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Random Thoughts on 10 TV Shows That Aired This Week

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 22, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 22, 2017 |


I watch a lot of TV. Sometimes, an episode doesn’t give me enough to talk about for an entire post, so here are some random thoughts on 10 TV shows I’ve seen this week:

10. I wasn’t bowled over by the first episode of The Deuce, but David Simon sank his fangs in this week. I’m in, despite that petty flaw Genevieve has with the series (I had NO idea she was 37. She could pass for 25, easy). It was the police work and the mafia connections that pulled me in with shades of The Wire.

9. That rant that Sam (Pamela Adlon) delivered in the parking lot to fedora wearing guy in last night’s Better Things? Wow! Let this be a lesson to you, fellas: Women do not exist to stroke your egos. If you want self-assurance, don’t expect it from the woman you have been dating for only three weeks. Read the body language, take some cues, and don’t expect a woman to lie to protect your fragile ego, because the resentment will build until it explodes all over you in a public parking lot. That was a painful moment.

8. After a much improved front half of the season, Fear the Walking Dead is a shitshow, so far, in the back half. It’s lost 75 percent of its original audience, but I’m still holding out hope that the two new showrunners they brought aboard for next season (from Once Upon a Time) can turn things around. The ingredients exists for a decent show, but the existing showrunner Dave Erickson doesn’t know what to do with them. Also, Kim Dickens needs to be killed off the series immediately.

7. No one is watching it, but Halt & Catch Fire continues to be the most under-appreciated drama on television as it heads toward its series finale. Toby Huss and Mackenzie Davis are doing some great unseen work on this show. Huss needs to be in everything.

6. Not many people, I suspect, are watching The Guest Book on TBS, either, but it’s been fun. It’s a Greg Garcia joint set in a cabin that’s rented out each week by different guests, and it’s basically just an excuse to rotate through a lot of Greg Garcia regulars, of which there are many — Crab Man and Jaime Pressly, from My Name is Earl, Garret Dillahunt and Shannon Woodward from Raising Hope, Margo Martindale from that other show he did on CBS, plus a lot of familiar faces, like Aloma Wright and Kate Miccuci from Scrubs, Tommy Dewey and Michaela Watkins from Casual, Kelly Martin, Jenna Fischer, Michael Rappaport, and a whole bunch of others. It’s a fun show, but not exactly required viewing.

5. The season finale of Sinner aired this week. I covered it more extensively over on Uproxx, but here’s the short version: I loved the season, and it was a great mystery, but I was a little disappointed in the finale. The killer didn’t exactly come out of left field, but definitely was way beyond the third base line. I like a good mystery where the clues lead to a suspect; here, the “killer” totally made sense, but there were never really any clues leading us to him.

4. I saw the pilot of Adam Scott and Craig Robinson’s Ghosted last night — they previewed it on Twitter. I’ll probably write about it more later, but it’s fine. Scott and Robinson are a good buddy duo, but 22 minutes is not enough time to dig into a paranormal case, so instead of being like a comedic version of The X-Files, it’s more like a paranormal version of Brooklyn 99, which is to say that the cases are not the point of the show. It’s just a setup for jokes, and pretty conventional buddy-comedy jokes, at that. But Robinson and Scott do have great chemistry, and I expect the show will only improve once it establishes its universe.

3. Nobody watches it, but the second season of the anthology series Channel Zero debuted this week on SyFy and it was fucking terrifying. Last season started that way and kind of drifted in the end, but for genuinely great creepy horror, Channel Zero is leaps and bounds better than American Horror Story. It doesn’t go for jump scares, big shocking twists, or trendy horror conventions: It just gets under your skin and marinates. Watch it late at night, alone. It will fuck you up.

2. I love Sarah Paulson, but her character this season on American Horror Story may be the most grating character of 2017. All she does is shriek and cry and freak out. We’re only three episodes in, and I don’t know how much longer I can take it. If it weren’t for Billy Eichner, I’d have bailed already.

1. My favorite joke of the week? Lindsay’s boss celebrating a new client on You’re the Worst: “Good news, we just signed a new client: Casey Affleck’s lawyer, for all future court appearances, press conferences and depositions. Looks like Momma’s gettin’ her boat!” Brilliant. (More on this week’s You’re the Worst here).

Also, more on this week’s season two premiere of The Good Place here.