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Ah okay well you mentioned surrealism. But yes I suppose it is pretty different in terms of how totally confected it is.

Okay replace that with Feel Good?

Better Things is so good.

Loved Better Things. Pretty sure Louis CK was involved with it initially but then it very much became Pamela Adlon's own thing

yes he produced it and co-wrote/maybe directed a few in the beginning but was gone after the first or second season.

Higher Maintenance is in that category for me

it's a bit of erasure to say that LCK was "involved initially" on a show that he co-created and wrote/co-wrote the first two seasons for and almost certainly would have continued on with as a lead creative force if he hadn't hit a (apparently temporary) professional brick wall

Brockmire and the first couple of seasons of You're The Worst were great for blending comedy and heavier stuff

it's a bit of erasure to say that LCK was "involved initially" on a show that he co-created and wrote/co-wrote the first two seasons for and almost certainly would have continued on with as a lead creative force if he hadn't hit a (apparently temporary) professional brick wall

I was not aware of the depth of his involvement until just now. I kind of assumed it was Adlon's show from the beginning and CK used his clout with FX to get it on the air. But yeah, for the first two seasons it was absolutely a creative partnership.

The Patient (therapist Steve Carrell imprisoned in cozy wood paneled basement by desperate serial killer patient show on Hulu) seems intriguing enough, despite the maybe silly premise and choice of lead.

At basically 20 minute episodes doled out once a week with cliffhanger-y endings, it seems like a reaction to glutton TV shit and I’m not yet sure it’s clever/good enough to warrant what I can see as being a frustrating rather than tantalizing roll out. We’ll see!

i watched the first two. have no idea what to think of it yet other than i guess ill keep watching cos its short and easy.

xpost half-hour shows blending comedy and heavier stuff - Brockmire yes and add Catastrophe

Catastrophe was amazing for that, and all the more amazing because they knew when to just stop.

I almost turned off The Bear after the first episode because I was getting Uncut Gems stress vibes you all talked about, but glad I stuck it out. It's calmer than that most of the time and very well written and acted, one of my favorite things I've seen this year

yeah i really loved it and i hated uncut gems.

I never know what I think of The Bear while I'm watching it, but I keep watching, so I guess that means I like it?

Conversely, I keep thinking I should like Severance, but I'm struggling to get through it.

I hated the first episode of Severance so much I couldn't get through it. The twee creepy vibe was just fingernails on a chalkboard.

The Bear had great characters but kind of weak plotting? I like it more after two episodes than after I finished the series.

I liked Severance but it could have been 3-4 episodes or... a two hour movie, perhaps?

I guess Halt & Catch Fire is only on AMC+ now?

Halt & Catch Fire is the best

Late to the discussion, but Transparent and Girls were pretty important half-hour light/heavy mixes, albeit with retrospective baggage which is probably why they haven't been mentioned yet.

in fact a lot of shows have this dynamic

Happy Days, Three's Company, Diff'rent Strokes 'very special episodes,' anything.

Joe Swanberg's Easy on Netflix also has that "comedy and heaviness, sillyness and drama" balance. As with Girls, Louie, and Atlanta, there are single episodes that are like perfect short stories ("Side Hustle" in season 2 especially).

I am unfamiliar with Joe Swanberg, but several of his films are about to expire from MUBI so may take a look.

I though the "surrealism" part of dan's post was pretty key and disqualifies most of these suggestions (no offense), including mine tbf. Atlanta was the only show that RD truly reminded me of (haven't seen Better Things)

Yeah, the surrealism part was key. Maybe that's the special something the handful of other suggested shows here lack? Or maybe just the hook of relatively underrepresented people? Or maybe the fact that Atlanta and Reservation Dogs are, unlike Brockmire, You're the Worst, Girls or whatever, not just jam packed with imo assholes?

I've heard great things about Better Things, should dive in!

I May Destroy You seems to fit the bill of what Dan describes (I don’t know about “surrealism” necessarily, but it has flashbacks and fantasies and whatnot).

I think there is definitely a model of a “auteurist” TV show these days, with that particular mix of elements.

As brilliant as IMDY was, I have a hard time thinking of it as even a quasi-comedy...though I don't know, maybe it was funnier than I'm remembering?

The reason I linked RD and Atlanta (fwiw I've only seen the first season of both shows) was the tone and the magical realist touches—not so much the characters. To Josh's point though, I have far more affection for RD's characters than those on Atlanta. And I wouldn't say Brockmire, which I liked a lot, is jam packed with assholes! I agree it isn't much like RD.

Been a while since I watched it, but maybe Enlightened would fit—it wasn't really surreal, iirc, but it was going for a kind of poetic tone that felt a little dreamy at times. I think that's why I thought of High Maintenance. These shows are "literary" (sorry) while also cinematic in a way that is good not bad

IMDY definitely had humor, but yeah it’s darker overall than some of these others.

I should probably rewatch that at some point

It isn't surreal, but people into the broader dramedy / naturalist indie film vibe we're describing here might like Somebody Somewhere

I think I watched the first season of Brockmire, or at least the first several episodes, and isn't the title character a big ... asshole? At least that's how I remember him, as someone I didn't want to spend any more time with. Even though you are not the first to say the show evolves. Same with, I don't know, BoJack Horseman. The praise is out of this world, but I didn't make it to any sort of compelling turning point that made me want to watch more.

This is reductive: but I'd say the basic point of Brockmire is him changing while the basic point of Bojack is him not. Though I mainly just meant not every character in Brockmire is an asshole, which I thought "jam packed with assholes" implied (a phrase better applied to a show like Succession or idk Girls). I think we'd have to have a larger conversation about what an asshole is lol before I could fully weigh in on Brockmire

https://c.tenor.com/PaSLTGPVLvQAAAAC/detector-asshole-detector.gif

theres some really touching stuff in the last couple seasons of brockmire.

totally. That third season is esp great, with Simmons's season arc a microcosm of the show's overall trajectory

OTOH if you watched the first season and didn't enjoy Azaria's performance at all, idk if sticking with it makes sense. At a basic level you need to enjoy the writing & delivery

didn't mean to imply erasure, Louie cocreated/wrote/produced the show but it continued without him and got better fwiw, and I did make the point that some degree of this atmosphere of these shows owe a great deal to his show.

But as much as I like plenty of these other shows, it's definitely different. Like Girls has characters and scenes I could relate to for sure (having my own experiences with Oberlin and Brooklyn) but is mostly ridiculous and melodramatic. These shows are more likely to have like, ghosts, entire episodes focusing on things seemingly unconnected to any sort of plot/narrative etc, more focus on like, local color and atmosphere, they're just more "poetic" or something.

finally finished the Resort which was incredible and magical right up to the final episode when it fucking dropped the ball and seemed completely rushed; crushing disappointment. Not sure what happened there.

I'm laid up in front of a Cable-equipped TV this weekend, and the Paramount Channel is running a series run marathon of Yellowstone (which iirc is the big ticket attraction on Paramount+)--I can see why this is so popular: it's basically a Dallas-style trashy primetime soap about The Worst People In The World© run through the Breaking Bad filter with plenty of profanity, random violence, and fantastic visual imagery. Costner's got that grumbly late-period Eastwood old dude swag thing going on. Good Red Dirt stuff on the soundtrack.

i can’t decide if i should try it or not

i watched an episode or two and see the appeal but the dialogue writing was so. fucking. bad.

i saw the first episode of the most recent season and admit I thought it was pretty riveting, will eventually probably go back and try to watch the whole thing

Cheese with his own episode of Reservation Dogs. Perfect.

I’m catching up. Slightly surprised at the amount of Spacemen 3 in episode 3!!

Lol @ Thomas Mars & Sofia Coppola on last week's What We Do In The Shadows

and Jim Jarmusch!

loved Gizmo's reaction at the end of this season

I happened to catch the last few minutes of the wedding episode, and lost my sh1t over the song they played for Nandor…

OK, I'm in for The Peripheral. (I loved the book, so I'm a little wary, but why not?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94fGHj2z8Kk

What We Do In The Shadows is on real TV, not a streaming service, and has an active thread, fyi

It's on Hulu. Real TV doesn't exist.