I didn’t know much about Firefly Lane until I saw that it had premiered. When I looked it up, and saw that it was a buddy premise, I thought, “Sure, why not give it a try?”. And with two women instead of two men, I really wanted to like it.

Katherine Heigl plays the co-lead, Tully, and for a lot of people that would be a giant plus. They loved her in Grey’s Anatomy or State of Affairs. Me? I remember her from Under Siege 2 and I thought she was decent enough there, but well, she was in the background. I didn’t watch GA and I gave SoA only one episode before bailing. I find almost all of her characters come across as almost superficial, particularly when she’s trying to be deep for a moment. I don’t “get” her, and I don’t want to I suppose.

Sarah Chalke is the other co-lead, Kate, and I didn’t watch her in Cougar Town with Courtney Cox or on Scrubs. I do remember her as Stella from How I Met Your Mother and vaguely as Becky from Roseanne. And she’s decent enough, just the character is rather bland. Yet I don’t mean just in comparison to Tully, I mean bland all the way around.

But you know the real problem? I kept seeing the two of them with all the flashbacks, and I thought, “Who cares what happened?” Because “modern day” Kate and Tully are a mess. There’s no giant success for the two of them to want me to know the origin story for them. I saw them meet, I’m pretty much done. I don’t care what happened in between and I don’t care what happens in present-day. Not to mention that relatively speaking, they seem like the same characters then and now. They started as wild child and home-body, so not much of a growth arc to present-day.

Kate’s daughter seems interesting, albeit a cliché teenager. But I don’t care enough about her to watch either.

I also can’t help feeling that someone watched Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in Grace and Frankie and said, “Give me that. But make them 40 instead of over-60.”

It’s Netflix, so the business model is different than normal. I’d normally say “cancellation” without reservation but it is getting buzz. Lots of women are interested to watch in the same demographic. And maybe the other 9 EPs are worth the buzz. But I’m going to pass. And I still think it should be cancelled.

The Silence of the Lamb series is hugely popular, certainly iconic, and downright creepy. The SotL movie won Best Picture, the last sequel to do so. And to be honest, not one of my favorites. I like Jodie Foster in it, sure, but I find Anthony Hopkins too over the top to be enjoyable. Yet, I confess, I loved the original Manhunter, having watched it way back on The Movie Network when I was living at home. Hard to belive Gil Grissom from CSI (i.e. William Petersen) was able to pull it off, in retrospect. But I liked it better.

Still, nevertheless, with a new series with Clarice as the main character and her life one year after catching the serial killer, I wanted to give it a go. And, not unexpectedly, it is pretty well done.

There is a LOT of backstory going on in the show, with Clarice having trouble after the events, she’s avoiding the one woman she was able to save, her therapy isn’t going well, etc. But she wants to hunker down in the basement of the FBI doing data entry. Until the mother of the woman she saved is appointed Attorney General, and wants her to be on a taskforce with the agent she bested the last time out. Oh, won’t that be fun!

Clarice is played by Rebecca Breeds, and she has this southern drawl going on that is strangely alluring and a strong presence. She talks slower than her counterparts, slows down the chatter, and you find yourself listening even more. I didn’t watch The Originals, but I’m almost tempted to go back and see her in it.

Her immediate boss is played by Michael Cudlitz, and while he has been in a lot of shows over the years, almost none of them were ones I watched. Yet he was familiar. I was combing his bio, starting to think I was just mistaking him for someone else until I got all the way back to Band of Brothers. Wow, would NOT have linked him to that in a million years as Denver. Anyway, his acting is fine, but his character is a giant cliché. Oh, she’s no good, let’s wash her out, blah blah blah. Cuz, you know, every top notch investigator must be really smart to get that high but a complete idiot for how to deal with subordinates. Riiight.

There are a bunch of secondary characters, including a familiar face from Designated Survivor, for example, but overall, nobody super solid in EP1 who is likely to make it through the season (yep, I’m predicting at least one to die before too long).

Anyway, I’ll find out. Because I’ll be watching and I bet others will be too. Good show.

There’s a strange “deadcat bounce” to some comedy shows. If you watch the first one, and it isn’t that funny, but okay to watch, and then watch a few more episodes, you often find that the jokes you didn’t think were funny the first time are not bad when you understand the full context for them.

In other words, once you get past the initial “kersplat” of a premiere, there’s a deadcat bounce to the second or third EPs that work just because you already know the characters and the writers don’t have to dump tons of exposition into the dialogue.

The Great North might be one of those shows. I watched EP1, and as an animated “adult” comedy show, I was expecting to see it be either really lame or just ripping off other shows. But I confess I found it kind of new. Not “Schitt’s Creek” / “Corner Gas” new, which would be bad in my view (I hate both shows’ style of so-called humour with a passion), but more the Simpsons’ in Alaska with older siblings.

It’s about a rugged family living in Alaska, and there’s a great line at the start to explain the Dad’s approach to life:

“Yeah, all right, I’ve chopped this month’s wood, mended the fishing nets, canned a batch of pepper jelly, and brainstormed my Hallowe’en costume. I think people are going to love me as Sully from Monster’s University. And it’s 5 a.m. The kids will be up soon. Oh, I almost forgot to stare with wild wonder at Alaska’s majesty while whispering ‘Hot Dog’. Hot Dog.”

Beef, the Dad, is voiced by Nick Offerman (Ron from Parks and Recreation), and he’s awesome.

The main protagonist in the story though is the daughter, Judie, voiced by Jenny Slate. She’s also awesome, and while it is hard to translate comic timing from SNL to an animated show where they manipulate the audio to match the animation, she does a great job giving Judie some range.

Other voices include the oldest son Wolf (Will Forte, SNL), his fiancée HoneyBee (Dulcé Sloan, The Daily Show) from San Francisco, the next brother Ham (Paul Rust), and youngest brother Moon (Aparna Nancherla). Megan Mulally and Alanis Morrissette also drop by as recurring characters (Alanis as herself, and I don’t recognize her voice AT ALL).

There are a constant supply of dry bits throughout the entire first EP. A moose that gets into the house, Judie talking to Alanis about her life plans and grabbing life by the ass, with a butt cheek in each hand, heck I even enjoyed a passing reference to a dock woman who wants them to buy Tupperware because if she doesn’t sell enough, she’ll owe thousands of dollars to her rep, Cheryl. I admit the first plot was probably ridiculous, as most animated shows are, but having Dad and the kids pretend that Mom was eaten by a bear rather than ran off to Pittsburgh with a guy named Marcus, is a bit odd for an opening premise. Oh, it’s not the main thing, that’s Judie leaving the family fishing business to work in photography at the mall.

But I laughed multiple times, and not only is that rare with most comedies, it is RARER still in a COVID world. I’m in.