Welcome to a week of tv!
Here’s what I watched this week.
Industry S02E05
Season 1 of industry was like an introduction- to the world the show is set in, to the shape of the characters and themes. Season 2 delves deeper into the core of the characters and each episode makes me feel like I’m stretched thin. The pacing of the show is excellent, as well as the dialogue and characterisation, so it’s an hour of tv that feels so much shorter.
Rap Sh!t S01E08 (the finale)
Season 1 of Issa Rae’s new HBO Max show has been short with only 8 episodes, but Issa has managed to give us the core of the characters, their motivations and the intricacies of their relationships with each other, something that isn’t easy to do in eight 30- minute episodes.
Trying S03E08 (season finale and potentially show finale)
This show has taken us through three seasons of a couple trying to have a baby and now they finally might. This finale tied the whole season together into a very emotionally satisfying ball. I balled my eyes out and wished them all well. Terrific finale.
Good Trouble S04E18
Honestly, sometimes this show feels like it’s in season 18, rather than only season 4. Mariana’s decisions and choices seem to get more and more frustrating and I wonder if this is a game by the writers to see how far they can go to annoy the viewer. At this point, I spend the entire show stressed out at whatever bad decision she’s making, about to make or about to get herself and multiple people into or out of.
Dated and Related (entire series)
I didn’t finish the finale because honestly, I didn’t care who won. This show about siblings who come on the show to date other sibling pairings to try to find love was strangely very very flat. As far as dating shows go, it was uninspiring, the pacing was off and we never quite got to experience the relationships being formed so everyone seemed like they were acting extremely randomly all of the time. The one bright light was Melinda, an ex dating-reality- show contestant hosting it.
Making the Cut S03E03 and 04
This show is amazon’s answer to project runway and while the 3rd season has improved a lot on its earlier seasons, it is still…not very good. All the elements that make project runway so good- running in and out of mood, spats between contestants, a sense of urgency in each challenge, challenges that forced contestants out of their comfort zone and the expertise of the judges that are currently very much working in the fashion industry and absent from this show. Making the cut brings established designers to make clothes that amazon immediately sells on its site. It is neither inspiring nor interesting and It made me really crave a new season of project runway.
Boston Legal- S01E01 and 02
I saw a clip from this show circulating and realised I had never watched it as it was on before my interest in watching procedural shows (which started with greys anatomy in 2007). It shows some promise but I need to watch a few more episodes to see if I start to care about any of the characters.
Mack & Rita
A super fun watch. Light on romance, heavy on friendship which was nice. It was as predictable as body swapping movies go but I don’t feel like they really committed to the body swapping trope. It was like body swapping made for social media age by a millennial (I haven’t googled the people behind this movie, but it definitely felt very much like a millennial trying to be of the moment. It was a bit weird in places and there were some times where I’m like “does this movie understand what it’s trying to do?”. Overall, it was easy and I enjoyed it.
Love in the Villa
I tried and failed to get through it. As soon as the meet-not-cute happened and the chemistry was as wooden as. baseball bat, I clicked off the movie. I will put up with a lot, but not with a complete lack of chemistry between the main characters. I don’t even mean romantic chemistry, just chemistry at all.
Honk for Jesus
Unfortunately, this movie was big on theme and light on story. The trope of a preacher that has made a lot of money from their congregation is very well known. This story tries to examine more of the wife’s point of view, but doesn’t. We are dropped into a story at the end basically and we are given a time frame where the characters are going to try and get everything back told through the eyes of a documentary they are using as part of their return to victory. First of all, the story doesn’t ring true- I have never once heard of a church that lost its entire congregation especially one that had over 25,000 members, so in order to stretch our imaginations that far, we should have been given more. They also switched the timeline of the comeback mid-way, which as a viewer threw me off balance. The set up for the “honk for Jesus” seemed like it was there to fulfil the name and nothing else. The acting was fantastic and I wished really hard that there was enough story to actually maximise the potential, but there wasn’t. It was very watchable though, so I would still suggest giving it a try.
That’s all for the week. Sad about the rap shit season being over but no real standouts from this week of tv.