Re "Sunny," it took me two or three tries to get into it, and I didn't really //get// until after they showed up on Abbot. I've been watching older episodes, and just finished "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire," which is one of the funniest ones I've seen.
Re "The Bear," there's something about streaming episodes (and maybe you've mentioned it?) that frustrates me that they can't decide on the length of an episode. Maybe it's nice, creatively, but as a viewer, I don't necessarily want to set aside a time each night only to see that an episode is three times longer than the one before it, you know?
Completely agree on the "Bear" episode length. I'm only four episodes in, but the first two seemed redundant in a way that would've worked better as an hour installment. But that would bring the inconsistency again.
Not really a surprise that Squid Game ultimately underwhelmed, sorry you had to watch all of it but thank you for taking that bullet and sparing me that disappointment.
Small correction on the (apart from that pretty good) Sunny article: it’s only the longest running *American* live-action sitcom in TV history. Last of the Summer Wine beats it by a considerable margin (31 series and almost 300 episodes oven 37 years).
And so much talking over each other. What once made it enjoyable to watch is now painful for some reason. Maybe it's overdone. Or the fact that it's lost the plot as a show about an upstart restaurant and the pains of a kitchen. This season just feels like a trauma and anxiety dump that just happens to take place in a kitchen sometimes.
Loved the previous seasons, and even S3 seems more interesting in retrospect.
This is how I felt about the first 2 seasons and why I gave up after that. Based on this comment I can safely say season 4 is probably not for me 😂. Thanks for sharing!
I have the WORST possible question to ask The Gang, and the only reason I share it is because I can just imagine them doubling over with laughter at its insanely pedantic nature.
Prelude: I rewatched the show many, MANY times during lockdown and started to obsessively notice minor details.
Anyway, the S7 episode “The Gang Gets Trapped” is one of my all-time favorites. As a refresher: It opens en medias res with the characters stuck in a fancy house, having decided to “liberate” (read: steal) a vase from a wealthy family for reasons even they can’t remember, which are vaguely explained in references to an argument they had earlier that day at a “hamburger store.”
Now, many viewers correctly note that Mac, Charlie and Frank are each wearing what is clearly part of an Indiana Jones costume. The episode also repeatedly references a “cool speech” Dennis made at the “hamburger store” about how he would easily retrieve the “artifact.”
My question is this (and again, I am giggling about what a stupid, complicated question this is for an episode more than a decade old) — do they feel that the guys got the Indiana Jones costume AFTER they decided to go after the vase, OR do they feel that they already had it at the “hamburger store,” and Dennis made his “cool speech” because he felt left out and escalated the situation in an effort to maintain control of them?
…I suppose a more sane version of the question would be something like, “When you do episodes that play with the formula, what are some lessons you’ve learned? For example, I love ‘The Gang Gets Trapped,’ but I noticed in later episodes where the audience isn’t privy to The Gang’s scheme, such as ‘Charlie Work,’ ‘Being Frank,’ and ‘Dee Day,’ the schemes in question are often easily explained so that the emphasis is on the frustration the characters feel at having their situation disrupted. How has the response to off-format episodes affected how you approach writing and producing them as the series has gone on?”
…I just had my first colonoscopy a few hours ago and am still loopy from the anesthesia so feel lucky that this is as coherent as it is.
Oh, another one! What’s the most obscure callback to an earlier episode they’ve done? Here’s one someone on the wiki pointed out — In “Mac Fights Gay Marriage,” Dennis first brings up the idea that he thinks he does not have feelings and notes that he thinks he’s having them again, “Like a 14-year-old kid or something.” Five or six seasons later, in “Dee Made a Smut Film,” he reveals he lost his virginity to the school librarian, which everyone else recognizes as an act of molestation, when he was…14. In addition to explaining the roots of some of his predatory behavior, was this a deliberate callback to explain WHY he thought he had no feelings, given how that point and the librarian incident come up several times the following season?
…why do I suddenly recall the “Boy, I sure hope somebody got fired for THAT blunder” scene from “The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show” Simpsons episode? Once I’ve recovered, I gotta get a date, I don’t like myself right now.
I don’t know if anyone here is watching the UK series Patience airing Sundays on PBS (or reading comments on this post after the weekend…) but there was a reference in last night’s episode that this crowd might appreciate: The victim had an ex named Peter Venkman. At first I took it as a throwaway nod that might vaguely tie into the plot, even though the backdrop was paleontology rather than parapsychology, but then he showed up as a character who isn’t kooky or ghostbustery or anything, so it was just a weird distraction.
I was bored and watched all three episodes of Ironheart last night. I have to say, it didn't that much to relieve my boredom.
It's not the worst Disney+ Marvel show, the bar for that achievement is quite high, but it's very mid, as the kids say these days.
Dominque Thorne doesn't give us much as the main character, but the writing for her is so poor it's hard to know who to blame. Writing a a character that's supposed to be super intelligent is always a challenge, but having everyone, including the character herself, just talk about how much a genius she is doesn't really sell it.
Outside of Eric Andre, Alden Ehrenreich and Manny Montana, the rest of the cast fails to impress. Anthony Ramos gives off no sense of menace and just looks silly walking around in that cape. Jalen Marrell just looks silly trying to do the typical "fast hacker typing" with those super long nails.
I'll watch the three back episodes when they drop, probably while playing Sudoku on my tablet, just to see what happens.
I have only watched one episode of the new season and it has a lot of the best elements of the Bear. But I still can rarely find much humor in the show. As for Raymond, I believe it’s one of the best comedies in the history of TV and is often overlooked. I can still watch almost any episode and laugh. I need to watch your panel discussion.
It'll take me a little while to watch all of The Bear S4, but I'm glad to hear it's on the rebound this season. Few episodes of TV have ever given me as much joy as "Forks" did in S2.
I gave up on following all of the MCU shows due to it reaching the point of diminishing returns. But Thunderbolts did give me some hope for the future.
Re: "Poker Face", I immediately watched Season 4 Episode 1 of Columbo, "An Exercise in Fatality". I've heard comparisons between Poker Face and Columbo. In that Columbo episode, the murder is similar in that a barbell is used to make it look like an accident.
I like that one a lot. Robert Blake is SO annoyed with Columbo, and then the way Columbo pieces it together using the shoelaces is one of my favorite gotcha scenes from that show.
Funny, I thought it was Robert Culp (another villain in multiple Columbo episodes), but it was Robert Conrad in this one. Yes, the shoelaces gotcha scene is delicious!
Hey, Alan! Something I’ve always wondered is when a review goes up on aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes (with its stupid binary rotten or fresh) or Metacritic (with a numerical score) do you assign a score yourself or do the websites determine that themselves.
I do nothing. I know some other critics occasionally check to see if those sites got it right. I don't. I just publish what I publish. You can read my review to see what I thought.
The post-Engdame era has been such a missed opportunity…it sounded exciting to have the movie and tv sections be combined but it become such as a mess all-around. Even the ones I enjoyed (She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Echo) could’ve easily been movies. Just too many terrible misses (Falcon, Secret Invasion, Moon Knight).
Excluding the animated shows, only MCU shows on the calendar for next year are Daredevil S2 and Vision Quest.
It was a real cash-grabbing blunder on Disney's part. Sure, the lure of the Marvel shows drew a lot of people to Disney+ initially but not only where they quickly creatively spreading themselves very thin, the sheer amount of continuity-connected TV shows actually made the films an overwhelming chore to enjoy. Too much bloated crap to keep up with, having it be mediocre actually became a good excuse to just opt out of the MCU entirely.
At the point we could care less about Fantastic Four, Dr Tony Doom, or the new Avengers.* Except for Andor (which is now over), it's the same for Star Wars. Great job, Disney!
I agree entirely with the first part. I have had the same frustrations.
I disagree with the 2nd part - I think the movies are still worth following. It's only 2-3 hrs of your life versus 6-9 hrs. I think they'll hold up better in the long-term.
I think many of these D+ will be retconned (Secret Invasion), ignored (Moon Knight), and irrelevant (Falcon/Winter Soldier). I think it's better if the tv and shows are minimally connectivity-connected.
I'm with you except their track record on these movies has been abysmal, these last two "phases" have been one clunker after another. I have zero faith in their ability to make anything good at this point, regardless of length.
Two items for the Always Sunny crew that I've wondered (apologies if these have been answered elsewhere & I'm not aware)
1) When in development, the 3 male leads all had somewhat vaguely defined archetypes that they built off of over time, but was there any consideration given to a different arrangement of the 3 (i.e. Rob playing the Dennis type, Glenn playing the Charlie type, Charlie playing the Mac type) or were they all sort of locked in always?
2) You (Alan) referenced the change about a year or so in, and that definitely coincides with Danny Devito joining the show. Was the Frank character always something in mind, that could've been played by someone else, or was that developed specifically with Danny in mind? And how, if at all, did things change once Danny was officially attached?
I thought I read somewhere that the network (yay, in this instance?) insisted on a big name coming onboard to boost ratings, and they had Devito in mind. It seems like he's the only one who could possibly be Frank now that we see him in that role.
Re "Sunny," it took me two or three tries to get into it, and I didn't really //get// until after they showed up on Abbot. I've been watching older episodes, and just finished "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire," which is one of the funniest ones I've seen.
Re "The Bear," there's something about streaming episodes (and maybe you've mentioned it?) that frustrates me that they can't decide on the length of an episode. Maybe it's nice, creatively, but as a viewer, I don't necessarily want to set aside a time each night only to see that an episode is three times longer than the one before it, you know?
Completely agree on the "Bear" episode length. I'm only four episodes in, but the first two seemed redundant in a way that would've worked better as an hour installment. But that would bring the inconsistency again.
Not really a surprise that Squid Game ultimately underwhelmed, sorry you had to watch all of it but thank you for taking that bullet and sparing me that disappointment.
Small correction on the (apart from that pretty good) Sunny article: it’s only the longest running *American* live-action sitcom in TV history. Last of the Summer Wine beats it by a considerable margin (31 series and almost 300 episodes oven 37 years).
Re: The Bear S4. So. Much. Yelling.
And so much talking over each other. What once made it enjoyable to watch is now painful for some reason. Maybe it's overdone. Or the fact that it's lost the plot as a show about an upstart restaurant and the pains of a kitchen. This season just feels like a trauma and anxiety dump that just happens to take place in a kitchen sometimes.
Loved the previous seasons, and even S3 seems more interesting in retrospect.
This is how I felt about the first 2 seasons and why I gave up after that. Based on this comment I can safely say season 4 is probably not for me 😂. Thanks for sharing!
I have the WORST possible question to ask The Gang, and the only reason I share it is because I can just imagine them doubling over with laughter at its insanely pedantic nature.
Prelude: I rewatched the show many, MANY times during lockdown and started to obsessively notice minor details.
Anyway, the S7 episode “The Gang Gets Trapped” is one of my all-time favorites. As a refresher: It opens en medias res with the characters stuck in a fancy house, having decided to “liberate” (read: steal) a vase from a wealthy family for reasons even they can’t remember, which are vaguely explained in references to an argument they had earlier that day at a “hamburger store.”
Now, many viewers correctly note that Mac, Charlie and Frank are each wearing what is clearly part of an Indiana Jones costume. The episode also repeatedly references a “cool speech” Dennis made at the “hamburger store” about how he would easily retrieve the “artifact.”
My question is this (and again, I am giggling about what a stupid, complicated question this is for an episode more than a decade old) — do they feel that the guys got the Indiana Jones costume AFTER they decided to go after the vase, OR do they feel that they already had it at the “hamburger store,” and Dennis made his “cool speech” because he felt left out and escalated the situation in an effort to maintain control of them?
…I suppose a more sane version of the question would be something like, “When you do episodes that play with the formula, what are some lessons you’ve learned? For example, I love ‘The Gang Gets Trapped,’ but I noticed in later episodes where the audience isn’t privy to The Gang’s scheme, such as ‘Charlie Work,’ ‘Being Frank,’ and ‘Dee Day,’ the schemes in question are often easily explained so that the emphasis is on the frustration the characters feel at having their situation disrupted. How has the response to off-format episodes affected how you approach writing and producing them as the series has gone on?”
…I just had my first colonoscopy a few hours ago and am still loopy from the anesthesia so feel lucky that this is as coherent as it is.
Oh, another one! What’s the most obscure callback to an earlier episode they’ve done? Here’s one someone on the wiki pointed out — In “Mac Fights Gay Marriage,” Dennis first brings up the idea that he thinks he does not have feelings and notes that he thinks he’s having them again, “Like a 14-year-old kid or something.” Five or six seasons later, in “Dee Made a Smut Film,” he reveals he lost his virginity to the school librarian, which everyone else recognizes as an act of molestation, when he was…14. In addition to explaining the roots of some of his predatory behavior, was this a deliberate callback to explain WHY he thought he had no feelings, given how that point and the librarian incident come up several times the following season?
…why do I suddenly recall the “Boy, I sure hope somebody got fired for THAT blunder” scene from “The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show” Simpsons episode? Once I’ve recovered, I gotta get a date, I don’t like myself right now.
I don’t know if anyone here is watching the UK series Patience airing Sundays on PBS (or reading comments on this post after the weekend…) but there was a reference in last night’s episode that this crowd might appreciate: The victim had an ex named Peter Venkman. At first I took it as a throwaway nod that might vaguely tie into the plot, even though the backdrop was paleontology rather than parapsychology, but then he showed up as a character who isn’t kooky or ghostbustery or anything, so it was just a weird distraction.
I was bored and watched all three episodes of Ironheart last night. I have to say, it didn't that much to relieve my boredom.
It's not the worst Disney+ Marvel show, the bar for that achievement is quite high, but it's very mid, as the kids say these days.
Dominque Thorne doesn't give us much as the main character, but the writing for her is so poor it's hard to know who to blame. Writing a a character that's supposed to be super intelligent is always a challenge, but having everyone, including the character herself, just talk about how much a genius she is doesn't really sell it.
Outside of Eric Andre, Alden Ehrenreich and Manny Montana, the rest of the cast fails to impress. Anthony Ramos gives off no sense of menace and just looks silly walking around in that cape. Jalen Marrell just looks silly trying to do the typical "fast hacker typing" with those super long nails.
I'll watch the three back episodes when they drop, probably while playing Sudoku on my tablet, just to see what happens.
Just want to shout out that we meet Kelly in the S2 finale - she’s Claire’s roommate!
Ahhh! I had completely forgotten this.
Been rewatching the whole thing, and she’s also the girl at the party to which Claire brings Carmy!
She sobs about how nice Carmy is, and how she wants a “nice guy” - Teddy Fak understood the assignment!
I have only watched one episode of the new season and it has a lot of the best elements of the Bear. But I still can rarely find much humor in the show. As for Raymond, I believe it’s one of the best comedies in the history of TV and is often overlooked. I can still watch almost any episode and laugh. I need to watch your panel discussion.
It'll take me a little while to watch all of The Bear S4, but I'm glad to hear it's on the rebound this season. Few episodes of TV have ever given me as much joy as "Forks" did in S2.
I gave up on following all of the MCU shows due to it reaching the point of diminishing returns. But Thunderbolts did give me some hope for the future.
As soon as I saw Doug Liman mentioned, I wondered if you were going to bring up "The O.C." 😂
The 'Don't Dream It's Over' montage in The Stand was also great.
Re: "Poker Face", I immediately watched Season 4 Episode 1 of Columbo, "An Exercise in Fatality". I've heard comparisons between Poker Face and Columbo. In that Columbo episode, the murder is similar in that a barbell is used to make it look like an accident.
I like that one a lot. Robert Blake is SO annoyed with Columbo, and then the way Columbo pieces it together using the shoelaces is one of my favorite gotcha scenes from that show.
Funny, I thought it was Robert Culp (another villain in multiple Columbo episodes), but it was Robert Conrad in this one. Yes, the shoelaces gotcha scene is delicious!
Dammit, we both got the Roberts wrong.
Hey, Alan! Something I’ve always wondered is when a review goes up on aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes (with its stupid binary rotten or fresh) or Metacritic (with a numerical score) do you assign a score yourself or do the websites determine that themselves.
I do nothing. I know some other critics occasionally check to see if those sites got it right. I don't. I just publish what I publish. You can read my review to see what I thought.
The post-Engdame era has been such a missed opportunity…it sounded exciting to have the movie and tv sections be combined but it become such as a mess all-around. Even the ones I enjoyed (She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Echo) could’ve easily been movies. Just too many terrible misses (Falcon, Secret Invasion, Moon Knight).
Excluding the animated shows, only MCU shows on the calendar for next year are Daredevil S2 and Vision Quest.
It was a real cash-grabbing blunder on Disney's part. Sure, the lure of the Marvel shows drew a lot of people to Disney+ initially but not only where they quickly creatively spreading themselves very thin, the sheer amount of continuity-connected TV shows actually made the films an overwhelming chore to enjoy. Too much bloated crap to keep up with, having it be mediocre actually became a good excuse to just opt out of the MCU entirely.
At the point we could care less about Fantastic Four, Dr Tony Doom, or the new Avengers.* Except for Andor (which is now over), it's the same for Star Wars. Great job, Disney!
I agree entirely with the first part. I have had the same frustrations.
I disagree with the 2nd part - I think the movies are still worth following. It's only 2-3 hrs of your life versus 6-9 hrs. I think they'll hold up better in the long-term.
I think many of these D+ will be retconned (Secret Invasion), ignored (Moon Knight), and irrelevant (Falcon/Winter Soldier). I think it's better if the tv and shows are minimally connectivity-connected.
I'm with you except their track record on these movies has been abysmal, these last two "phases" have been one clunker after another. I have zero faith in their ability to make anything good at this point, regardless of length.
Two items for the Always Sunny crew that I've wondered (apologies if these have been answered elsewhere & I'm not aware)
1) When in development, the 3 male leads all had somewhat vaguely defined archetypes that they built off of over time, but was there any consideration given to a different arrangement of the 3 (i.e. Rob playing the Dennis type, Glenn playing the Charlie type, Charlie playing the Mac type) or were they all sort of locked in always?
2) You (Alan) referenced the change about a year or so in, and that definitely coincides with Danny Devito joining the show. Was the Frank character always something in mind, that could've been played by someone else, or was that developed specifically with Danny in mind? And how, if at all, did things change once Danny was officially attached?
Thanks!
I thought I read somewhere that the network (yay, in this instance?) insisted on a big name coming onboard to boost ratings, and they had Devito in mind. It seems like he's the only one who could possibly be Frank now that we see him in that role.