Today's What's Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I make you go to dinner at a no-shoes house...
What's next?
Among the stories coming up over the next week or so on What's Alan Watching?:
- A review of HBO's new Steve Carell college comedy Rooster, possibly in tandem with Netflix's new Rachel Weisz college comedy Vladimir;
- For What Else Is Alan Watching? bonus tier subscribers, a new Ask Alan video mailbag (get those questions in now);
- A recap of the next episode of Shrinking; and
- A recap of the next episode of The Pitt.
Catching up
Here's what I published since last Friday's newsletter:
- My recap of the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season finale, which functioned as a low-key epilogue to the dramatic climax of the previous episode:
Alan Sepinwall
- Instead of reviewing the new season of Paradise, I wrote about the challenge that arises when I like a lot of things about a show except the main thing it's actually about:
Alan Sepinwall
- I wrote a bunch about the return of Scrubs, starting with my mostly positive review of the revival's early episodes:
Alan Sepinwall
- For The Ringer, I spoke with the stars and creator Bill Lawrence about why this was the time to bring the hospital comedy back, along with memories of classic moments like Turk's "Poison" dance:
- And I recapped the first two episodes, though I'll be picking my spots on future installments, rather than doing weekly coverage:
Alan Sepinwall
I recapped this week's Shrinking, where Jason Segel got to sing — twice! — and Lily Rabe got to show comedy chops suggesting that maybe the business has been misusing her for all these years:
Alan Sepinwall
I recapped this week's The Pitt, where the hospital's computer shutdown turned an already difficult day at PTMC into an overwhelming one:
Alan Sepinwall
This is not a review: HBO's DTF St. Louis
As I noted in that Paradise essay, I will periodically devote a section of the Friday newsletter to a show I watched a little of, but not necessarily enough to feel comfortable calling it a review. In this case, it's DTF St. Louis, a new miniseries debuting this weekend on HBO, starring Jason Bateman as a local TV weatherman, David Harbour as his new coworker, and Linda Cardellini as Harbour's wife. It was created by Steven Conrad, whose mid-2010s spy dramedy Patriot is one of the most delightfully weird TV shows ever made. (Among its character was a disgraced ex-cop named Jack Birdbath, and he wouldn't even crack the top 10 of oddest thing about Patriot.) For various reasons, I didn't see his next series, Epix's Perpetual Grace Ltd., and I bounced off the few episodes I watched of his stop motion animated series Ultra City Smiths. Still, I have such affection for Patriot that I was curious to see what Conrad would do on a big platform, and with arguably his most high-profile cast to date.
Unfortunately, after two episodes, I hit the virtual eject button and moved on.
The genius of Patriot was not only in how strange it was, but how the strangeness perfectly entwined with some genuinely heartfelt material. Its main character was an intelligence officer going through a mental breakdown that inspired him to write extremely literal folk songs based on his missions. This was played for laughs, but the show also had tremendous empathy for its hero. My problem with the first couple of DTF St. Louis is that, outside of Harbour's character, the show was neither weird enough nor emotionally resonant enough, on top of the two elements not combining effectively. Harbour is really in the pocket as Bateman's on-screen ASL translator, and manages to turn a character who could be a bundle of unrelated tics into someone who feels human and specific. But the centerpiece of the show is Bateman, whom I've pretty much always found underwhelming as a dramatic actor, up to and including his stint on Netflix's Black Rabbit. He's asked to convey a level of nuance and ambiguity that he doesn't seem up for.
Alan Sepinwall
As a result, a lot of what I've seen of DTF St. Louis plays like a generic murder mystery with occasional eccentric flourishes. (An ancient Playgirl centerfold becomes a key plot point, for instance, and we get to hear Richard Jenkins, as a cop investigating the murder, ask deadpan questions like "Who played with whose ass?") It's entirely possible it gets more specific and Conrad-y as it continues, but the early ones didn't have a sufficient amount of that for me to continue.
Again, Harbour is very good and I'm glad whenever someone gives Cardellini a showcase. If any of you think it gets great later, maybe I'll return to give it another look down the road.
This is a review: NBC's The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
On the other hand, I wound up watching, and mostly enjoying, the whole first season of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, starring Tracy Morgan as a disgraced former NFL star, Erika Alexander as his business manager ex-wife, and Daniel Radcliffe as a disgraced documentarian hoping that he and Reggie can pull off a comeback together.
Co-created by 30 Rock alums Robert Carlock and Sam Means, Reggie Dinkins doesn't lack for clever jokes, both big and small. (My favorite from the first episode, which debuted last month, was a one percenter of a one percenter, where we get a brief glimpse of the cover of Reggie's unreleased hip-hop album, which is credited as featuring Bruno Radolini — aka Bruce Willis' alter ego from his short-lived attempt to become a blues singer.) It's full of what Tracy Jordan would happily dub "Wordplay!" In one episode, Reggie questions the phrase "a fool's errand," arguing "Fools run errands all the time. That's why Wawa sells sushi." In another, he makes a reference to going to what sounds like "Epstein island," until he clarifies that Dr. Epstein is his optometrist, and we see a sign for "Epstein's Eye Land" clinic. After all this time, Carlock and Means clearly know how to write for Morgan, and Radcliffe and Alexander are such game and versatile comic performers that they fit right into this exaggerated world.
That said, Morgan pretty much always works better for me as a supporting player. There are periodic attempts to sprinkle in some genuine emotion, in the same way you would get on 30 Rock, Kimmy Schmidt, and other Carlock and Carlock-adjacent shows. But Morgan's onscreen persona is so fundamentally cartoonish that it never quite clicks. And as was the case for me at times with later series like Girls5Eva, the joke density can be both a feature and a bug, as I feel like I'm missing five punchlines while my brain is busy making all the necessary connections to fully appreciate an earlier one.
Still, I laughed a bunch. At a time when a lot of comedies seem to settle for generating smiles, that counts for a lot.
That's it for today! What does everybody else think?
