That's a large and complicated issue, though, including the nature of "exclusivity" in a world where the actual ownership is trickier than what we rubes might imagine. In general, it appears that Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, at least, in general don't have the same lock on material that, say, HBO seems to with their exclusives/originals -- an arrangement that has to be costlier than ever to swing -- or, at least, that's my expectation.
On the positive side, if they're going to bring series to a close, at least (using these two as an example) it appears they're giving enough advance notice that the shows have a chance to tie up loose ends.
The final episodes of what is currently Netflix's longest-running series, Grace and Frankie, arrive today. I know I've at least mentioned the show several times over the past few years, going back to April two years ago, where I spent a little time in the details. This is the bulk of season seven, twelve episodes, with a ramp-up/teaser beginning to the season being the four episodes they released back in August 2021. With this final block the series will stand at 94 episodes. The show debuted back in 2015. Seven years, seven seasons, when put that way it hardly seems as if there was a pandemic wedged in there, does it?
While the specifics shifted and were refined along the way, the cancellation in general cannot be a surprise to anyone who was following the series. Netflix announced the formal, eventual, cancellation way back in September of 2019. Pandemic protocols stretched the process out, as one would expect.
Given the ages of the cast - Lily Tomlin's 82, Jane Fonda's 84, Sam Waterston's 81, as is Martin Sheen - as soon as the pandemic really hit (as in being declared as such) and production shut-downs began, I had concerns that it might not be coming back, intentions or no. With that in mind, to have reached a point where we're getting an ending is a victory, all the more so with an expanded final season.
The other Netflix series dropping the back portion of a final season today is the crime thriller Ozark.
In it, Jason Bateman plays a man who finds out upon the violent death of his business partner that said partner was deep in business with organized crime. Marty (Bateman) has to adapt quickly to keep said shadow partners happy and give himself and his family a chance to survive. This leads him to making them an offer to expand their operations, relocating from the Chicago suburbs to a remote, summer resort area of Missouri. It's wrapping its fourth (and, again, final) season. I'm at an odd spot with this one, because while I watched and overall enjoyed the first season enough to see it all the way through, I never made the time to come back for season two, much less move on to three, so I'm at sea as to how the show and the characters may have evolved in the past 2.5 seasons. As best I recall I was finding it just stressful and unpleasant enough that when they survived the events of season one I was happy to indefinitely let it ride at that relative safe spot. In that way it was much as I ended up leaving matters with Sneaky Pete (Amazon Prime), where season one's scheming saw the lead successfully navigate increasingly dangerous waters, and I found myself in no hurry at all to see what challenges and threats he'd be dealing with next. So it is that I have two more seasons of that canceled (officially as of June 2019) series still waiting for me over there.
Back to Ozark, in a slightly perverse move, here's the season four, part 2 trailer that, so far, I haven't watched other than to see that the link works
Meanwhile, over on Amazon Prime, I was happy to see the return for a second season a show I'd thought was likely to have not made it past its 2019 season one; looking back at the write-up I gave it when I got around to it back in January 2020, I see I'd forgotten that I knew then that it had been renewed for a second season. In fact, I'd only decided to watch it back then once I saw notice of the second season renewal, being a little gun-shy at the time because Prime was tending to cancel things rather than renew them, and indications were that this wasn't going to be a single season story, complete unto itself.
It's a fantasy adventure with sci-fi elements, as Alma, a young woman who nearly dies in a car accident, discovers she has a new, flexible relationship with time. She ends up using her ability to investigate the death of her father. The show was officially Prime's first animation effort for adults, though it's done using a rotoscope process - they filmed actors and then drew over the images. It's Undone.
Hulu seems to be going for true crime dramas, the latest being Under the Banner of Heaven. Produced by FX exclusively (at least for now) for Hulu, the first two episodes of this six-episode miniseries appeared on Hulu yesterday. The show is an adaptation (the ever-slippery "inspired by true events") of Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book of the same name. A police detective's faith is shaken as he investigates the death of a mother and baby daughter that appears to involve the Church of Latter-day Saints. Andrew Garfield plays the lead. This isn't the sort of thing I rush to watch, and as early reviewers were just working off the first one or two episodes there's no sense of how well or not early investment in Mormon history will pay off. To keep it more potentially interesting I've avoided details of the real-life 1980s murders, and the subsequent trial.
Over on HBO, along with the long-awaited return of Barry (previewed last week) this past Sunday saw the debut of an eight-part (arriving weekly) new, British, supernatural horror comedy series: The Baby.
Michelle de Swarte stars as Natasha, a 38 year-old, single woman who is revulsed by one of her oldest mates changing due to having had a baby, only to have the other member of their cards and drinking session trio announce that she, too, is pregnant. What passes as her social life outside of work now being all but dead, Natasha takes a sudden holiday to try to get her mind straight. She has no idea how surreal the experience coming for her will quickly become. I enjoyed the first episode, and am looking forward to the rest. Given the (soon obvious) supernatural element to the story I'm bracing myself for a likely less-than-thorough set of eventual explanations. (The first episode leaves us with several big questions.) It's dark fun both at the surface and in being an obvious parody exaggeration of the dehumanizing aspects of the tunnel vision both of the new parent herself and of the world's view of the same, in early parenthood. As with all things HBO, episodes are also available on HBO Max.
Next Thursday (May 5), over on Paramount+, the Star Trek machine has a dovetail week, presenting both the final episode of season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, and the first episode of new, retro-Trek series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The new series primarily focuses on Captain Pike, Mr. Spock, and the crew aboard the USS Enterprise. So, all of this will be what the Enterprise was up to in the years before Captain Kirk took command. The main characters (this casting of them, as they were first seen by Trek audiences in the recut pilot of the original series, which was adapted into the two-part The Cage) happened during the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, which was part of the reason I did a recent rewatch of the first two seasons of that show.
The ten-episode first season will be running from May 5th through July 7th, landing each Thursday as new Trek shows do on Paramount+. Here's the series trailer: Prequel series are inherently problematic in what they can and can't show, as the familiar shows, set later in their timeline, established so many firsts that these shows set earlier in the timeline can't reference without invoking some gimmick to keep the information secret from the future. Then there's the matter of the relative state of tech that can easily (and has) left us with equipment more advanced than the arguably more advanced (their timeline) adventures showed audiences decades ago.
Predicting what the future will look like is terribly tricky business, especially as we in the audience have had front row seats to drastically expanding tech in our daily home and professional lives over the decades since the original series began back in 1966. We need to be forgiving and flexible about it, and maybe just be at least a little happy that some aspects of the future we've lived to see have already surpassed what they imagined the 23rd century would offer back in the late 20th. Our casual workstations are so much cooler and versatile than what the 1966-'69 original series crew had to work with, and our phones can do so very much more than their communicators could.
I'm going to end this week with another made for tv movie - this one a few years older than the others I've linked to in some earlier posts - and one that'll be new to me, too, and which received generally good reviews. Originally airing on ABC as the Movie of the Week on November 24, 1970. It's a supernatural horror film centering on a couple, Maggie (Hope Lange) and Ben (Paul Burke) inheriting an old New England farm. Soon after moving in, Maggie starts having visions involving witches and satanic cults. The cast includes John Carradine. From Aaron Spelling Productions, it's Crowhaven Farm (1970 74m) Okay, I did peek at the first couple minutes, which gave me a couple of unintended laughs, but I'm still looking forward to watching the rest of it. Based on the opening two minutes there seemed to be no flies landing on the director, as the pace of this set-up is swift!
That's as much as I have time for this week. Things are ratcheting up both at work and on the home front, with big changes coming in the case of the latter. (Hopefully not the former, unless it's a case of sudden, sustaining wealth.) Spring around here's gotten to be an oddly chilled affair of late, but at least there's been more sunshine -- not that I've gotten to be out in much of it. By Sunday it'll be May! How'd that happen?
Take care, and I'll see you back here next Friday. - Mike
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