Yellow Jackets is the one currently airing show I’m watching. Not sure how it is distributed elsewhere, but in Canada it’s on this service known as “Crave” which seems to carry HBO content along with some other stuff. The show is heavily aimed at people who grew up in the 1990s, and takes place between two timeframes, 1996-1998, and then present day. The characters have teen versions of themselves and middle aged versions. The cast is stellar, and includes many well known 1990s teen stars playing the older versions of characters. The main cast of older characters includes Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Juliette Lewis. Hillary Swank is also on the show in season 3, not sure how deep her role will go, but it looks like she’ll be a new main role character - but people are killed all the time. The show starts off with a girls soccer team crashing in the wilderness. They then form a cult of cannibals, and it’s who will eat who. They were lost for a period of 19 months, starting in late 1996. The adult phase kicks off when one of the survivors ends up dead, mysteriously, and it quickly spins off into a story about whether or not their secret is going to get out - and just how dark that secret is gets more and more apparent as the show goes forward. It features a lot of really cool music from the 1990s.
I’ve also been watching a lot of WWE lately, it’s a few weeks before Wrestlemania. That’s my background show, because it’s one of the few shows I can keep on, glance at from time to time, and not feel distracted from other things. I generally hate multitasking, but that’s what I find shows like this are good for. Whether it’s having a beer and chat with friends, looking after the kids, or even playing certain videogames (like Stellaris, Victoria 3, or Crusader Kings 3).
Other shows I’m rewatching include:
HBO’s dark comedy series “Girls” by Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham. Currently on the final season. The show is basically the third show in Judd Apatow’s trilogy which also includes Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. And while the Freaks and Geeks was great, and Undeclared was passable, Girls is the only one of the three that was successful, as the other two received early cancellations. Freaks and Geeks focuses on High School life, while Undeclared for uses on university life, and Girls focuses on that gap between university and adult life. The three shows share a lot of crew, and certain cast - the mother on Freaks and Geeks is the same as the mother on Girls, and is virtually the same character, just with a different family. And despite the name “Girls” the show features both male and female main characters - including Adam Sackler (played by Adam Driver) - who is an actor in his late 20s; Ray… Ray’s an asshole, a guy in his thirties who manages a coffee shop and still hangs out with younger women, he hates taking shit from people and goes to war against hipster culture in the later seasons, and probably the most popular character on the show; Charlie, who plays a sort of a “nice guy/simp” character who plays acoustic guitar - but gets replaced by a Desi later on, who has a similar occupation, but replace the nice guy simp stuff with drug addiction. The fourth main character is Hannah’s (Lena Dunham’s) ex-boyfriend who is a flamboyant party type who loves cocaine, chaos, and celebrity culture. Of the female characters: Hannah (Dunham) who is OCD and a main character who everyone considers self centered and suffering from “main character syndrome” I know no women who don’t hate this character - but I like her a lot. Shoshana Shapiro, who is kind of the “sex and the city” girl and always talks super fast like she’s on cocaine (I don’t think she’s based on Ben Shapiro, who is also a sex and the city girl who talks super fast like he’s on cocaine, and highly resembles Shoshana physically - the show is before his time, if anything - he’s based on her off). Marnie (played by Allison Williams, who also plays the main villain in Get Out), is kind of dumb and doesn’t realize it, and it always gets her into terrible situations - she is also entitled and confident thanks to her insane mother. Jessa, is an English girl who parties and is addicted to drugs, and is IMO the most interesting main character on the show. It shares a lot of common guest stars with other shows - Donald Glover (Derek Comedy and Community) plays a black Republican, Gillian Jacobs (Community) plays a successful performance artist, Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, Heroes) plays the boyfriend of Gillian Jacob’s character who is into playing games with other women, Jenny Slate (Parks and Rec) plays Hannah’s rival in the writing industry, Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids) plays a wealthy business guy, Patrick Wilson (Fargo series, Insidious, The Conjuring) plays a doctor who moved to New York City after breaking up with his family.
But in short, this show features a lot of internal conflicts and heavy character flaws - there would be little to no external conflicts if the characters didn’t have internal flaws. I think something about this show strikes truer than most shows I watch - because IMO, most shows feature people who are too damn flawless and sanitized, and it gets kinda boring. This show has a ton of nudity, sexuality, and just generally people at their grossest - and many people find this offensive material; so, it’s not for everyone. Ironically, I think men generally like this show better than women, despite the audience being something like 95% women, it’s just the title “Girls” kind of throws people off. Specifically, dark comedy fans. I think if you like Freaks and Geeks, there’s a good chance you’ll like this one - it’s a similar vibe, except it digs way deeper into the themes the way Curb Your Enthusiasm did to Seinfeld. Anyway, Girls has lots of cool music as well.
Parks and Recreation - a recent sitcom featuring an ensemble cast of Amy Poehler, Adam Scott, Rashida Jones (also on Freaks and Geeks), Nick Offerman, Aziz Anzari, Chris Pratt, and Aubrey Plaza. This one also features a robust secondary cast of characters which would take me way too long to get through - and I already wrote a fucking wall about Girls. But anyway, this is one of the best “lowest common denominator shows” and I’d recommend this one to everyone. It starts off a little slow, but picks in the third season when they sort of figure out the characters a little better and drop the original storylines for fresher and more well-thought out ones. Mostly, I like rewatching this one because there’s a lot of great moments in it. It takes a lot of inspiration from some of the stylistic approaches to Rocky Gervais’s The Office, being it was made by the same team that did the American spinoff of the same name - although, I like Parks and Rec better than American Office. So, The Office, had these moments of random fourth fall breaking cutaways where a character would spend 5-30 seconds on a weird opinion they have. One of my favourites is Ron Swanson’s “My favourite book is Moby Dick because there’s no metaphors, no froo-froo symbolism, it’s just about a man who really hates an animal.” This show is significantly more light-hearted than the two shows I’m watching above that aren’t pro-wrestling. The most memorable music is that played by Andy (Chris Pratt) and his band, Mouse Rat.
Mad Men - kinda toward the end, but I put it down a couple months ago. Will probably pick it up by the end of April.
Last edited by Jumpin - 1 day ago
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