loved her on BBT. But she’s almost unwatchable here. Like every five seconds, she’s nudging in the ribs to say, “Get it? Get it?”.

The supporting cast

The rest of the cast is a bit one-dimensional, but I’ve only seen 3 EPs (and will only ever see 3 EPs!), maybe they’ll grow in the future, but I doubt it. Her mother is played by Swoosie Kurtz (Pushing Daisies, Sisters), and while I have seen her in a few things where I didn’t mind her over-the-top acting (Pushing Daisies, Sisters), my favorite scene from her of all time is an outtake from Liar, Liar with Jim Carrey (as part of a yelling match in court, she calls him an over-actor!). Here? Meh.

Leslie Jordan is fun to watch in limited duration, and he is playing virtually the same character he did in The Cool Kids (the Vicki Lawrence show) — a bit of a smarter version of Woody or Coach from Cheers, but with similar lines. Leslie works in the café with Randi, played by Kyla Pratt. She’s young, innocent but brash, black with some attitude and can be the young female to guide Kat in the world of dating. In the right show (and she’s been in a LOT of shows over the years), she might actually even shine.

The other major cast member is Cheyenne Jackson as the would-be boyfriend who is an old friend that Kat used to have a crush on, they’re hanging out, but he’s hung up on a French girl who makes fantasy appearances to talk to Kat in her monologues. But I have no idea if he’s any good because literally he says one line and then immediately the narration jumps on his downbeat to intrude. He seems down-to-earth, a good guy, etc., and I suspect she’s destined to long for him for the life of the show.

The bottom line

And that show life would likely be 8-10 episodes in a normal year, and that would be generous. I have NO idea the longevity in a COVID season. It’s on Fox though, and TV Grim Reaper is predicting likely renewal. Sorry, Mayim, I’m out. I hope I’m wrong and the show goes on for years, but I won’t be watching. My prediction is officially cancellation.

Series premiere: Perfect Harmony

The PolyBlog
December 8 2019

On the show, Perfect Harmony, one of the characters exclaims holy crap at one point, and that is what I was thinking too, but for different reasons. Okay, quick premise. Music teacher takes over small-town church choir and gets them to pull together. That’s what I knew before the show started, and while I don’t want to discount the Glee factor, it’s a half-hour comedy show. Nope, I went with cancellation as my prediction.

Then I watched the show. The premise is a bit more involved than that, but not much. First, the music teacher lost his wife, he brought her back home to be buried in her small town, and now he’s ready to kill himself rather than go on. However, just as he reaches for a bottle of pills, he hears a REALLY bad choir singing and playing the piano, and he refuses to die with that as his final listening experience. He goes in, tries to tell them what to do, and then passes out. When he awakens, he finds them all hoping he’ll use his music expertise to help.

Second, it turns out that in addition to all of the choir being a bunch of misfits, another choir always wins a local competition every year.  And it just so happens that the pastor of that church refused to let the wife be buried in his cemetery, so the music director decides to stick around and help the choir try and beat the other choir out of spite.

If this was a movie, you’d see it be a struggle for them to all come together and then finally in the end, they would win it all by learning some lesson about love, and friendship, and believing in themselves, or some equivalent ridiculous crap. Probably with some quiet church mouse rising to the occasion and singing her heart out like never before. But this is TV, so more like Glee, or a dozen other shows, it would normally take a whole season of practicing, with some setbacks, etc., until the end, when in the last couple of episodes it would almost come together, maybe some dark betrayals, maybe some tears, and then a final win near the end. This show? They get ready for a show in 20 minutes of air time, including some rehearsals, go on stage, do their thing, and sing a song the music director never ever heard them sing before. He’s totally bewildered.

Bradley Whitford plays the music director. I loved him in West Wing. I liked him in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He blew me away in The Mentalist. Fantastic, creepy. But some of his comedic attempts leave me wanting less. He needs a really good comic partner, and the shows don’t tend to give him one. And he is TERRIBLE here. He’s funnier when he plays it straight, and terrible when he goes for humour.

Anna Camp plays the simple leader of the misfits, and piano player. A single mother, she’s all rainbow and sunshine. And while I haven’t seen her work much on True Blood, she’s okay here. Except when she sings. She’s not BAD, it’s just the whole choir is a totally different group when singing — like they all have two roles, one while talking and one while singing, and they’re not the same characters. And not in the sense of “let it go”. 

Other members of the choir are played by Tymberlee Hill, Will Greenberg (Abby’s), Shanice Williams, Rizwan Manji, Dominic Burgess, Desi Dennis-Dylan, and Geno Segers. They’re all good, but hard to tell if they will hold up over time.

But I’m lost. 21 minutes after the opening, they’ve had their first competition and it’s over, and they’ve invited the music guy to stay. But what’s the premise? Where does it go after the competition?

I have no idea. And I don’t really care either. There were a couple of mildly amusing lines, but that was it.

Series premiere: Modern Love

The PolyBlog
November 29 2019

Amazon has a thing for anthology series about love and relationships, and last year’s went nowhere for me. Each segment was a 2 hour movie almost, very rich and vibrant but going nowhere. This year’s show is called Modern Love and I fear it suffers from the same fate. Like a collection of short stories that are more slice-of-life than full stories, the pilot was only 30 minutes long and has some interesting slice-of-life scenes, but hard to say what the real intent of the anthology will be.

In the first episode, the premise is a woman living the single life in New York while living in a rent-controlled building with a doorman. As a recap, the doorman serves as an initial gatekeeper, as well as a judge of her life choices, or at least, of her choices in men. One of the occasional lovers ends up getting her pregnant, and she doesn’t know what to do. The doorman acts as an almost surrogate father for her, with just a hint of personal interest in one scene (why is he discouraging her from dating others?), but outside of her romances, he is surprisingly unconditionally supportive. She decides to keep the baby, raise it on her own, but he helps with bringing in the crib, carrying bags, even showing up in the delivery room (or is it a vision?) to help her get through. In the end, she gets a job offer in LA, he convinces her to take it, and she comes back five years later to see him and introduce her now older family to him, including a new partner. The episode is entitled, “When the Doorman is your Main Man”.

It is short, it is funny in places, it is almost like watching a one-act play. And the two main leads interact well. It’s enjoyable. But if it wasn’t Amazon, would it even make it to air?

Anthologies are tricky business, because ultimately it doesn’t go anywhere, and if you miss an episode, doesn’t matter, because there’s no link between the segments. I don’t know if there is enough in this one to hook people, maybe it works on a binging basis.

I’m going to pass though. Cute, but not enough to hold me.

Series premiere: Watchmen

The PolyBlog
November 27 2019

I knew that the Watchmen as a comic book genre was on the weird side, and I saw a version of it a few years ago (oops, it was 2009 apparently). So I thought I had an inkling of what to expect…superheroes, kind of weird ones, outlawed, but kind of doing the vigilante thing. Okay, I can work with that.

Instead, the new series version goes heavy on the alternate history, police officers wearing masks, and race wars. Umm, okay. Considering I’m watching the latest season of Black Lightning during an occupation, it didn’t feel a whole lot different. Particularly when the lead female cop wears an outfit an awful lot like Blackbird’s.

And at the end of the episode, all I could think was, “What the hell is going on?”. Okay, I sort of get it. A race war in Tulsa in the 20s ignited a huge schism. Nixon is considered awesome. And the 7th Cavalry is a white supremacist organization that has “risen” again to challenge law and order. Except there isn’t anything shown that explains the law and order side or the white supremacist’s specific beef/trigger. The rallying cry other than race. There is almost NO backstory provided. Which is a huge problem to follow.

Don Johnson plays the head of the cops, and he’s pretty good. Spoiler alert though, he’s dead by the end of the episode. His daughter Angela is a go-get-em cop, wears a superhero outfit (FYI, she’s called Sister Night), and is played by Regina King. She also is awesome, and eminently watchable in most scenes, even if you can’t get a handle on her life — cop, superhero, mom, daughter. She has a huge list of roles on IMDB, most of which I haven’t seen, and I didn’t recognize her at all from Big Bang Theory. But she’s watchable.

The rest of the characters and actors? Relatively secondary. And no superheroes. I had no real idea what was going on, but sure, okay, let’s say the cops wear masks, they hunt a bad group, the bad group kills a cop, the cops retaliate in force, I kind of get all that. I’m okay with an alternate history, figure it out as we go, fine. But then there’s a scene with a Lord of the Manor who’s clearly nutters, dealing with loyal servants, celebrating an anniversary of something, and it HAS NO CONNECTION TO THE REST OF THE SHOW. It seemed like the start of a bad Monty Python skit.

I get that it is HBO. I get that renewal / continuing is a totally different business model. But I don’t know how many people beyond the hard-core fan types will stick around past Ep 1. I can’t even decide if I will watch, and I have a pretty high tolerance. I had the same problem with Doom Patrol and passed.

I did see some trailers for later in the series, and it seems a bit more normal in places. Not completely, but enough to give me a preview of something to follow.

Eeny meeny miny moe…Nope, I’m out too.

Series premiere: The Mandalorian

The PolyBlog
November 17 2019

Disney+ has its new Star Wars TV series called The Mandalorian taking place five years after Return of the Jedi. The Mandalorian, a renowned bounty hunter in the style of Boba and Jenga Fett, is working far away from the Galactic Core, and getting by collecting low-value bounties. It was a no-brainer to predict renewal.

I don’t normally give a full recap of the episode, but it is relatively necessary here to explain the plot. A new client offers a large sum to retrieve a 50-year-old package, and other than coordinates, they provide little else in the way of details. Upon arrival, the bounty hunter receives help from a local who wants the group of mercenaries who protect the package removed from the area. The mercenaries are many, he is just one, but the odds are evened out by another bounty hunter who shows up first — a droid with super fast gun reflexes. They end up working together, get to the package, and there are two surprises. The droid bounty hunter has been paid to kill the package, while he gets more money if it is brought back alive; equally, the package turns out to be a young creature of the same species as Yoda, a relative infant. The Mandalorian kills the droid, and the episode ends.

The show has been accurately described as almost a Western, and it has a very strong Western feel to it. Lone gunman rides into town, doesn’t say much, does his job, and rides out. And while that is a great premise, it is really hard to bond with the protagonist if all he does is look blankly at the audience. This is a problem for The Mandalorian because he doesn’t take off his helmet the entire time.

You might be thinking, “But there have been lots of characters with no face that have bonded with their audiences”, including androids and robots. True, yet in almost all cases, they give them other ways to communicate. Heck, even R2D2 had whistles to convey changes in emotions.

For me, it was a challenge in the episode. I like the plot, I like the action, but I find it really hard to care about the Mandalorian. Not that it matters, the show is already renewed for Season 2, and I have no doubt Disney will milk it for several seasons. I just hope there is more than a helmet to react to in the future.