Friday Check-In: 'Furious' finish

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Today's Friday Check-In newsletter coming up just as soon as I get Fox to pull my entire season of MasterChef Junior...

Catching up

Here's what I've published since last Friday's newsletter:

I recapped the latest episode of Lanterns, an episode-length John Stewart origin story:

In the latest TV Is Good podcast, Kathryn and I talked about our love of Adults, then talked to the show's creators about other things about TV that they love:

For What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers, I wrote about notable instances of TV shows that produced more than one pilot (more on that in a bit):

I recapped the latest episode of Ted Lasso, in which the Season Four writers continue to do very, very badly by Keeley and Rebeecca:

I recapped this week's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a limp soap opera parody that sucked away whatever joy I felt about last week's disaster episode:

What's next?

Labor Day weekend is here, and things are about to get a lot busier — so busy that I'm still sorting through options for next week. You will definitely be getting the following:

New recaps of Lanterns, Ted Lasso, and Strange New Worlds.
A celebration of 60 years of Star Trek
A new TV Is Good podcast episode where Kathryn and I talk about the Aussie rom-com Colin from Accounts, then continue with the dog theme with a look back at Nineties PBS kids show Wishbone.

I will also write something about Colin, for the non-podcast-inclined, but unclear if it will be a full review or an item in next Friday's check-in. Ditto for Season Two of The Paper on Peacock.

Submitted for their approval...

We have barely over a month to go until Serling: A Journey Into The Twilight Zone with TV's First Visionary is published on October 13. In case you're still on the fence after all my cheerleading, the reviews so far have been strong. Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review a few weeks ago, and Kirkus Reviews called it, among other things, "Thorough, illuminating, and above all deeply empathetic."

As a reminder, you can preorder Serling wherever books are sold. No matter what format you preorder in, you can get a free bonus essay about my favorite Twilight Zone episode by filling out a simple form. There's also a week left in the Goodreads contest to win one of 10 free copies.

Odds and/or ends

Coyote vs. Acme somehow finally escaped David Zaslav's clutches and made it into movie theaters last weekend, earning critical praise, high scores from audience members, and promising box office returns. I went to see it, and it was a delight. It's a film overflowing with love for the classic Looney Tunes shorts, and not just the ones that pit Wile E. Coyote against the Road Runner. For goodness' sake, much of the plot hinges on the cartoon version of character actor Peter Lorre, who first appeared as a mad scientist in a 1946 Bugs Bunny cartoon!
In the introduction to the aforementioned article on notable shows that made more than one pilot, I said it wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list. Nonetheless, readers pointed out one show I meant to include and simply blanked on, and one I should have thought about. The former: The Dick Van Dyke Show, which began as a pilot called Man of the House, starring Carl Reiner as the comedy writer and family man. Since the series was based on his life as a writer and actor on Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and because he already had performing experience on a huge hit, Reiner assumed no one was better qualified to play himself than himself. CBS disagreed, and insisted they would only order a series if he found a different actor. Hiring Dick Van Dyke to play his avatar had to be a bitter pill for Reiner at first, but it all worked out spectacularly for everyone in the end, and Reiner even got on camera as Van Dyke's mercurial boss. The one I wished I had thought of was The Muppet Show, which aired two different pilots in the mid-Seventies — one called The Muppets Valentine Show, one called The Muppet Show: Sex & Violence — before finally landing on the version that kicked off the proper series. As the Sex & Violence title suggests, Jim Henson and company were experimenting with tone and target audience, before finally settling in on the family-friendly, but still whip-smart, show everyone knows and loves.

Adults entertainment

Between my review and then the podcast, I've written and talked quite a lot about Adults over the last week. That said, there are a few plot points I wanted to highlight now that the season has been out for a week. There are spoilers here, so if you intend to watch the season but haven't yet, skip ahead.

Though the acid trip episode with the raccoon is probably the season's best, I think I laughed the most consistently at the premiere, with the introduction of Paul Baker's shame friends. What makes it work — and what made their return in the finale so potent — is that the shame friends, while completely disgusting, also aren't unrepentant assholes. They do their best to seem presentable when Issa invites them to the apartment, even if they're terrible at it. You can see why Paul Baker likes them, and in the finale, there's not only no judgment from the shame friends about Paul Baker hooking up with Anton, but we see that the shame friends are even more gung-ho in their support than the main friend group.
For the most part, I think the show is kind of a miracle in how it's able to generate the hangout vibes and chemistry that you usually would need broadcast network-length seasons to properly achieve. That said, Paul Baker and Anton's slow-boiling romance surely would have been even more potent if we had more than eight episodes for it to build, even if Jack Innanen and Owen Thiele's chemistry made it work even in this compressed format.
On the other hand, Billie and Samir hooking up after decades of friendship was designed to be a Chandler-and-Monica-style surprise, so it didn't need buildup. With all five housemates now in new relationships (including Issa hooking up with the woman from the library), the dynamics could be very different for a third season.
Even though I'm posting on TikTok these days, I don't spend enough time watching the app to recognize the various TikTokkers who appeared in the subplot about Paul Baker having "man on the street face." Didn't need to; the concept itself was hilarious.
I think the show is slightly too in love with scenes where one or more characters are screaming at each other. That said, all the screaming in the raccoon episode was fun, and Issa's responses to Samir's attempts to give her the fertility injections even more so.

I could run through jokes I enjoyed in all eight episodes, but the point is, great show, great seasons, and my main complaint is just that I want more of it.

Two Furious, too fast?

Finally, let's do some spoilers for this week's Furious season finale. And it was a season finale, since Hulu announced a second season renewal shortly before the finale dropped.

Much of the season felt like yet another instance of a streaming show that clearly should be a miniseries, but probably wouldn't be, because everything that should be short gets extended, and everything that should run for years gets canceled within a season or two. At the same time, many of the best parts of Furious were things independent from the main case that Liz Meriwether adapted from the Eighties Black Widow movie, including Emmy Rossum dealing with the trauma of a lifetime of abuse, Scoot McNairy being illegally charming (while, like Rossum, doing a charmingly incorrect attempt at a Noo Yawk accent), and Quincy Tyler Bernstine stealing the show out from under her better-known co-stars. Honestly, if the show were just Alice, Nora, and Danny hanging at the karaoke bar and occasionally solving crimes, I wouldn't mind it. Wrapping up the black widow plot means we've probably seen the last of Steve Way, who was incredible, and so funny, but we can't have everything. (If you loved him and have never seen him before, he's hilarious in multiple appearances as the best friend on Ramy, which is conveniently also on Hulu.)

Clearly, that's not what we'll be getting. After seeing that Alice killed Jay Easton to punish him for his role in trafficking her when she was younger, we conclude with Alice checking the files on her video to see how often it's been viewed. The implication, it seems, is that she plans to pick up the vigilante mantle from Catherine, and go after the men who watched the video, and/or go after men similar to Jay who took advantage of girls like her. We'll see. I'm more glad at the thought of more of Rossum, Bernstine, and McNairy in these roles than that specific plot idea, but Hulu probably wouldn't pay for the karaoke-centric version.

The finale itself felt a bit more conventional than much of what came before it. But the scene where Catherine realized the truth about what exactly happened to her friend was powerful, and the payoff to Alice's PTSD about showering even more so. Meriwether and company put together a show with a bunch of really compelling characters, strong forward momentum, and interesting things to say about sex trafficking, abuse, misogyny, addiction, and more. I don't know exactly what shape Season Two will take, nor whether it will work as well, but Meriwether has earned the right to try.

What did everybody else think?