The TV thread

Fixer Upper with Tebow and Make a Wish folks was great tonight.

 

Bettany backed out, FWIW.

 

I just finished Peaky Blinders. Thought it was great but Adrian Brody’s Vito Corleone impression ruined season 4 for me. That was quite honestly the most overacted character I have ever seen. It was a SNL impression of an Italian gangster.

 

End of the F-ing World. Gave it a spin (8 eps of about 20 min) I "get" british humor, but this almost seemed to be more of a wry drama than a dark comedy. And really, it's kind of sweet.

 

I hated the way Jack died in the "This Is Us" episode following the Super Bowl. I mean, those fire scenes were incredible, and to see him survive them, and not only that, but for him to come walking out through the flames like some kind of modern-say messiah, or something, made you hope/think he wasn't actually going to die.

But we knew he would, and so it just made you wonder, "Well, then, how's he going to?," when it certainly seems, afterward, that he's recovering well from his burns, and we see him up and around, and talking and dressed, and everything.

And then they have him just die of a heart attack? And we, and no one in the family even sees it, or is with him, or experiences it, or anything, when he dies? Ugh.

It seemed criminal, and so anticlimactic as to be nothing short of deflating, even seemingly almost meaningless -- which is horrible considering what he'd just done and what his family has just been thing. I mean, they didn't even address the death, scene-wise. Jack literally just disappeared in the theatrical sense.

When the episode was specially scheduled for a post-Super Bowl time slot, I felt sure it was just a play for the most viewers -- which, I'm sure it was -- but, given the theme of the show, it was also smart programming in the creative sense, too. But that death is such a letdown that therein lay the shock, I think, rather than with the fire, even.

It was like fate laughing, cruelly, in your face. Which was maybe what they were going for, but it didn't really work for me.

The follow-up episode last night, however, with the car scenes, the wake, the meeting of Maggie and the family doctor, and the with the family spreading Jack's ashes at his special tree, swung everything back the other way again. It was another really great episode.

 

Watching the first season of The Man in the High Castle. 6 episodes in and it is just good enough to keep watching but not good enough that I can't wait to see what happens.

 

The concept was much better than the execution. I finished the season but it was a slog.

 

Does it ever feel like certain guest spots -- not just here, but repeatedly -- are written with Gerald McRaney specifically in mind? Not that this is a bad thing, mind you.

 

Funny you should mention that. I just finished Season 1 of House of Cards where McRaney shoews up as the president’s friend.

 

Exactly a McRaney role, Chris -- the veteran of the battle who knows just a little bit more than most other people in the room.

 

Dammit, you all just sent me down a Major Dad wormhole during my lunch hour.

Where I ran into this delightfully funny sentence in the comment section of the Major Dad showrunner's blog (That's a thing that exists!):

Please, bring back a new version of Major Dad and not Major Mom or Major Transgender.

 

He was so good in Deadwood that it basically gave him a new lease on life as a serious actor.