This week saw the return of substance-abusing super-spy Archer (FX Wednesday nights, then available on Hulu) for the start of its 13th season, the first season without agency matriarch Malory Archer, who was played by the late Jessica Walter. The final episode of season 12 gave her character a fitting send-off into legend. I didn't realize how much I needed the catharsis of watching someone wildly abandon responsibility, yet manage to get things done... but there it was. Welcome back.
Also newly arrived on FX (Wednesday nights, then on Hulu Thursday) is a docuseries in which a pair of U.S. celebrities make a pitch to buy a lower tier, Welsh football team: The Wrexham Dragons, the world's third oldest professional association football team, having been formed in 1864.
The celebrities' aim is to fully learn the game, along with the complex league system, and try to develop the team such that it becomes an underdog success story. Their ultimate aim being the unheard of ascent of a National League team to the Premiere League, the prestige pinnacle three tiers above. As outsiders, and relatively recent converts to the game, the new owners are not convinced that tradition is an impenetrable barrier, and the earnest people of Wrexham are hungry for good news.
The celebrities? Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Mythic Quest creator Rob McElhenny.
It's Welcome To Wrexham.
The project's engaging primarily at the cultural level, as the team's new owners and the people of Wrexham try to understand each other. To approach it for the pair of North American leads is to make a mistake. Certainly, their star power is what made this project possible, and grants them celebrity power to leverage, but the important core is that they're two people with individual passions for sport.
The first two episodes are there, setting up the premise and the first, big steps. Along the way we get some mission-appropriate background on both McElhenny and Reynolds. In both cases there's a childhood-rooted connection to sport, with McElhenny's connection of a hometown team of underdogs overall being the one that resonates more with the position, plight and aspirations of the people of the long embattled town of Wrexham. For me, much of it remains an anthropological matter, with me remaining an outside observer - I've never been able to connect with that hometown team fan passion and deep self-identification, but it's interesting to observe.
Meanwhile, over on FXX (which also means it's on Hulu the following day) this Thursday saw the start of a new, adult animated comedy series, with lead voice roles by Aubrey Plaza, Danny DeVito and Lucy DeVito, centering on a 13 year old girl who discovers that she's the antichrist. It's Little Demon. The first two episodes aired last night, so I've not seen anything more than the trailer. If you have Hulu, that would be the best spot to head for it.
Over on the Syfy Channel (which is ultimately one of the commercial gateways to the Peacock streaming service) and on Peacock itself is a new, six-part, science-driven, doomsday speculation series in which science educator Bill Nye lays out various doomsday scenarios, including possible ways to navigate and survive them. Suitably enough, it's The End Is Nye. The show launched just last night, with new, stand-alone episodes airing 10pm Eastern each night through next Tuesday. All six episodes are already on Peacock, though only the first one, centering on the ongoing and rapidly-increasing threat of climate change-driven storms, is free (with ads) to all comers; the other five are behind their paywall. As a dinosaur who still has a cable connection, I set the DVR to get them for me as they air on Syfy. I'm looking forward to watching them, and hope that many people take the time to watch -- especially that first episode.
Stepping back to the crass, commercial aspects, I'll reiterate that the overall marketing aim for their delivery path is too obviously to drive people to test drive Peacock subscriptions. Checking on some details here was almost certainly the first time I'd even launched their app on my smart tv in I don't know how many months. That's where all of the NBC/Universal content is being increasingly aggregated, and it's all likely to be most familiar to Comcast cable customers, as that's all under the same corporate umbrella. (I haven't been with Comcast since a brief return to them just over ten years ago, and I can't say I miss them.)
Today on Amazon Prime, Sylvester Stallone gets in (again, I suppose) on the superhero genre as a grizzled, former hero who's long believed dead, and that's how he'd prefer it. It's Samaritan (2022 PG-13 101 minutes.
Originally
slated for theatrical release, this MGM production fell prey to COVID
delays both during production and then with release delays. During all
this, Amazon bought out MGM, and this was one of the films that the new
owners decided to head straight to streaming. Another one I've only seen
the trailer for, I'm trying not to prejudge it, though the trailer
seems to lay it all out there.
It's wholly suitable that the opening narration for the tale is told to us by a boy, as it's very much a fairy tale-level story.
While I generally put some effort into avoiding trying to spoil a film for myself by looking for a "twist", some are too obvious in misdirections-by-omissions to be even willfully blind to. Such is the case with this film, where it's difficult to imagine the third act reveal was a surprise to anyone. It fits well enough that one really can't resent it as a plot point, so it becomes a matter of whether or not one indulges a fit of pique over it, perhaps feeling that to not take offense is to be played. The Internet seems to encourage such pettiness, but we don't have to oblige. It's a fairy tale about extreme paths of good an evil in response to childhood trauma, and ultimately to the capacity for change, and can be enjoyed as such.
Two
weeks back (but, damn! It feels so much longer...) Netflix added a
Jamie Foxx/Dave Franco vampire-hunting buddy film, which I got around to
sometime the following week. It was fun enough, though very
by-the-numbers, with Foxx playing Bud Jablonski, an ex-husband and
father, desperate for the cash to keep his ex from moving across the
country and taking his daughter with her. This is all part of our
introduction to the world of vampire hunters, which has both a formal,
approved, and licensed level, and an underground economy for those who
have trouble coloring inside the professional lines.
It's Day Shift (2022 R 1h 54m)
Arriving next Tuesday (the 30th) on Hulu, Steve Carrell and Domhnall Gleeson is what's being billed as a psychological thriller, ten-episode limited series. Carrell plays a therapist mourning the loss of his wife, while Gleeson plays a serial killer who is seeking his own insights into himself, and chooses Alan Strauss (Carrell) as his therapist. It's The Patient.
While I'm not averse to them getting more time if there are more stories to tell, I'm approaching this with the sincere hope that that "limited series" tag has meaning. I want this to tell a complete story arc.
The first two episodes will arrive Tuesday, then one per week through October 25th.
Here we are one the threshold of the final weekend of August. By this time next week we'll be two days into September, headed into the Labor Day weekend, which during all of my primary school years was the last gasp of summer vacation -- but that's for then.
For now, it's the final days for TCM's 2022 month of Summer Under the Stars. (As noted in each of my Friday posts for August, that link pops out as an interactive map of the month's listings. You just need to be a little patient with the response time when you decide to click on any of the movies listed for more information.)
This final block of days puts the following in the spotlight:
Friday Aug. 26: Vivien Leigh
Saturday Aug. 27: Marilyn Monroe
Sunday Aug. 28: Cary Grant
Monday Aug. 29: Myrna Loy
Tuesday Aug. 30: Jack Carson
Wednesday Aug 31: Peter Sellers
Another nice, varied block of star and film choices that begs for more free time than I have to not only hit the expected highlights but to try out various films I'm not familiar with. I mainly know Myrna Loy for the Thin Man comedy mysteries - two of which are in her day's mix, suitably in primetime slots - but I'm only distantly familiar with (mostly) character actor Jack Carson. The month ends with 24 hours of Peter Sellers, suitably enough including both Dr. Strangelove and Being There, the latter being a role he fought hard to play, in a personal campaign over the course of years once he read the source novel. It was a very personal project for him, playing Chance, the gardener, whose identity was almost entirely dependent upon the perception of his audience. Sellers himself really only seemed to be comfortable while inhabiting a role.
On the flip side of all this, his 24 hours, and TCM's month-long series of spotlights, ends fairly ignominiously with the final Sellers film released posthumously two weeks after Sellers' death in 1980: The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. Poorly received at the time, it has only gotten worse with age, drawing on comedy and culture from the age of Sax Rohmer's yellow peril pulps. I expect you'll quickly get a sense of that from the trailer. Were it currently on Tubi I might send the determined and morbidly curious there, but it's not, and I can't suggest in good conscience anyone spend the few bucks to rent or buy a copy online. Even on YouTube it's a Rent or Buy option.
The week's done me in. One more work day to push through, this is all I have time for this week's piece. I hope we'll be able to get back together next Friday to see September in and summer, largely, out. - Mike
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