We're All Drowning in Television Misery

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 22, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | June 22, 2018 |

There’s nothing more harrowing each week than watching The Handmaid’s Tale. I never look forward to it, but I force myself to eventually go through with it. It’s always unpleasant, and this week was probably the most unpleasant episode to date. I won’t spoil it except to say, if you want to know how it feels to have your child stripped away from you, watch this week’s episode (and somehow, that’s not the worst scene in the episode).

Meanwhile, I am not enjoying Westworld at all anymore either, but I am still subjecting myself to it because … I don’t know — it’s the show of the moment and confusion and misery is apparently the emotions du jour. Even Brockmire — my favorite comedy of 2017 — has been much less funny this season (though still great) because Fun Bobby eventually always becomes Rock-Bottom Bobby. So much of television these days, in fact, feels like something to endure rather than enjoy, and I totally get it, but man, I miss The Good Place.

Another miserable show to watch in 2018 was AMC’s The Terror. I only managed six of the ten episodes before bailing, because by that point, I’d read so much about what was coming that I couldn’t bear to watch anymore, and I didn’t feel as compelled by our current political landscape to put myself through it. That won’t be the case in season two. AMC has renewed the show as an anthology series, and in season two, we’ll be privy to Japanese internment camps. From TVLine:

The season will revolve around “an uncanny specter that menaces a Japanese-American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific,” according to the official release. (The news comes, of course, as reports of immigrant children being held in detention centers are currently dominating the headlines.) Series co-creator Alexander Woo will serve as showrunner, with co-creator Max Borenstein serving as executive producer. Season 2, which will consist of 10 episodes, is slated to debut in 2019.

Well, I’m definitely going to watch that, but I am not going to enjoy one minute of it. However, it’s a very unexplored subject area, and it’s probably never been a more important time to revisit that than now. It’ll arrive in 2019, and we can pair it with the weekly horror-show that is Game of Thrones!