My Week In Media September 21st -27th
Disclaimer: As always, typos are not a reflection of laziness by of my learning disability. Also, as I lean more into footnotes, for help and for schtick, you can click on the number to take you down to the footnote, then click on the number again to take you back to the body text.
Next Week’s post is going to have a change of format since this one is 2500 words and I had to omit a category I wanted to include, and it’s getting in the way of making exclusive content for paying readers. Anyhow, we’re starting this week with a bang…
A first time ever (in the month I’ve been doing this), the Biggest Impact and the Under the Radar honors are bestowed on the same thing!
We Are Lady Parts (Streaming on Peacock)
We Are Lady Parts is a British sitcom (one season so far, 6 half hour episodes) about five Muslim women who form a punk band named Lady Parts (hence the title). The show centers on Amina (played by Anjana Vasan), a college student pursuing a career in science, struggling with not yet being engaged, having a perfect best friend, and teaching children guitar lessons while suffering from crippling, vomit and diarrhea inducing stage fright. Yes, this show how poop and throw up jokes.
In the first episode her attraction to a cute boy leads her to the four other members of Lady Parts, and band in desperate need of a lead guitarist.
What unfolds is a raucous, tender, hilarious, and sweet (but not saccharine and certainly not cloying) story of friendships and relationships forming, and a band struggling to find their footing and their fans.
The show is wholly of itself, informed by a unique and honest point of view, and as Islam is not a monolith, neither is the cast. Each one of the five women that forms the band comes from a different ethnic heritage and as such different religious traditions1, and relationships to their faiths, families, and social expectations. Each character’s story is wholly their own, genuinely relatable as honest human experience, and critical to the emotional and comedic weight of the show.
We Are Lady Parts is the rare television accomplishment of being as hilarious as it is heartfelt, with both elements of the show working in harmony to make it more than the sum of its parts and free of tonal whiplash.
I’ll admit that this show speaks pretty strongly to things I enjoy: punk rock, funny women, and dramedy, and so I know I’m not a hard sell on it, but it really is that good. It’s overflowing with fantastic performances, great musical numbers, smart jokes, and moments that subvert expectations in the kindest and most effective ways for the show to be what it sets out to be.
Omission from Last Week’s Entry:
LA to Vegas (streaming re-watch via Itunes)
In between stretches of reading the book that made up all of last week’s Week In Media, I also bought and rewatched LA to Vegas off of Itunes. Like The Mick (mentioned in the AP BIO entry) and Last Man On Earth (which has not come up yet, but was a post apocalyptic comedy staring Will Forte, Kristen Schaal, January Jones, and many more), LA to Vegas was a victim of Disney buying Fox Studios.
It was a one season sitcom about a budget airline’s weekend flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas (hence the title), and followed the struggles of Ronnie, the cute, funny, disaster of a flight attendant as she managed her co-workers, regulars, and the kind of post 30 Rock high concept big comedy shenanigans that informed so many sitcom premises of the last decade.
It was a truly enjoyable show, that while not groundbreaking, was still pretty great, and not just because it featured Dylan McDermott as Captain Dave, and Dermot Mulroney2 as his nemesis Captain Steve (to say nothing of a cameo appearance by Josh Duhamel as Captain Kyle).
Irreverent, charming, absurd, and loaded with talent, LA to Vegas had its wings clipped before it could finish it’s, at most three season, flight.
TV:
Archer (FX/Hulu): As much as I’ve found things about and generally continued to enjoy Archer over the last 9 seasons, in many ways the show peaked in those first three years. That said, the show has not yet hit “bad” but a lot of people have lost interest, and are surprisingly more judgmental about it than I am.
Part of this has come from literally three seasons taking place in Archer’s head as coma fantasies, and when you have a cumulative quarter of your episodes being wholly disconnected from the show’s actual narrative continuity, especially for a show known for its continuity driven runners and call backs, there’s a lot of cause for people to bail.
And more than that, despite the show never being dumb, the strength of its comedy waxes and wanes, and overall Archer’s comedy (which I still enjoy) is bound by the law of diminishing returns that impacts all comedy.
Last week’s episode of the show, which may have been Jessica Walter’s last (this week’s episode only features dialogue from her that was clipped from other episodes), was a genuine high point.
It is another piece of the long running “mystery” of who Sterling’s father is (the show is pretty sure his mother knows exactly who it is, and has essentially told us without saying it explicitly while he doesn’t know), features Bruce Campbell as Archer’s mentor on his first field assignment, and some genuine absurd comedy that all comes together to make a solid 20ish minutes of cartoon action comedy.
The Conners (ABC/Hulu): How and why am I watching/still watching this show? The answer is morbid fascination and nostalgia in equal measure.
The Conners, a continuation of the canceled Rosanne remake (cancelled because of Rosanne being a garbage person), is a tonal mess. It is neither a comedy, nor is it a drama, nor does it manage to be a dramedy (which is clearly my favorite genre of TV show…) because it simply doesn’t thread the needle of being a genre hybrid. And yet, I keep watching it.
As I understand it, Sarah Gilbert was a driving force in The Conners launching and coming together, and it is mainly for my middle school crush on her character Darleen on the original Rosanne that got me to watch it. Well that and the fact I also love John Goodman.
Back in the early mid 90s parts of the original show reminded me in very piecemeal ways of my only family, and as puberty took hold, the pace, tone, humor, and emotional intensity of the original series resonated with me, especially with Sarah Chalk coming on the show as New Becky, but the Darlene character was a genuine fictional character crush.
Now, Darlene is the head of the family, original Becky is back, DJ is kind of around, almost everyone lives in the house together, and Katey Segal plays Dan’s new love interest after ROSEANNE DIED OF AN OPIOD OVERDOSE.
In talking about the show I’d be remiss in not mentioning Laurie Metcalf coming back as Aunt Jackie, who after her “star turn3” in Lady Bird, who shows up to go all in on the bi-polar insanity of the show.
The Conners has a laugh track and is filmed in front of a live study audience, rips everything from the headlines like some kind of rustbelt gothic Law and Order minus the murder, and all of the acting (and ACTING!), timing, and talent on display in the show eats itself alive.
And here’s the thing, the show’s not all bad.
If it was I wouldn’t be able to tough it out, or choose to fill 20 minutes of my finite time on this planet with this show playing in the background while I play video games.
There are some weird politics at play on the show, but not nearly as weird and messy as when it was the Roseanne re-launch (which I didn’t watch because fuck her), with the show ending up being about a generally liberal and progressive family existing in red state/county/whatever America.
The show doesn’t work, and it’s not really close to working either, and I am fascinated by it. It is fascinating in the way only an ambulatory disaster can be, and I would LOVE to be in the writer’s room of this show just to hear how they think and why they do what they do, to see what’s pointing them in these directions, and how they come around to making this… this thing.
It’s a thing.
That’s what it is, a mutated alien monster from The Thing4 version of a TV show, dramatic and comedic heads twisting out of commercial broadcast body.
The Goldenbergs (ABC/Hulu): One entry down I talk about the Wonder Years remake, and that’s as good a place to start talking about this show as any.
The Goldebergs is a 22 epsiode a year half hour sitcom that takes place in the 80s, but if time had no meaning, in that the show’s 80s are an emotional impression of the decade and not chronologically accurate.
Time on the show does have meaning as the actors age, the three kids grow, and now in season 9, the main character Adam is about to go to college, all while his life is still narrated by Paton Oswalt in the same way Daniel Stern (shout out to Leviathan) narrated Fred Savage’s life on the original Wonder Years.
Nine years.
This show has been on for nine years and I started watching during season 3. The show was recommended to me by my ex, who generally has a pretty good idea of what I enjoy, and it took a try or two to get into it, but the comedic sensibilities of the early seasons, and the connection I felt to the characters was enough to get me on board.
Now, much like the final ten seasons of Supernatural I’m just sticking with it out of familiarity, waiting for it to end. That’s all there is to it, I’m just waiting for it to end.
Wonder Years (ABC/Hulu): The new The Wonder Years tells the story of black family in Georgia in the 60s, has Don Cheadle providing the voice overs, and is missing an iconic theme song to anchor it in the tradition of its predecessor.
So far it’s charming and it’s funny enough, and instead of ending with the girl down the street’s older brother dying, the first episode closes with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the main character’s best friend being kissed by the girl he likes. These little homages to the pilot of the original show are fun winks, but one episode in, the show is obviously treading its own ground, in as much as coming of age stories can do that.
So far, I like it enough to (again) have it on while I play video games.
The Simpsons (FOX/Hulu): Season premire of the 30something season of my favorite TV show, and it’s… for almost 2 decades the show has been a mediocre comedy with some low moments and some high ones. At every milestone season (one that ends with a 5 or a 0) since 20, the show should have ended, but this week the did a musical episode with Kristen Bell as the in-her-head singing voice of Marge Simpson.
What I should do is write a listicle about my favorite episodes.
Bob’s Burgers (FOX/Hulu): I think I started watching Bob’s Burgers in the break between season 4 and 5, on a recommendation from a friend, and I’m glad I did. This show is the second coming of peak ere The Simpsons in its ability to be astoundingly funny, and equally heartfelt… but nothing will ever actual be peak era Simpsonsbecause things are ultimately only what they are.
Bob’s Burgers in part due to being animated, works hard for its humor and its heart, and has not hit the level of late era Simpsons institutionalism (two writers rooms, 30+ years of existing, having been a cultural juggernaut, now existing as a sort of factory production) and time that has stripped it of its vibrancy.
In the season 12 debut Louis, the youngest of the three Belcher children (Bob being their father, Bob’s Burgers being their burger joint, Linda being the wife/mother/co-owner etc.) has to help a friend/stalker/enemy on a heist that plunges Louis face to face with her identity as a tom-boy, while Linda is forced to confront her unresolved grief about a neighborhood dog she saw die… and yes, this is a comedy.
Unlike The Conners the comedy and the emotional cores of the characters aren’t in conflict in the way they play out on screen, and the settings for the above A and B plots (an A plot being the central story of an episode, B being the secondary, etc.) are absurd, hilarious, and stay comedically capable through the story.
For continuity I should mention that Bob is voiced by H. John Benjamin, who also voices Sterling Archer (Archer) and Louie os voice by the aforementioned from not really mentioned Last Man on Earth Kristen Schaal. And yes, Archer did do a History of Violence inspired Bob’s Burgers crossover scene you can watch here (not entirely safe for work).
(Season 5 is the best season of Bob’s Burgers so far.)
Movies:
Blithe Spirit (Showtime): A period comedy about a pulp crime writer turned screen writer (Dan Stevens) who loses the ability to write after the death of his first wife (Leslie Mann), a wife that returns to haunt him and second wife (Ilsa Fisher) after a botched séance by a phony(ish) mystic played by Dame Judi Dench. It’s a perfectly fine, generally funny, mid range comedy.
Save the Date (Showtime): Lizzie Caplan and Alison Bree star as two sisters both seemingly on their way to getting married to their longtime boyfriends, but Lizzie caplan’s sister isn’t ready, and there are more complications and a lot of very mid-2000s indie not-quite-a-dramedy nonsense.
It’s not… bad… but it’s also a waste of the assembled talent and just kind of there.
We Broke Up (Hulu): Aya Cash (Gretchen on You’re The Worst) and William Jackson Harper (Chidi on The Good Place) play a couple who break up right before Aya’s character’s sister’s wedding, but they still go together and generally lie about being together.
The scenes with the two of them together are dynamite, the rest of the movie is… not nearly as magnetic, interesting, or propulsive. Seeing this two in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe would be great.
Night Books (Netflix): Started watching, didn’t finish. Kristen Ritter (Jessica Jones, the “B” in Don’t Rust the B in Apartment 23) plays an evil witch who traps lonely children in her magic apartment and keep them there for eternity/untily the die/she kills them/etc. It’s a kids movie, lots of kids yelling in real mortal terror at CHI peril. I might finish it, it’s not bad, just missing something. Even as a kid I’d have been kind of bored watching it.
Reading:
Conjure Wife (Fritz Lieber): Set on a small college campus in the 1950s, Conjure Wife is an occult horror story that tells the story of an anthropology and sociology professor who discovers his wife is practicing witchcraft to defend him against the witchcraft practicing wives of some of the other faculty members.
Written in the 50s, it is a decidedly feminist book (for its time/in general), and is a fun, relatively fast read that has been adapted to film three separate times. One version of the story (Witches Brew) is streaming for free in its entirely on YouTube and stars Terri Garr, the version with Vincent Price isn’t available digitally anywhere, and the third version Burn Witch Burn/Night of the Eagle (which is the better of the two I’ve seen) is available for rent on Amazon.
None of the movies nail the book, or the moments of real terror in its pages, but are all fun in their own ways.
These differences are not points of conflict in the band, and there is no Sunni and Shia sectarian violence amidst the characters and their families.
She was already a star, but aside from Aunt Jackie on the original series her role in Lady Bird was her highest profile performance.
John Carpenter’s horror movie about an alien doppleganger… you know, The Thing…