#i know that none of these is exactly emmy material

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

@liskantope

@thejakeformerlyknownasprince I remember the MM1 adaptation and that it was pretty good, but I don't remember anything about the #6 adaptation. There are just particular lines of both Richard Sali and "Victor Trent" from the #2-based episode which stuck with me for two decades, though. I would say both exuded their characters really well in that episode. (I did once see it as an adult, twenty years past the original airing, and remember feeling the same way.)

[Starting a new post for an off-topic reply.]

Hard agree. I think the best AniTV episodes are the ones that work within the budget, even (especially) when that means a loose adaptation. And I agree about MM1 and #2's adaptations having good moments as a result.

Like, the adaptation of #6 works because it doesn't have the budget to show Temrash 114 cycling through Jake's morphs in an effort to escape — it instead has to depict psychological warfare. I love everything that ensues: Temrash laughing that "Tom" will "take one look at [Ax] and turn him over to Visser Three." Bringing up Jake's memories of Cassie, and threatening to hurt Jake if she doesn't let him go. Calling Tobias "a scavenger... a pet that sits on Rachel's arm." Calmly assuring Jake that "we break humans the way humans break horses" while showing him an image of Tom crying on the floor. It works, surprisingly well.

The MM1 episode is weakest when it's trying to adapt the book, but it does depart, to its strength — Rachel can't remember morphing, so she has to break out of shoe-lady's house the hard way. Marco points out that she's likely to be a controller, and that's why she's acting so out of character. Rachel sensibly approaches a nonprofit group called The Sharing to ask them for help, and almost gets infested before Jake saves her. Instead of the weird truck thing, she just regains her memory as soon as she morphs the first time.

Same for the #2 adaptation. I love that Rachel's motivation gets changed from "uhh, let's try something?" to a) trying to find out if the yeerks know of any technology that could get Tobias back to human shape, and b) responding to the red flags of child abuse that Melissa is throwing left and right. It helps that the controllers are all better-acted than the Animorphs — I can't tell if it's just easier to convey an alien who doesn't quite know how to human than it is to convey a human, or if it's that the actors are all trained adults. But the eps (like this, or the MM4 one) that lean into controllers being creepy are almost always better than the ones that involve lots of morphing.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Do you think Pen Ward is over AT? Like mentally. To my knowledge he isn't part of creating Distant Lands (I'm sure he could have worked on it if he wanted to) and unlike other cartoon creators whose shows have finished he rarely mentions it or draws stuff from it. I don't know if I'm projecting but it seems like Pen has completely moved on from AT and that makes me sad because it makes me think he got so burnt out from it he doesn't care about his most well known work anymore :(

I think you’re projecting a bit. Sure, some creators do get burnt out and eventually want nothing to do with their work (Andrew Hussie), but Pen’s circumstances are different. 

Pendleton Ward did get burnt out with AT, but that’s because he was sick of dealing with people at press conferences, Cartoon Network, etc, not because he hated working on the show. Pen was a very private individual. He hated dealing with people on the business side of things, he just wanted to be a writer. 

He stayed in the writer’s room until much later, the end of Season 6. 

He did leave the show eventually, but he kept storyboarding for it even. Pen also continued to voice act, primarily as LSP, which is probably why they kept bringing LSP back so much from season 7 onwards. They wanted Pen back in the studio!!!!    

Around the time that he left, Pen wrote and storyboarded the game “Explore the Dungeon because I Don’t Know”, which was an early peak at some very late-series lore. It was the big reveal of PB’s age and origin, and it contains tons of material relating to the shift in tone of the later seasons. It makes me think that the show went EXACTLY in the direction he wanted it to. 

In fact the eps he worked on  are some of the most unsettling of all: 

Bad Timing, which has LSP bombing a castle and killing her love interest, a joke about eating cyanide gum if youre captured by raiders, and drinking to cope, with one of the most surprisingly heartbreaking endings of the series. This ep is to this day unresolved - Johnny is permanently stuck in the other dimension, and LSP has still forgotten his existence, and Peebs still knows all about what happened but can’t do shit. Also what ARE those little guys? Are they micro bacteria? They are definitely a Pen Ward idea.  

High Strangeness. This is the one where Tree Trunks is in a relationship with an alien and she has alien kids, but one of PB’s rockets crashes into the space ship and infects it with little pink best buds, who tear the aliens to pieces. TT stages a coup and wants guns and makes “fascist!” signs, PB retreats the program, and says she only did it because she thinks Ooo’s going to get destroyed. Pb’s anxieties are resolved by TT sending her space husband away with the tiny rocket for 40 years, and... uhh.... Ooo getting destroyed in the future. Oh and poor Mr Pig found out at the end. He didn’t seem happy. I love this episode so much. 

Imaginary Resources. This ep won a fucking Emmy! Pen Ward co-storyboarded this and it takes place in VR, because it turns out the Humans built an entire island of people who wanted to escape to virtual reality. They’ve become consumed by it and need to keep using it to cope, their bodies no longer fit to move around freely. And how is this conflict resolved? BMO repairs the VR system and sends them all back to their slumber, where they live the rest of their days.  The thing all 3 of these eps have in common is they dont have a neat lil bow wrapped on them by the end. They’re not neatly resolved, and the dark situations still exist.  Johnny is still dead and it’s up to the viewer to decide whether reverting LSP was the right thing to do, Ooo is still going to get destroyed but there’s hope the candy people can rebuild elsewhere, and the people are still stuck in the VR world where they’re happy but unable to experience the joys of real life. 

Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself. What I meant to say is that Adventure Time getting really grim and uncomfortable with a sugary coating on the top is a Pen Ward thing, and I think it retained a lot of his identity up to the very end. I bring this up because lots of people argue it changed a lot under Muto, when in reality he just expanded on Pen’s ideas. Pen was still in the writer’s room for the entire season 5 and 6 breakup arc, for example.  

And as I said, he has been constantly involved on the voice acting side of things. I think if he truly wanted nothing to do with it, he’d tell them to involve LSP less, but he seems overjoyed to play as her! 

But if you’re talking about his twitter... it’s no surprise he doesn’t engage there. Historically, none of the AT crew have talked much on twitter about the show. Even Adam Muto, who could go on making AT eps for quite some time before giving up, doesn’t talk to anyone about the show on social media. It’s a big fandom, and the crew NEVER were that open. They’d occasionally talk on stuff like Formspring, but it’s a bit redundant to do so these days.  

I don’t think it’s terrible. I know what it’s like to be in fandoms where the crew talk FAR too much. 

I do miss the days of watching Pen, Steve, Andy and Jesse banter on twitter. 

Pen probably at this point wants to move forward with new projects. Imagine looking back at your old art all the time, you’d feel embarrassed! 

[jordoalejandro]

The Sixth Annual List of TV Shows I Saw the Past Year

The list kind of caught me off-guard this year. A little while ago I was thinking, “I should check out when the Emmys are” and then I did and it was a few weeks away and then I thought, “Oh dang, better get going on that.”

This is a shorter list than previous years. It’s in part because, again, I forgot the Emmys were coming up and so I just didn’t watch the new seasons of a handful of shows and also, I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t watch that many shows period. I was probably doing other stuff. It’s none of your business.

So anyway, I eventually got going on the list and now here it is: the list of shows I’ve watched since-ish the last Emmy Awards (9/19/21).

40. Riverdale (Season 6 - 2021-2022, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 39) - I don’t know if this is the worst show I watched this year. Probably not. But that’s how it feels to me on a personal level. “Hate watching” implies you’re getting some kind of perverse joy from watching a show you think is bad. I don’t think I’m doing that here. I think I’m “disappointed watching” this. The show just feels tired. The actors feel tired. Most of them seem like they’re phoning it in. The drama feels tired. A lot of repetitive beats. A lot of dull storylines. Even the wild swings the show takes feel tired. The main cast all get superpowers this season. Sure. Why not? The show is going through the motions and I’m going through the motions watching it. Season seven will mercifully be its last. Probably a season or two or three too late but it’s the right choice.

39. The Last O.G. (Season 4 - 2021, TBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The show went through another overhaul in-between seasons. After a really bad season three, I was hoping to see some improvement but unfortunately it didn’t seem to help. The writing wasn’t as terribly broad as it was in season three, but it wasn’t good either. The storylines and jokes were way too obvious. The drama felt forced. The show as a whole came across as weirdly amateurish. The acting from the non-main characters was community theater-level. Even things like the sets, the lighting, and the camera work were all really cheap looking. The whole thing often felt like a college production class. The best parts of the season all came from what was likely Tracy Morgan improvising. He and Ryan Gaul are trying to wring laughs out of the material but you can only do so much. Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who I’ve shouted out multiple times on this blog, was again excellent. Way too strong an acting job for a show like this but she has not disappointed in anything I’ve seen her pop up in.

38. The Endgame (Season 1 - 2022, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - This probably could’ve slotted in a few spots higher, just on a quality level, but it’s down here because I got so tired with its nonsense by the end of the season. It’s one of those shows where the main character villain has this insanely complicated plan with a thousand moving parts and they’re always one step ahead. Even when those types of thrillers are done well they can be exhausting to watch and stretch the boundaries of what you’re willing to logically accept. This one was not done particularly well so it mostly just turned the FBI agent protagonists into complete morons when the situation called for it. Lots of making of decisions that you as a viewer immediately know will backfire (and you usually already know how they'll backfire). A frustrating watch. The central mystery and backstory wasn’t exactly interesting either, so really what are you even getting out of this?

37. La Brea (Season 1 - 2021, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A mostly nonsense show. A bunch of CGI that is SyFy channel-level bad, as is most of the acting. Weirdly, not a ton actually happens on a show that is about characters being thrown back in time. Lots of uninteresting conversations and walking around, mostly, and then every now and then our heroes are attacked by a Windows XP saber-toothed tiger.

36. Welcome to Flatch (Season 1 - 2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A shockingly unfunny show. I’ve wondered this about comedies, how some of them seem incapable of even just accidentally running into something hilarious. You have all these writers and directors and actors working on this and you still go three or four episodes without a solid laugh. Not a single person pitched even an A- joke over that span. A show like this might actually be able to get away with that lack of humor if it made up for it in the story or characters. Come up with a plot that has some surprises or some heart or something. This show has just about none of it. Flat plots, flat characters. I say all of this generally. There are moments in this – which is why it’s a few spots up from the bottom of the list – where there’s a glimmer of hope. You squint and go, “Oh, okay, maybe…” So I do think there’s still some potential here for the show to be better but the writing must improve. A lot.

35. The Flash (Season 8 - 2021-2022, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 40) - Another CW show, like Riverdale, that feels like it’s limping to the finish line. A disjointed season. A lot of stuff from seasons past thrown at the wall but nothing sticking. Instead of feeling like, “Ooh, a blast from the past” it comes off more like they’re out of ideas. I think the problem is that, look: the guy’s superpower is running fast. This show is eight seasons and 170+ episodes in and though the writers have tried here and there to make the Flash have something different to do than “run faster than he’s ever run before,” at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. It's probably hard to keep finding new stories when that’s the core you must return to every time. At least, I assume it must be because it seems like they haven’t been able to find those new stories for several seasons now.

34. Batwoman (Season 3 - 2021-2022, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 38) - In some of Arrow’s (and to a lesser extent, Flash’s) better seasons, you forgot it was a CW show. The quality of the writing, acting, and production was good enough to do that. Batwoman, in its three seasons of existence, never got there. It frankly never got close. It started out fine-ish and got worse. The characters were not compelling, the acting was mostly sub-par, and the writing, in terms of both dialogue and plot, was almost always weak. It’s a show that didn’t know its third season would be its last but which limped to the finish line all the same. It’s become a CW tradition!

33. The Walking Dead: World Beyond (Season 2 - 2021, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: 34) - Ultimately a forgettable, disposable show. No real high points or low points in the second and final season. It was probably slightly worse than the first season just because it split up the main cast for most of it but not by a whole lot. In the end, the show ran its course, told its story, and left very little impact.

32. The Blacklist (Season 9 - 2021-2022, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 28) - Here’s how you know The Blacklist is in some trouble. In the early seasons, when an episode’s title would appear at the start of the program, it would have the name of the character on the titular Blacklist who would be the focus of the episode and then it would have their number on the list. So you would get some in the low 100-150 range and know, “Okay this is more of a weird, side villain.” Then you’d get a few in the 20-100 range and know they were a more serious foe. And then, around the end of the season, you’d start to get to the people under 20 who were like the big bads of the season or other main characters. Well, the creators of the show clearly didn’t plan for it to go on this long. They had probably put about 150 names on the list and now, almost 200 episodes into the show’s run, they’ve run through all the good numbers and have had to expand the list, putting themselves in a place where they're constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Every episode now starts with, like, “Bad Guy of the Week. No. 179.” or some similarly high number. It sounds very silly but it has to be this way to logically work with the show’s lore. You can’t suddenly introduce someone who’s extremely dangerous because James Spader’s know-it-all character at the center of the show would’ve placed them nearer to the top of the Blacklist. Thus, you end up with a season here that feels kind of lame. (And, by the way, it’s not going to get better on this front. You can’t invent new numbers.) Look, even trapped into this lore corner, the show could’ve written its way out. It didn’t really. It was a pretty weak season and probably an indication they’re going to need to switch some things up going forward to inject some life into this thing. (In fairness to the show, they seemed to understand this and there was some indication at the end of the season that they might be doing just that. Guess we’ll see.)

31. Bob’s Burgers (Season 12 - 2021-2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 30) - For the last few years, the show has been hovering down here on this list. It tends to reel off an excellent episode once a year, but outside of that it feels like it doesn’t have a lot of surprises left. The plots have familiar beats. The dialogue, especially, is starting to feel stale. It might have to do with the bones of the show. It’s about a pretty basic family and its stories are told in a pretty grounded way, more so than the other cartoons it shares a Sunday evening lineup with, so maybe there’s just so many places you can go with it and after a while, it feels like you’ve seen it all.

30. Abbott Elementary (Season 1 - 2021-2022, ABC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I’m shocked this show has received the level of praise and accolades that it has. As of season one, it’s a supremely average show with just a few high points. Its characters are broad, bordering on one-note caricatures. Its plots and jokes are basic, often going exactly the way you think they’re going to go. There’s definitely potential here if they can sharpen things but it’s wild to see people falling over themselves to laud what is an unremarkable workplace comedy.

29. Tales of the Walking Dead (Season 1 - 2022, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - As I’ve written before about anthology shows, they’ll really only take you as far as the story of the week connects with you. Some weeks are better, some weeks are worse. I will note that this particular show, so far, seems to have a problem getting there. Like, some of these episodes will have a good nugget of an idea (episode two being a time-loop story) but then fail to really deliver a truly satisfying episode (it doesn’t use the time-loop structure particularly well and then ends on a pretty flat note). It feels like they haven’t done a good job of figuring out how to tell a sharp story in just an hour’s time. I think this show has potential (one-off stories in the zombie apocalypse that can get really wild and weird) but it needs to figure out how to hone its storytelling to reach it.

28. Fear the Walking Dead (Season 7 - 2021-2022, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: 11) - Season six of the show ended with a bunch of bombs going off, creating a nuclear wasteland. On last year’s list, I noted this set up an intriguing seventh season. I’m here to report it was not as intriguing as I’d hoped. It honestly felt like the show just got away from the producers. They wanted to pit main characters against one another but couldn’t kill them so a lot of the season became this back and forth dance where characters would fight and yell at each other and then retreat and do it again an episode or two later. Unclear character motivations. Janky plots. A real disjointed season. The show ultimately did kill off quite a few characters by the end of the season which is probably a good thing. It’ll make it easier to do another hard-ish reset. This show has gone through one before and been made better for it. I think that can be the case here.

27. Ghosts (Season 1 - 2021-2022, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A fine freshman season for Ghosts with a handful of solid episodes and a few above-average ones. It’s not a particularly funny show. Maybe a couple laughs throughout the whole thing, but it will occasionally nail a story and show off some surprising depth. Still, I do wish it was funnier. It’s in love with the joke of the main girl who can hear the ghosts responding to something one of the ghosts said and then scrambling to cover up when a person who can’t see the ghosts goes “Excuse me?�� It also particularly likes having the ghosts yell continuously at someone, trying to get them to hear them even though they’ve been dead for centuries and know they cannot be heard. They keep yelling though, because the writers find it funny when the main girl snaps at them and, once again, has to weakly explain to someone who can’t see or hear the ghosts why she yelled. They overused these joke setups to the point of embarrassment. The show also has another problem: its whole concept is that this couple obtains a mansion deep in the woods and then starts seeing and interacting with the ghosts that are stuck there. Something like 80-90% of the show takes place in said mansion in the woods. This leads to plot after plot of some guest character randomly visiting. You really quickly start seeing the sitcom writing gears turning underneath (“Don’t forget, my boss is coming to stay the weekend.” “I can’t believe your sister showed up uninvited!” etc. etc.). This is coming off more negatively than I feel about the show. I’m sort of neutral about it. I’d like to see where it goes and if it can improve, but I am worried about these things I mentioned. They could turn this into a very grating show very quickly.

26. Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas (TV Film - 2021, The Roku Channel) (Last year’s ranking: 32) - Listen, should this have been on the Movies I Saw list? I guess? It's not really a movie. It's more of a TV show holiday special. And really what it was was a sort of pilot for the Roku Channel to see if there was value in trying to produce more episodes of this show. So in this increasingly blurred area between TV and film, I’m calling it TV. Also, it just felt like TV. It was like a decent two-part Christmas episode of this show, so that’s why it’s in this post and that’s why it’s landed here on this list. Sue me.

25. The Simpsons (Season 33 - 2021-2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 23) - I’ll pass on writing too much about the 33rd season of The Simpsons. I’ll just note it was a decent season, with the high point being a two-part homage to Fargo that was a lot of fun (33.6 and 33.7 - "A Serious Flanders Parts 1 & 2").

24. Snowpiercer (Season 3 - 2022, TNT) (Last year’s ranking: 21) - Snowpiercer had an alright season though I do think it’s reaching the end of the line (pun absolutely and thoroughly intended). It’s been renewed for a fourth and final season and that feels right. It’s been three seasons of basically battling back and forth for control of the train and it’s starting to get a little tired. They do a decent job of flipping the script every now and then and keeping the show fresh enough to be enjoyable, but there’s probably only so many times you can do that.

23. The Walking Dead (Season 11A - 2021-2022, AMC) (Last year’s ranking: 29) - It’s not the most inspired season The Walking Dead has done, but it’s pretty good overall. It has dipped its storytelling toe into classism in a post-apocalypse high society (what seemed like a utopia has a dark underside! whoa!) and it’s like: do we have to? Aren’t there enough shows already doing this in some form or another? The Walking Dead has always worked better as more of a survivalist story. It’s dirtier. And it has zombies. I would’ve preferred that but this is, like I said, pretty good overall still.

22. The Great North (Season 2 - 2021-2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 24) - Solid sophomore season. I don’t have a ton to add. It’s pretty comfortable in its role already.

21. Duncanville (Season 3 - 2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 22) - I’d come to enjoy this show. I think it was starting to find its groove. At times, its tone and humor reminded me a little bit of one of my favorite animated shows ever, The Critic. Duncanville wasn’t entirely close, in terms of consistent quality, but there were moments where I saw it. Anyway, the show got canceled. (Maybe. They’re going to put the remaining completed episodes on Hulu and see if Hulu has interest picking it up for more but I’m expecting it’ll probably join the graveyard of so many other shows that went unsaved by a streamer.)

20. 9-1-1: Lone Star (Season 3 - 2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 13) - I like most of the characters on this show so that keeps me interested, even when things get pretty silly.

19. CSI: Vegas (Season 1 - 2021, CBS) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The original CSI was always solid as a crime procedural but was particularly good at creating likable characters. This reboot/sequel series isn’t quite there yet but shows some promise. It did a fine job with the crime stories, but the new characters were just alright. It was a smart move to bring William Petersen back as he injected immediate likability, but he only joined for a one season arc and won’t be returning for season two. The success of the show is going to rest on how well they can continue to flesh out the new characters now that he’s gone.

18. Impeachment: American Crime Story (Season 3 - 2021, FX) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It certainly has its moments, and it picked up momentum as the season went on, but I do think there was just not quite enough meat on the bones for the full 10 episodes. Strong acting performances.

17. Family Guy (Season 20 - 2021-2022, FOX) (Last year’s ranking: 18) - Good year for Family Guy. No real stinkers, though nothing that really stood out as exceptional either. Lots of average to pretty good episodes, which is a nice quality level to maintain for 20 shows, at least.

16. American Dad! (Season 19A - 2022, TBS) (Last year’s ranking: 9) - This show aired the first eight episodes of this season in January and just aired the ninth episode of season 19 this past week. So I guess I’m just reviewing the first eight episodes of the season, which I’ve dubbed season 19A, and I’m here to report: they were good.

15. Ms. Marvel (Season 1 - 2022, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Good humor and characters. Clever visuals. Decent action sequences. Probably the one knock is that it was trying to show off so many aspects of Pakistani Muslim culture throughout that a lot of times it came off a little too much like a Wikipedia article on the subject. The dialogue was so clearly written to give the viewer cultural information that it came off extremely unnatural and pulled you out of things.

14. Archer (Season 12 - 2021, FXX) (Last year’s ranking: 25) - Another strong season for Archer. I mentioned last year that they returned the show to its spy roots and I think it’s been a positive move. They’re only doing eight episodes a year now and it’s back in their comfort zone so they can focus on what they do well and put out good episode after good episode.

13. Legends of Tomorrow (Season 7 - 2021-2022, CW) (Last year’s ranking: 15) - Remember what I wrote about Batwoman? How you never forgot it was a CW show? The same could be said for Legends of Tomorrow, but in a good way. Low budget, silly concept, sort of no reason to exist. And yet, basically from around season three on, everyone in the cast and crew realized that that CW-ness of it all freed them up to do whatever the hell they wanted. The show took big swings – sometimes missed, often landed – but they were never afraid to go for the wildest thing they could think of. Very few shows on the basic broadcast channels do that and I’ll miss this one because of it.

12. Animal Kingdom (Season 6 - 2022, TNT) (Last year’s ranking: 10) - I’ll miss this show, too. For me, it was the perfect summer show. Fun escapism, a great vibe. This is the exact kind of show you want 10-13 episodes of from late May through August. As for season six of this show, though? Last year, after a somewhat weaker fifth season I predicted a very good final season. And well… look, this final season was fine. It was probably my least favorite of all the seasons but it was fine. I enjoyed it for the most part but ultimately, it felt uninspired. Let me get spoilery and dive deep into it for a little here. So the thing is: this show, for its first four seasons, was really about Ellen Barkin’s character Smurf. She was the matriarch of this crime family and her extremely complicated relationship with her sons and grandson was the primary driving force of this show. What was being set up through the early seasons was the final clash between Smurf and her grandson J. It was pretty clear -- because this was a crime show and crime shows all sort of head towards the same bleak ending -- that things would get bad and bloody and the empire would fall and the only question would be who would survive in the end. But then something interesting happened. Smurf was killed off in the penultimate episode of season four. (From what I can tell, this was more a personnel-based decision rather than a plot-based one.) And then another interesting thing happened. The episode after Smurf’s death was fascinating. It wasn’t a revolutionary episode but the vibe was totally different. It was like a cloud had been lifted. Smurf had been this domineering, abusive presence in all these characters’ lives for so long and for the first time, they were free of her. And you saw hints in that episode that maybe these characters might be able to change course. That the show might be able to explore what it would be like to get out from under her shadow and try to build their own lives (while still doing fun stuff like heists and what have you). Season five kind of built on this idea, but you could tell it was struggling a little bit with what to do without Smurf as the big bad at the core of it. And season six was kind of a mess in a similar sense. It spent a lot of time sort of searching for stuff to do. There were a lot of subplots for the majority of the early part of season six that never really paid off and, in retrospect, now feel like they were killing time until we got to the endgame of the season and of the show. And what was that endgame? Basically what it always had been. That's really the most disappointing thing. That after everything, it came back to J needing revenge against a woman who’s been dead for a while. Of course, it’s hard to write out a satisfying plot revolving around getting revenge on a dead person, so the writers had J instead turn his vengeful eye towards Smurf’s sons, essentially for not standing up to her in their youth. They were victims of her abuse, too. That’s something the show showed us multiple times while she was alive and weirdly, drove home even harder with flashbacks after her character was dead. And yet the writers chose to lean back into the most obvious ending. One that felt like it was outlined in season one. For me, if you’re going to do something so bold as to kill off the main villain of the show in season four of six, you have to be willing to adjust. To change things and explore new paths and new endings. By not doing that, by sticking with what was likely the original ending, it made basically everything we’ve seen since Smurf’s death feel pointless. Why did we go through any of this? Why not just end the show at season four then? I want to stress again: I didn’t even hate this season. It more or less worked. But I think I’m just disappointed. This show had always done a good job of surprising me. Of swerving when I didn’t expect it. And for its big finale, it rode right along the rails to an inevitable, unsurprising finish. 

11. The Book of Boba Fett (Season 1 - 2021-2022, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - There’s some fun stuff in here and certainly some wonkiness. It’s weirdly more The Mandalorian season 2.5 than its own separate thing. It’s like if a TV show took four episodes in the middle of the season and followed a side character for a while, which I guess is the sort of experimental thing you can do in the age of streaming. In that sense, it’s certainly not my favorite season of The Mandalorian, but entertaining nonetheless.

10. Mr. Mayor (Season 2 - 2022, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: 7) - This was a very funny show and I was really enjoying it which meant it was only a matter of time until it was canceled. It felt like it had a lot of life left in it and it’s a real shame that it’s already gone.

9. Love, Victor (Season 3 - 2022, Hulu) (Last year’s ranking: 8) - Love, Victor is another show, like Animal Kingdom, that had a messy final season. Also, like Animal Kingdom, I enjoyed it anyway. I can just also acknowledge that it was a bit of a mess. For the first five or six episodes this year, everything was rolling along like a normal season, and then, sort of suddenly, in the last couple of episodes, everything picks up the pace to an extreme level. Plots are wrapped up, characters break up and get together with other people, big life decisions are made, and then the show kind of just ends. I have no real knowledge of the situation, but seasons one and two had ten episodes apiece and season three had eight. My guess is that the producers were told late in the process that season three was the end and they needed to wrap things up, so they tried to do that as quickly as possible in the remaining episodes they had. And it wraps up fine – the characters all sort of sprint to their satisfying endpoints – but you definitely don’t get a lot of time to catch your breath as it does.

8. American Auto (Season 1 - 2021-2022, NBC) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Created by the same guy who created Superstore and it has a lot of that show’s DNA in it. Not that it’s particularly original DNA. It’s a workplace comedy. But this is a good one. It performed well right out of the gate and had a couple of really excellent episodes in its first season.

7. Our Flag Means Death (Season 1 - 2022 - HBO Max) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - A delightful comedy that had a surprising amount of layers to it. You think it’s going to be a silly pirate show but it unfolds into this unexpectedly sweet love story. Great characters.

6. Obi-Wan Kenobi (Miniseries - 2022, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - Like The Book of Boba Fett, there’s definitely a little wonkiness to this, but there’s a lot of excellent stuff as well. It’s great to see Ewan McGregor back in this role and he does a wonderful job with it. Really strong finish.

5. Only Murders in the Building (Season 2 - 2022, Hulu) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - It’s fun enough just watching Steve Martin and Martin Short play off of each other and do their thing. It’s even better when you add Selena Gomez, who is, weirdly, a fantastic third person in this grouping. It’s even better when you add in a compelling mystery at the core of the season. This is a cleverly written show with a fun cast of characters and a surprising bit of humanity as well.

4. Moon Knight (Miniseries - 2022, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - First off, Oscar Isaac is so good at the center of this. He plays multiple characters in this and each one has his own charm. The show itself is a real ride. It’s only six episodes but it reinvents itself like three times throughout. It’s funny, it’s trippy and mind-bending, it has solid action pieces. If there’s one knock against it, the ending is fairly weak. It’s a shame it couldn’t really stick the landing, but what came before was very strong and that’s why it’s up here.

3. Succession (Season 3 - 2021, HBO) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I’d been meaning to catch up on this show for a while and finally did and it is as good as everyone says. So sharply written. Great score. Fantastic acting from the entire cast.

2. Hawkeye (Miniseries - 2021, Disney+) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - The MCU’s Die Hard. It’s six lean episodes that are all a ton of fun. The heroes are great, they have plus chemistry and play off each other well. The villains are unique. The action scenes are excellently done. The dialogue is strong. There are some fun twists and turns. It’s not the most groundbreaking show but it just delivers episode after episode and I enjoyed it immensely. 

1. Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (Season 1 - HBO) (Last year’s ranking: N/A) - I love what this show did with the sports drama. It understood that the story it was telling, about the 1980s Showtime Lakers, had all these personalities that were larger than life, so it decided to tell the story like that. Go bigger than big. Everything about this is going for it. It’s shot and edited over the top. The plots are exaggerated versions of what happened. The acting is big. John C. Reilly is doing an amazing job as Jerry Buss but there’s great acting from just about the whole cast.

I do feel like it’s almost a little unfair to have so many Disney+ miniseries near the top of the list. They have huge budgets and only have to support six episodes versus twenty or so. I should probably have some kind of weighted system or something to balance that out but that’s way too much math so I’m not going to do that.

Enjoy the Emmys.

- - - - -

Read More:

Annual Lists of TV Shows I Saw the Past Year

[cinnonym]

Who might I be? Anyway, as your ask is open for prompts: extreme (distinctive) characters.

Well, if that isn’t my favourite person in the whole wide world

It’s not every day you encounter the perfect jawline. So when you do, you don’t let it go again. Which, to sum it up, was how Emmy Lou ended up at the mechatronics workshop.

Her backpack dug painfully into this place right between her ribs, where it hurt the most, the assortment of pens and notebooks an unorganized mess. In her defence, she had thrown everything together in her haste to get up and follow jawline-girl from the tram.

Normally, unfinished drawings didn’t annoy her much – it was inevitable if you insisted on drawing strangers on the tram. A tram, by very definition, both collected and lost people at every station, none of which were in Emmy Lou’s control. Her notebooks were overflowing with half-drawn sketches, their status ranging anywhere from a few lines to full-grown coloured art pieces, depending on both the schedule of her models and her own motivation on that particular day.

The point was, Emmy Lou didn’t care all that much about the people she perpetuated on her pages. They were practice, simple, gratis practice, a means to an end to some day get her access to art school. 

The other day an elderly man had looked over her shoulder and sent her a thumbs-up. „Never give up on your passion,“ he’d said and Emmy Lou still couldn’t decide if she should be discouraged by the hopeless manner he’d said it in, or motivated because he’d gone through the trouble to talk to her at all. Then again, Mary always said she was overthinking too much, so maybe she just ought to be glad to have had a human interaction.

None of which mattered now, Emmy Lou told herself strictly, angling her head backwards to look up at the shabby wall in front of her. A brickstone house, similarly rundown as the cottage Emmy Lou herself lived in these days, covered in malicious looking tendrils of ivy. A rusty sign hung from an iron stick, its colours faded it read „Bill'n'Ben’s, Mechatronics inc“. Beneath the sign was a door with a bell.

Emmy Loud had spent the last five minutes looking at said door. Jawline-girl had vanished behind it, a teasing whip of her ponytail the last thing Emmy Lou had seen from her. It was idiotic, probably, to have come here, on account of a half-finished portrait. It was probably idiotic to have come here, period. Emmy Lou should be at the market, running errands for her mum and younger brothers. Instead she was following a girl to her workplace like a downright creep. On the other hand, now that she had come as far, shouldn’t she at least give the situation a try and ring that bell? What could possibly go wrong?

That, Emmy Lou noticed rather quickly, was exactly the wrong question to ask herself. She had barely finished the thought when the scenarios popped up in her head: jawline-girl could be part of a cult, a group of gangly teenagers just waiting for innocent redheads like Emmy Lou to offer as a sacrifice. Or the mechatronics shop could be a disguise for a laboratory of super-scientists – jawline-girl certainly looked the part – and they would abduct Emmy Lou for their researching purposes as soon as she rang the bell. Or worse, the bell itself could be connected to a bomb, which would inevitably destroy the whole building and everything in it, because evidence had to be annihilated.

Or maybe it wasn’t and instead jawline-girl would open the door and laugh at Emmy Lou. In her mind, Emmy Lou imagined a high-pitched and obnoxious laugh that would destroy the positive image she had of the girl. A sneer that would twist that beautiful jawline into something not at all draw-worthy until Emmy Lou would leave, scarred for life and forever untrusting of human beauty.

Before Emmy Lou could lose herself too much in the twisted corners of her brain – though some of the pictures did make for excellent comic material – she used a trick Mary had once shown her, after one of Emmy Lou’s frequent attacks-of-counterproductive-overthinking, short ACO. She took a deep breath, imagined the oxygen streaming down her pharynx, slowly reaching her tubes first, then her bronchia, alveoli and finally her blood. The only subject Emmy Lou liked more than Arts was Biology, and that was mostly due to her young and over-motivated Arts teacher at school, who had insisted on trying out crazy new methods every week. (Recreating statues had been the worst of them. Emmy Lou hated touching other people.)

Once she had successfully distracted herself with the wonders of breathing and the human organism, Emmy Lou turned back to the door. It didn’t have a window, which was too bad, since Emmy Lou would have loved the minimal advantage of knowing where she was about to go before she went there. As it was, she didn’t have much of a choice but to press the bell and wait.

In the twenty-ish seconds it took Bill or Ben or whoever actually owned the shop to open the door, Emmy Lou had made three half-hearted attempts to run. In fact, the only thing really keeping her from making a dash was that the street the workshop lay in stretched on for at least a mile in each direction, with absolutely no corner, turns or even a house entrance to hide behind. If there was anything more embarrassing than ringing a bell of an unknown shop, it was being caught on her flight. 

Plus, she really wanted to finish her portrait of jawline-girl.Which reminded Emmy Lou of the possibility that it could be jawline-girl herself, who was now slowly turning the knob to answer the door, and the thought was so frightening – because what should Emmy Lou say, „I really like your jawline, please let me draw it?“ - that she almost reconsidered her priorities and made a run for it after all.

But by then, the door had finally swung open and Emmy Lou stood rooted to the spot, clutching the string of her backpack with one hand, the other still awkwardly hovering over the doorbell, as she mustered the person in front of her. 

It wasn’t the girl, which was a good omen (she hoped). It wasn’t an old man either, which was the picture both Ben and Bill had evoked in Emmy Lou’s mind. It was, however, the next best thing: an elderly woman. Jackpot, Emmy Lou thought, because while the woman watched her with apprehension of the kind that made all words vanish from Emmy Lou’s brain, she also seemed rather kind and grandmotherly, which was always a good thing.

Emmy Lou remembered her manners just in time before the woman could open her own mouth and undoubtedly ask what the hell Emmy Lou was doing here. Because a short girl with too-frizzy hair and a backpack bulging with notebooks certainly didn’t make the impression of frequenting a mechatronics workshop. But Emmy Lou smiled her most convincing smile that she had practiced in front of her mirror for months now and said brightly enough to fool even herself: „Excuse me, Madam, I am looking for Mister Bill?“

Which, for some reason Emmy Lou couldn’t quite understand – Bill was one of the owners or had she remembered a wrong name? - drew a hearty laugh from the woman.

„My dear,” she then said, her voice just as hearty, and not at all frail like Emmy Lou would have expected, “Bill died years ago. I just haven’t gotten around to change the sign yet, besides, it looks so handsomely alliterative, don’t you think? My name’s Benedicta, I’m the widow. Whatever business you had with dear Bill, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me instead.“

„Oh,“ made Emmy Lou, who felt incredibly dumb and vaguely horrified at the idea of other, worse outcomes of her blunder. What if Benedicta had gotten angry instead of amused, or worse, started to cry. What if Bill had died yesterday instead of years ago? She could have put her finger right into a fresh wound and hurt this kindly lady whom she didn’t even know, for no other reason than her absolute incompetence to let go of a perfect jawline when she encountered it.

Benedicta, apparently mistaking Emmy Lou’s mortification at the near miss for some sort of grief, put out a hand to stroke Emmy Lou’s sleeve briefly. (Emmy Lou barely held her hand in place instead of recoiling from the touch, but only because she was still too dazed to react.) 

„Poor girl, don’t be sad,“ she said, her voice hovering between pity, which Emmy Lou abhorred, and a strange amusement. „He died quite peacefully, in his sleep, whoosh and gone. Besides, nobody is really mourning him, he had always been the kind of person who didn’t quite belong on earth, don’t you think?“

Emmy Lou, once again, hesitated. The sheer volubility of the woman overwhelmed her, but at the same time, she felt grateful she didn’t have to do the talking herself. Also, Benedicta was already half-dragging, half-leading her inside, which seemed like a good first step. Now Emmy Lou only had to find jawline-girl and ask her if she minded posing for her, so she could finish her drawing.

But Benedicta, chattering continuously, solved even the next obstacle for Emmy Lou. They had barely passed through a short and narrow hallway, Emmy Lou struggling to fit her bulky backpack through, when Benedicta interrupted her monologue for a second to call out: „Don’t mind us, Tess, tis just a visitor looking for old Bill, isn’t that perfectly amusing?“ And half a minute later, jawline-girl popped her head around a corner, mustered Emmy Lou with the same cool stare she had objected her phone to, back on the tram, and disappeared again.

Emmy Lou almost started after her, drawn to the possibility and once again mesmerized by the stunning perfection of her jawline, but Benedicta’s hand was still on her sleeve, rooting Emmy Lou to her spot at the kitchen table.

„That was my niece, Tessa, she’s living with me. Helping out at the shop too, though Lord knows she isn’t made for the handiwork – no offence, sweetpie!“ The latter being called out in response to the gruff that came from the corner Tessa had vanished behind. 

Benedicta leaned in conspiratorially and winked. „She hates being inept at anything but I’m only telling the truth, you know. People have to learn to live with the truth.“

„I can still hear you,“ Tessa’s voice sounded out, low and melodic though sharp in its irritation, and it was a voice to remember, a voice that demanded attention and praise; a voice befitting that jawline. Once again, Emmy Lou stirred, her artist heart drawing her towards Tessa, towards the artwork. But Benedicta’s grip might as well have been iron for its unwillingness to let her go, and Emmy Lou had no choice but to stay and face the woman’s cheerful smile and airy tone.

„So, what business did you have with dear old Bill?“

Emmy Lou flinched. It seemed ironic, but she had almost forgotten about her excuse to ring the bell, to get into this house which didn’t seem like a workshop at all but more like a really homely kitchen.

„I, uh,“ was what she made as she tried feverishly to come up with an explanation that for one, satisfied Benedicta’s curiosity and on the other hand, could also lead up to a portrait session with Tessa. She came up blank. 

Benedicta was still watching her apprehensively and even from Tessa’s general direction, Emmy Lou picked up a curious sense of expectation, almost as if both women knew she had been playing a ruse thus far and were looking forward to the next act of the play Emmy Lou was performing for them. 

Emmy Lou coloured. Her mind, her wonderfully imaginative mind, that could come up with a thousand and one horror scenarios if need be, that served as live commentator and innate cinema most waking hours of her day, lay now empty and silent before her, unable to concoct a single excuse. 

She sighed.

„I am an artist,“ she said truthfully and at last, before Benedicta could start speaking again, questioning her further, pressing. Her hand, still on Emmy Lou’s arm, felt less comforting now, and a brief image of handcuffs flashed through Emmy Lou’s mind before it went black again. „I’m here because I want to draw - „

„The sign!“ Benedicta interrupted, cheerfully enough to break the heavy atmosphere that had grown in the room. „Of course, that’s why you were mentioning it earlier, Bill had always wanted to repaint the sign. No sense for vintage, the man, that’s what I always said, but you know how they are.“ She nudged Emmy Lou and winked. 

Emmy Lou responded with a weak smile of her own, amazed that yet another problem had been solved by Benedicta’s bubbly personality. Was it lying, she asked herself, if she didn’t correct the wrong assumptions other people made? Was it wrong not to mention that it had been Benedicta, who had been speaking of the sign earlier, that Emmy Lou had never mentioned it once? Was it very despicable not to stop Benedicta in her cheerful rant over how she had paint stored downstairs and how Emmy Lou could start whenever she wanted and “feel free to redesign it completely, dear, I love me some change, besides, it wouldn’t hurt business if a fresh sign attracted some more customers than the current one did.” 

And then she added „Oh, and dear, Tess can help you, she’s decent with colouring, if not at car work,“ and Emmy Lou decided that if she was a despicable being, at least she got what she wanted. Which was more time to study Tessa’s jawline, so she would go with the play for now.

„That sounds awesome,“ she managed to fit in between two of Benedicta’s floods of words, and both of them ignored the complaining „Aunt Bee!“ from the other room.

When the topic turned towards payment, however, even Emmy Lou’s unscrupulousness found an abrupt end.

 „I don’t mind doing it for free,“ she insisted, over and over again, her guts twisting uncomfortably. „Consider it a last gift for poor Bill, a sign in his honour…“

But Benedicta wouldn’t hear of it. „Nonsense,“ she said, her fingers momentarily tightening around Emmy Lou’s wrist with a fierce kindness. „Of course you will be paid, if not in money, at least accept cake and biscuits while you’re working. It’s the least I can do, besides, every girl should have cake and biscuits, I’ve found it lightens the mood so much, don’t you think?“ Emmy Lou couldn’t really argue with that. 

In the end, it was decided that Emmy Lou would start her job tomorrow – now she just had to come up with an excuse for mum, to explain her sudden unavailability for daily chores – and that paint and tools would all be provided by Benedicta whereas Emmy Lou just had to „come and make art“.

And promptly, Emmy Lou was out of the warm kitchen and on the shabby street again, her hand clutching a slip of paper with Benedicta’s phone number - ”In case anything comes up, you know” - her mind struggling to comprehend what had actually just happened. She hadn’t seen Tessa again, but that was okay because starting tomorrow she would see the girl more than enough to finish her sketch. 

And now, Emmy Lou thought, I just have to come up with an idea for that blasted sign I’m supposed to paint and everything will be fine. 

Lying isn’t really lying if you work for it, right? Also, she was adamant to tell herself over and over again; that jawline? It was totally worth it.

[capsulecloset]

Good Things:  June

Because the world can be a real bummer, I’ve decided to try to start focusing on positive content.  I’m going to start compiling a list each month of Good Things I’ve come across.

Wonder Woman - I know, I know, you’ve heard it by now!  See Wonder Woman.  Take your daughters and sons and partners and best friends!  I was a major skeptic, having major superhero movie fatigue myself--especially after DC put out a string of really boring, offensively bad movies.  But Wonder Woman is truly refreshing.  It has Xena references that make me feel very nostalgic, and a healthy number of female characters.  In fact, there are only female characters for the first 20 minutes.  Gal Gadot is charming and stunning to watch.  Chris Pine is adorable, and a true sidekick.  Diana is written as whip-smart--and although her gaps in knowledge are consistent, she’s anything but naive--an incredible fighter, compassionate, righteous, and funny.   Her body is insane, but the movie has none of the male gaze-y shots of it that appeared in Batman V Superman.  Instead, the camera revels in her strength.  The effects are somewhat cheesey, standard fare for superhero movies of today, but the imagery is downright iconic (MAJOR #resist vibes).  The action is directed so well, with a wonderful helping of combat that’s more creative than guns, and I especially appreciated that action sequences didn’t drag on forever.  I laughed, I cried, I will watch this again and again as uplifting comfort food.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Trigger Warning:  almost everything.  While this is hard to describe as “positive” content, it’s so good that I can’t not talk about it.  Just be aware that diving in will leave you unnerved.  This is one of the best adaptations I’ve ever seen, making the source material richer, more intimate (by putting you in the perspectives of more characters), and bigger in scope (which I imagine leaves room for more seasons).  It does exactly what sci-fi should--be about the present.  It weaves themes about patriarchy, feminism, oppression, slavery, and reproductive rights into a thrilling, thoughtful story.  There are enough cliff-hangers that you’ll be tempted to binge, but I find it’s best to take a little time between episodes to digest them.  The performances are so moving, so human, and even the villains are nuanced.  The look is very creepy, very Kubrick-ian.  Overall, so well executed, and such an important piece of art.  And no, you don’t have to read the book first to appreciate it.  

Companion reading (spoilers in here):  The Handmaid’s Tale:  Why the Female Villains are So Terrifying

Kate McKinnon’s Live with Kelly entrance - Because sometimes you just need a dance.  

Emmy roundtables - Obviously, I’m obsessed with TV, so man do I love roundtable season.  These ladies in comedy are brilliant (and funny, of course).  And it’s always so good to see Oprah in interviews.

LA Pride - It turned into a resist march this year, with Orlando heavy on many hearts, but it’s still such a joyful time in my home city West Hollywood.  And what a beautiful photo series of Pulse survivors and first responders.

Jen Richards on men playing transwomen - I’ve loved her writing many times over, but this piece on why man playing transwomen is dangerous was so eloquent and illuminating to me.  It’s not just about trans actors having opportunities, or even having themselves represented--it’s that representation matters in so many bigger cultural ways:  

“I was trapped in the same cycle many of my friends were: We dated straight men who were afraid other people would think they were gay because the public thinks transgender women are just men with good hair and makeup. And the public thinks that because the only trans people they know of are men with good hair and makeup in movies.”

[archerton84-blog]

BoJack Horseman season 5 spoiler-free review

“I tell you buddy, this is going to be an exceptional season of television…”

Over the span of five seasons, BoJack Horseman has proven itself to be many things. It is of course an animated series about a self-absorbed horse actor’s struggles through life’s many hurdles, but BoJack Horseman is also a friend. BoJack Horseman is an enemy. BoJack Horseman is a therapist, and it is escapism. It is a mirror. But BoJack Horseman is also just a television show, which is why it is so impressive when it so perfectly captures the human condition. It can also make its audience laugh and cry and want to be better. BoJack Horseman is art and its newest season continues to evolve the show and its characters in exciting and challenging ways.

BoJack Horseman season five begins with dialogue that feels like it could be said by BoJack at any point in the series. "Nothing's lonelier than a party,” he muses. “Good thing I don't need anyone, or I might feel lonesome." For a moment it looks like BoJack has made the ultimate emotional backslide after much of the progress that happened back in season four. But then it becomes abundantly clear that this isn’t BoJack, merely his latest role, who just happens to share disturbing parallels to the actor. BoJack is forced to re-live past traumas through episodes of his new show, “Philbert.” John Philbert’s house even inexplicably looks identical to BoJack’s, as if its purpose is to intentionally get BoJack lost between real life and fiction.

This reflexive, self-referential direction for the character isn't exactly new territory for the show. But the way in which BoJack's new alter ego, Philbert, cuts so deeply into who he is and what he's done—especially after all the soul searching and mistakes BoJack has made—feels particularly poignant this time. It’s a clever device for BoJack to confront his past. This is the ultimate way for BoJack to finally come to terms with who he is and it’s all too fitting for this series that BoJack requires a fictional character to reach this degree of honesty and intimacy with himself.

“Philbert,” BoJack’s new gig, is a gritty detective drama, but it’s a huge satire on “troubled men” shows as well. The series also broaches the important idea of how shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or Ray Donovan can make audiences feel less guilty about their own poor actions and how dangerous this is. The icing on the cake is that this conversation also applies to BoJack Horseman itself as the show wades through continually shaky territory with its own flawed protagonist. No other show knows how to get meta and poke fun at Hollywood and the television and film industries like BoJack Horseman.

BoJack Horseman season five explores the intricacies and dangers of relationships, whether they’re romantic, professional, or just of a friendly, platonic nature. Furthermore, while this has very much been a series that wears its cynicism on its sleeve, this season reinforces the importance of following your dreams and not giving up. However make no mistake, this is still a show where an entire cold open can be dominated by someone sobbing or characters will use trusted secrets as emotional blackmail against each other.

This has never been a series that’s afraid to dig deep and show people at their worst or most raw, and this year is no different. However, with so many characters now in reactionary places, this season deals with much more vulnerable versions of these people. BoJack Horseman gets a lot of credit for how brilliantly it eschews the entertainment industry, but it also conveys and understands heartbreak, pain, and the dangers of addiction as genuinely as any of the all-time great dramas out there.

In what can often be a BoJack-heavy series, this season isn’t afraid to share the focus and take some of the spotlight off of its titular character. There are several episodes which dig into the problems of other characters, allowing the season to cover a broader perspective than purely what plagues BoJack. In fact, a lot of this season looks back to the painful childhoods of its characters to examine how their destructive trajectories began and perhaps how to break the cycle. This has been par for the course with BoJack, but this season extends this courtesy to the rest of its characters. It’s necessary for everyone to look back and examine their roots as they head into the next stages of their lives. Everyone is lost in some old version of who they are.

On that note, the majority of BoJack Horseman’s cast finds themselves in flux this season. BoJack really tries to think about others more than himself, but as altruistic as his actions are, they still seem to hurt people. BoJack is still selfish in many of the ways he’s always been, but this points to this older version of the character getting ready to settle down to some form of normalcy. BoJack did whole lot of living and five seasons in, it feels appropriate his character would be in this calmer, more reflective place.

Diane struggles with her existence as a divorcee and how her life functions without Mr. Peanut Butter and if can find a casual balance with him still in it. Diane has often been positioned as a mirror to BoJack’s character, even if they find themselves increasingly further away from each other. Diane’s story really rises to the forefront of this season and she feels more like BoJack Horseman’s second lead than she has in years.

Alternatively, much of Princess Carolyn’s material is consumed with her adoption efforts and fluctuating feelings on the matter. She still wants to further her life and spread her love, and the series doesn’t shy away from the complexities. This year really digs into the character’s constant workaholic tendencies and the difficulty of seeing if a family can fit into that lifestyle.

Some of the season’s best work comes from what it does with Todd. He continues to navigate life as an asexual, but begins to enter more areas of responsibility and growth, albeit in very Todd ways. It’s nice to see him get fleshed out into less of a caricature. In spite of Todd tackling more adult tasks this season, his storylines are in no danger of losing any of their absurd nature and they still fall together in a chaotic, happenstance way. One particularly ridiculous situation places Todd in a cartoonish sexual comedy of errors that wouldn’t be out of place in a Frasier episode, but it uses this absurd veneer to say something deeper on asexuality.

BoJack Horseman season five embraces important discussions on relevant social topics like sexual harassment and the male gaze. It’s not as if this hasn’t been previously critiqued by the show, but it really attempts to have a conversation about it now, and for good reason. There’s an entire episode on celebrity apology tours and their precarious reputation with the cyclical PR machine. It exposes the dangerous nature of overanalysing and creating stories where there are none. The show handles the topic as adeptly as anything else that it’s put in its crosshairs. It manages to say some very insightful things about responsibility while still operating with a precise, razor sharp wit. What makes this even more powerful is that it holds this paradigm up to BoJack himself and attempts to answer if he can probably atone for all of his mistakes.

BoJack Horseman also has a remarkable knack for presenting its season in a non-linear order that beautifully reframes events and characters in new and inventive ways. The series truly understands how to tell a story and the most powerful way to present its information to the audience. Another episode seamlessly splits its storyline into four variations on the same idea in order to show how much these characters have evolved and changed (or haven’t) over the course of twenty-five years. BoJack Horseman naturalises inventive story structures like this that would otherwise be daunting in a less seasoned series.

One remarkable episode is basically a darkly comic one-man show from Will Arnett where he delivers a staggering monologue about grief for the entire instalment. It’s an astonishing display of stream of consciousness and how humans process bad news. It’s one of the best performances of Arnett’s career and both his work and the script deserve Emmys. It’s perhaps the most moving, emotional thing the show has ever done and it’s episodes like this that are so purely, thoroughly BoJack Horseman.  As good or intelligent as other shows may be, this is the only show that pulls off risks like this.

BoJack Horseman season five does not disappoint and moves its show and characters forward in a way that most shows aren’t willing to explore. Some of the best work from the entire series is in this season and there are episodes as powerful as last season’s dementia entry or the silent underwater installment. Furthermore, this season contains no lull or period that drags in the middle, which is honestly a rarity with Netflix shows. This remains one of the few series that has more than enough content to fill their entire season.

Even though BoJack Horseman is as fresh as ever, it feels like the character is finally taking the steps that are necessary to give him some peace. The end of the season perfectly crystalizes not only the themes of this year, but also the larger lessons of the series as a whole, with startling clarity. It’s one of the strongest conclusions the show has done and it really sets things up for a powerful sixth season, which could very well be the end for the show. Season 5 proves it has plenty of life left, but much like one of Mr. Peanut Butter’s wives, it’ll surely want to leave the party early before it’s worn out its welcome.

Oh, and Diane gets a boss new haircut this season. Seriously.

BoJack Horseman season five arrives on Netflix on Friday the 14th of September.

Source: http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/bojack-horseman/60298/bojack-horseman-season-5-spoiler-free-review