It’s almost worth watching as a sicko-mode voyeur, since the series is so disjointed and elliptical that it approaches anomaly and spectacle. But for viewers seeking entertainment, The Abandons makes it too easy to, well, abandon it.
Crouched in a defensive posture, Red Alert and One Day in October are responding to an argument they’re not naming, even as they try to appear bold. .... One Day in October holds up Taasa’s grief like a blinding torch, so bright and overwhelming that the thousands of grieving parents who live mere miles from her have been obscured. Occasionally, though — in Red Alert especially — the camera drifts over to a shot of Gaza, shining high-rises looming in the distance.
Crouched in a defensive posture, Red Alert and One Day in October are responding to an argument they’re not naming, even as they try to appear bold. .... One Day in October holds up Taasa’s grief like a blinding torch, so bright and overwhelming that the thousands of grieving parents who live mere miles from her have been obscured. Occasionally, though — in Red Alert especially — the camera drifts over to a shot of Gaza, shining high-rises looming in the distance.
English Teacher is a well-made show featuring strong comedic actors who haven’t yet gotten major breakout roles, and its second season proves the first was not a fluke. .... There’s a real sadness in putting a giant bummer asterisk next to one of the few good ones.
He’s waving his arms about fires and Hitler and fascism and Theo Von’s podcast; he’s stooped on a stool, trying to get at the pain of his childhood. All of it’s excellent. Maron’s too good at his job to let it be otherwise. But amid the nightmare of now, there’s an almost uncanny, delighted sense of watching a comedian who is just the right guy for this exact moment.
The show still lacks the balance its first two seasons were able to find, and by now, some of its moves have become familiar enough to lose their sheen of novelty. But compared to its predecessor, this season is the better, more appealing, and more confident version of The Bear.
The elements of the show that do start to gel only make the trauma-plot framework more annoying. Every time Stick starts to roll ahead into some momentum for the future, the story has to boomerang around into a reminder of where they’ve all been. Each step forward comes with two steps back.
The issue is not that his subject continues to be queerness after exploring that idea in both Rothaniel and Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show. It’s that Carmichael’s favorite subject is himself, and in Don’t Be Gay, the totality of that interest starts to feel repetitive. His comedy is a shallow-focus lens, rendering every plane of his self-perception in exquisite detail and losing specificity or texture as soon as that lens pans out toward other characters in his story.
On screen we see Murderbot from the outside. There’s no avoiding it, and for better and for worse, that move into a world seen from beyond Murderbot’s perspective flattens everything into a story that’s simpler, sillier, and lighter. The show’s biggest boon is Skarsgård, who plays Murderbot with an unblinking straightness that still manages to read as a whole palette of emotional experience.
Yes, it’s clearly Blume’s Forever …, with all of its thematic interests and hilarious specificity intact (Justin still calls his dick Ralph!), but the reason it lands with the same impact is how thoroughly Akil translates it into this not-quite-contemporary setting. .... They [Justin and Keisha] make Forever feel timeless.
