Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

DJI - yeah it's so good :) hope so too! Any country music fans owes it to themselves to check it out

search party is now next level imo

"dirty old motel" - ded

search party season 2 is good but man is the nihilism strong with this show. like watching people who don't know how to deal with life suffer, not really my bag, but it's some critique of the younger gen i guess...

tbf the scene where chantal's family embrace her was pretty amazing

IT'S TIME FOR WILL'S TV CORNER

i just mainlined all of YouTube Red's new(ish) show, Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television, which is basically a show that feels like it was built for me and almost nobody else (it is a super meta/4th wall cop procedural starring Ryan Hansen as himself, and for full enjoyment requires knowledge of who Ryan Hansen is (Veronica Mars and Party Down)). I bet there are a few ILXors out there who would enjoy it too, and the first two eps are free. The other two eps are on YouTube Red, so like, that's a thing, but give it a shot!

Also new Search Party is kinda almost TOO next-level for me now, like, i am really not having fun like i was before, which definitely feels like ~the point~, but also, fuck, that point ~sucks~

My Myself & I was a cute new sitcom that got canned almost immediately, too bad but also i had enough "cute wholesome sitcoms" to watch (fucking still watch modern family and fresh off the boat and blackish, among others, someone shoot me)

Looking forward to the dennis from Sunny/Patton Oswalt vehicle AP BIO but I think I just heard it's not out til March or something? Ok whatever

is high maintenance ever coming back? few things have touched the level that show hit, like, ever. between this and insecure and veep and silicon valley i honestly believe hbo is at an all-time high for quality shows, and i think game of thrones is a piece of shit (and new curb is a joke... but a watchable joke at least)

the orville and the new star trek are both very watchable and i don't care who knows that i think so

i like snl even when it's bad but this is has been DIFFICULT this year. heidi gardner has been a treasure tho, they better not waste her. and i look forward to more chris redd. also there's a guy named luke null who has had like 2 lines all season which is one of the saddest/most dickensian name situations of all time

halt & catch fire was a masterpiece and i am gonna be thinking about it for a long time. you're the worst kinda sucked this year but it's still great.

THANKS FOR READING WILL'S TV CORNER! PLZ LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE

oops, typo: other six* eps of Ryan Hansen on YT Red.

and clarification: new curb is /barely/ watchable

I thought the first ep of the new Curb was a little limp, but subsequent have been fine.

I'm also a dutiful Modern Family, Fresh Off the Boat and Blackish watcher (throw in Mom too) though I don't mind as much if I miss one now and then (esp FOtB).

the good place
zoo
ice fantasy
the walking dead
nikita
black-ish
bob's burgers
halt and catch fire
z nation
chef & my fridge

thank you will, keep em coming. deciding what's up next can be daunting and you lured me to high maintenance and it's juuuust riiiight

I'm almost ready to bail on the "Erica and Anna" half of Girlfriend Experience s2

yeah, the whole plot is kind of skeevy

oh wow rip van wanko if u haven't seen high maintenance yet, be sure to also watch the web series (in add'n to the hbo stuff)... it's SOOOOO good

search party really dropped the laughs this season. No longer a comedy or dark comedy, just bleak af...OK.

dunno, just feel like writers should care about their characters even if they're dirtbags, and this show doesn't really convince me the writers give a shit

Vikings is back.

Woo, and indeed, hoo.

Well shit

http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/bryan-fuller-and-michael-green-depart-american-gods.html

I’m only 3 eps in & I dont even care how this ends or where it goes- Marvelous Mrs Maisel is the most perfect thing Amy Sherman Palladino has created & I love it so much

I'm watching The Sinner on Netflix, it's very awful but cheesily watchable

Watching Midnight Sun on Hulu - it's a French-Swedish co-production about a French police detective (a woman of Arabic descent; don't know yet if this will matter, I'm only on episode 3 of 8) who travels to northern Sweden to investigate the ritual murder (he was lashed to a helicopter blade and when the rotors were turned on, his head came off) of a French citizen. So far, the investigation has led them into the Sami community, so you get a lot of information about how that group is treated in Sweden (hint: not well). Plus, it's fucking gorgeous - worth watching for the landscapes alone, and there's a lot of travel by helicopter. Highly recommended.

I should mention that while there are lots of sequences with dialogue in Swedish, French, and Sami, all subtitled, there are also lots of English-language scenes, because the French cop doesn't speak Swedish, and her Swedish counterpart doesn't speak French, but they both speak English.

The Mick is funnier than I expected

I’m only 3 eps in & I dont even care how this ends or where it goes- Marvelous Mrs Maisel is the most perfect thing Amy Sherman Palladino has created & I love it so much

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, December 2, 2017 1:17 AM

I made it part of the way through the pilot a couple weeks ago anticipating the rest of the series becoming available, but I started cringing too hard when he was doing Newhart's Lincoln routine during the open mic. I'll come back to it soon.

you’re supposed to cringe! he’s a schmuck!!

I don't weather cringey moments very well, though. I've never lasted an entire episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

It's also why I bailed on Enlightened, despite everyone telling me it was wonderful.

i feel you, enlightened was an almost-bail for me too early on!

re: The Leftovers:
* how disturbing/violent is it?
* how depressing is it?
want to watch it but trying to figure out if i'm up for it emotionally

ok I googled and every article about it is like "Why The Leftovers is the darkest, bleakest show on TV" so i guess that answers my question

It's actually hilarious, especially Season 3. And Ann Dowd is fantastic in it. You should watch it.

I can only think of two or three real moments of violence in the series, although one goes pretty far.

It's not depressing, but it is about depression. As unperson says, at times it's a comedy but is frequently very funny.

yeah it definitely walks a very fine line between depressing & uplifting ... it’s not really one or the other but a unique combination of both

I thought the overall theme of The Leftovers was optimistic because there’s a bleak premise, people who are fighting against internal and external demons, and in the end they really keep continuing because of their bonds with each other. People even form new bonds and loves!

idk, it’s a dystopia where some people end up in darkness but the main cast ends up deciding life is worth it

I guess it might be in the very slim genre of “cynically optimistic” shows

Should I watch the expanse season 2 next or rewatch enlightened?

I watched 19 different TV shows that were airing this year which is unusually high for me. I'd say these were my favorites.

1. Twin Peaks ("event")
2. Mindhunter
3. Rick & Morty
4. GLOW
5. Big Little Lies (mini)
6. Broadchurch

good not great: five came back, feud, penn & teller fool us, mst3k, veep, leftovers, doctor who, handmaid's tale, stranger things, curb your enthusiasm

bad: sherlock, game of thrones, star trek discovery

so basically season 2 of search party is millennial crime & punishment

yep. and it's real good!

Here's my at the moment 9:
1) Desus and Mero - i hate that i am watching vice tho
2) Search Party
3) SMILF - Last episode was an extended and explicit take on Run Lola Run... the balls on this show! Rosie O'Donnell is a revelation, which is not something I thought I'd say ever.
4) At Home with Amy Sedaris - Pee Wee's Playhouse 2017
5) Colbert's Late Show monologues are somehow weirdly necessary
6) PBS Newshour but boy it's unpleasant
7) NBA
8) Rosehaven - Best in small doses but enjoyable
9) The Rundown with Robin Thede - Probably the best late night show on right now
10) The Good Place - Back soon!

Still Watching I Guess - Full Frontal, Curb

Need to try again with more focus: Girlfriend Experience (not with my girlfriend in the room apparently), American Gods, Stranger Things 2, Ken Burns' Vietnam

I suppose i should try again but don't know why: The Deuce, Twin Peaks

Fondly recently remembered: Nathan for You, Rick and Morty, One Mississippi, Better Things (mixed feelings there), Baroness Von Sketch (got kinda burned out at the end), Great British Baking Show, Difficult People, Insecure, Love You More pilot (this shit needs to go to series immediately)

Gave up: Broad City (empty calories now), You're the Worst (yeah nothing there for me), NFL (i'm out at least until the playoffs i guess), Big Little Lies (thought this was terrible!), Top of the Lake: China Girl (surprisingly straight garbage), Back (very mean!), TRL (this might be the worst thing on television right now), Runaways (made it three episodes... why so much focus on the adults? and wtf with the scratch soundtrack; maybe the worst music direction i've ever seen on a television show and the scripting isn't much better)

Coming up shortly: Happy!, Top Chef, Marvelous Miss Maisel

Where the fuck is: High Maintenance?

High Maintenance was renewed for a second HBO season, which is set to premiere January 19, 2018.[6][7]

Marvelous Mrs Maisel needs to parachute into that list somewhere v high up imo

I am loving it so much. The staging alone is just so ambitious and bravura. Long takes. Foreground and background dialogue overlapping and intersecting. It feels like a piece of theater, even a musical at times. There is however something at the heart of it that is really bothering me and it's painful as shit because I am a massive fan, and that is that we are supposed to believe that the main character is magically great at stand-up with no practice. It's the keystone of the plot but it's manifestly impossible. Famously impossible. It does it do a disservice to the hard-gigging milieu that A S-P valorizes. Like someone who's never picked up a guitar suddenly deciding to play like Jimi Hendrix. If that was your plot, the sudden Hendrix, you could explain that it was magical realism or something, and your actor could pretend to play while you dubbed in actual great guitar playing on the soundtrack. But they can't do that here. They have to get Rachel Brosnahan to actually be great, as great as Lenny Bruce. Which she just isn't. It turns out that impersonating a great comedian is essentially impossible. Even when you get the voice and the cadence right, like the guy playing Lenny Bruce, the rhythms and the energy and the ineffableness of it only comes from years and years of playing rooms. The show's Lenny is a cuddly version of the real thing, the edges sanded off. Less a seething mass of upper-addled bottled lightning and more a whimsical sweetie. I mean the show is a sweet show, so maybe that's why.

I keep trying to make excuses for this - like maybe Alex Borstein's hardened, seen-it-all pro is so taken with this complete amateur because she's never seen a women do filthy material before?

I mean, yeah yeah, suspension of disbelief, but I laughed more at Rupert Pupkin

glad to hear on high maintenance.

i have a #11 for that list: The President Show, which is much better than you'd expect

watched the pilot of the leftovers, liked it a lot, my wife liked it too despite the disappearing baby/shot dog combo within the first five minutes. it was weird seeing mark's boss from peep show in a big dramatic role.

It feels like a piece of theater, even a musical at times

yeah what i love about mrs maisel most so far is how much of the sensibility of bunheads carried over re: this stuff

i have a #11 for that list: The President Show, which is much better than you'd expect

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Wednesday, December 6, 2017 8:30 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i took an improv class taught by the guy who plays trump, it's exactly as good as i expected (he's brilliant) if... a little hard to watch regularly

anyway here are my top shows of the year

1. twin peaks
2. riverdale

the end

kantaro the sweet tooth salaryman is my new number one. only watching one a night so that it lasts longer.

i'm also enjoying Marcella, a brit crime show that has Apollo from Battlestar in it in his native Britisher! i don't think i even knew he was British. it's nice to see him. it also has my fave actress from W1A in it. Marcella is by the Swedish guy who did The Bridge.

I tried w/ Marcella but couldn't get beyond the first couple

beyond Twin Peaks, Leftovers, and American Vandal, not a big TV year for me.

Twin Peaks, Nathan For You, Decker, Desus and Mero, Vice Principals, the final mini-season of Review. Still seeing Game of Thrones through to the end. That's it, I think, besides the NBA.

NFY and Review finales were great too of course. Also excited for the Errol Morris miniseries on MKULTRA.