THERE'S TOO MUCH TV - Roundup July 2023

“What are you watching?” is pretty much the automatic question I get when I tell people what I do for a living.

I don’t have time to do full conversations on everything I’m watching but here are some stray thoughts on everything I’ve watched in the last month. I’ve also been requested to include content warnings for shows that need them, so you can see those beneath each title!

I’ll keep spoilers to a minimum unless otherwise marked. These are ordered by how much I’m interested in talking about them, to you, right now, in this post.

The Bear (Season 2) — FX/Hulu
CW: language

I’d like to open these notes about The Bear by declaring my support for it as “Show of the Year.” It expanded the cast into a true ensemble, giving every member time and empathy in a way that made us root for all of them, not just Carmy. It continued to deal with the underlying themes of past trauma without providing neat TV resolutions. And it grappled with the balancing act that is obsession/passion, questioning what it really brings to the table while acknowledging that for those afflicted, it’s not necessarily a choice. This was a brilliant season of TV.

But I am struck by the show’s choice to leave behind the working class sandwich shop and build a Michelin-star-chasing endeavor that only the richest could afford. While it is undoubtedly Sydney and Carmy’s dream to run their own high class restaurant, I’m struck by how many of The Beef’s customers, the people they served for years, are now excluded from The Bear. But that doesn’t mean that Carmy and crew become part of that class, they just realize that it’s only that upper class that can pay the bills.

It’s a dynamic I don’t necessarily expect the show to grapple with in its third season, but it is one that I’ve found myself returning to. The first season felt distinctly working class, almost as if the show was paying homage to the hard work of working in a kitchen, even if it’s for a small sandwich shop. I think that, in many ways, that was part of what made that first season stand out—the way it gave a Top Chef presentation to the food most of us actually eat. But the turn to high-class dining does make the show a bit less unique as a premise. We’ve all seen beautifully elegant dishes shot in beautifully elegant ways before.

I think that anything lost there is made up for in droves by the incredible character work done this season, but something I’ll be thinking about for a bit.

What We Do in the Shadows (Season 5) — FX/Hulu
CW: Language

No show has ever had more fun with the fantasy genre than What We Do in the Shadows. What consistently impresses me most about What We Do in the Shadows is the amount of fun the show has with its premise and genre, combining VFX and an incredible attention to detail. From the khaki robes of the Energy Vampire council to Colin Robinson and Nadja-Doll’s fusion to the endlessly funny Sire, What We Do in the Shadows is always able to squeeze a joke out of whatever preposterous shenanigans the vampires are up to this week. Each joke carries with it the show’s trademark not-quite-right aesthetic, which only lends itself more to the humor and uncanniness of the show’s premise, pointing out that these vampires aren’t cool, not even a little.

I Think You Should Leave (Season 3) — Netflix
CW: Language ,cringe

Around the same time as when the third season of ITYSL dropped, this article was published in GQ, alleging that men everywhere are quoting the show and that that’s annoying. It probably is. I remember finding the show grating when I first discovered it and, as many have pointed out on Twitter—erm, X—men quoting a very silly piece of media was not invented by Tim Robinson. I spent most of my 20s quoting the 2004 seminal classic Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Today, in 2023, I can safely say that no show has made me laugh as hard as I Think You Should Leave and if my laughing at that is annoying to GQ writer Chloe Hall, then I don’t want to be non-annoying.

Peaky Blinders (Season 1) — Netflix
CW: Language, violence

I started watching Peaky Blinders last week because 1) I got Netflix again and 2) I’d been told it’s a fairly anti-police show, which sounded like quite the palate cleanser after The Rookie. What I’ve especially enjoyed about the show is the way it treats the police the same way it might treat any other gang. They are a faction that can be parlayed with, with their own discreet incentives and goals, rather than the ultimate arbiters of justice, and the show doesn’t really ever try to show them as a just body at all. And it also goes a long way towards showing the Peaky Blinders gang as one that provides services to their neighborhood in the form of protection from other gangs and cleanup. Does that make the Blinders good people or their organization just? No. But I think the show does portray the police exactly the same way, and that’s an interesting vibe that you don’t often get in American media.