As you might imagine of someone who has a whole newsletter dedicated to the small screen, I’ve watched a lot of TV in my lifetime, and at a certain point, it gets kind of boring to see the same types of stories told the same way, over and over again. Because of that, I often intentionally seek out series that push the boundaries of what our brains will accept, or which look at familiar things in new ways. In this week’s newsletter, I’ll cover two series I’ve recently watched which both have a bizarre charm as well as a real sense of watchability.
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Finding Beauty in the Bizarre
An Inside Look at NYC in How To with John Wilson
Image credit: HBO
Comedic docuseries are nothing new, and New York City’s crowded streets are a well-tread topic. But this six-part series’ uniquely quirky narrative style, which carefully threads between the hyper-personal and the city-wide in scale, sets it apart from others in its category, taking a sometimes uncomfortably offbeat look at one of the world’s best-known cities.
Creator John Wilson, who seems to wear all of this series’ creative hats (he’s also the writer, director, cameraman, and narrator), awkwardly, endearingly stumbles through conversations from behind the camera, exposing personal vulnerabilities while also keeping everyone he meets (including, at times, us) at arm’s length. In each episode, he tries to learn how to do something, whether as internal as improving memory or as tactile as covering furniture. But, as so often happens in real life, Wilson’s seemingly simple tasks take him down unexpected paths, and he ends up in bars and basements and meetings of professional referees, tagging along in others’ lives while trying to figure out his own. It’s sometimes socially maladroit, and sometimes weirdly inspiring, and always very human.
My favorite episode is called “How to Put Up Scaffolding,” and it turns what could be the most dry topic of all time into a weird, unpredictable exploration of tragedy, beautification, and learning to make do, but each episode has its charms, and nothing could’ve prepared me for the intense emotional punch of the finale. It’s worth watching all the episodes in order to get there, but even more so, for the strange and unexpected everyday adventures along the way.
How To with John Wilson is streaming now on HBO Max.
The Weirdest “Superhero” Team on TV in Doom Patrol
Image credit: DC / HBO
In last week’s issue, I covered a whole bunch of superhero-themed TV shows I’d recommend for adults. In that newsletter, I mentioned that I hadn’t yet watched Doom Patrol, perhaps the strangest of the DC made-for-TV slate. Well, in the past week I’ve watched nearly every episode of this curious series, and in that time, I’ve fallen in love with it.
To say this series is deeply odd is an understatement, but its outlandish plot elements (Vengeful rats and religious cockroaches! A sentient, teleporting street named Danny! Whole towns being swallowed by donkeys!) are only part of its charm. Its real power lies with its eccentric cast of characters, each with their own cursed condition — and no, I don’t mean superpowers. You won’t find super-strength or inhuman speed or any other traditionally useful gifts here.
The members of the so-called “Doom Patrol” are tragic. There’s the one-time Hollywood starlet, Rita Farr (April Bowlby), who puddles into a pile of flesh when she’s feeling down; the former space-bound pilot, Larry Trainor (Matt Bomer), whose career-ending accident also made him radioactive and saddled him with an intergalactic body-sharer; the crashed race-car driver, Cliff Steele (Brendan Fraser), whose brain is the only human part left in his unfeeling robot body; and Jane (Diane Guerrero), whose many personas each come with their own superpower but leave her without a whole lot of control.
Although all most of these poor folks want is to wallow in self-pity, a series of even more unfortunate events lead these homebodies to get involved in the world in a big way, and though none of them are prepared to be heroes, the addition of the in-universe-famous Cyborg (Joivan Wade) brings a much-needed boost of energy to the depressing Doom Manor they all call home. And sure, they still mess things up pretty much constantly, and they cause as many problems as they solve, but there’s so much humor, and such an undercurrent of resiliency, that the series manages to remain surprisingly upbeat.
Doom Patrol is part of the same television universe as Titans, which I wrote about last week (and also like very much!). But the two series couldn’t be more different, and that’s not a bad thing. The oddball weirdness of Doom Patrol and its messy, lovable cast of characters create a refreshingly unserious show, which swerves around (or plows right through) its sort-of heroes’ personal traumas to help them find ways to keep moving forward. Or, you know, a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kinda thing. And sometimes they save other people too. I like it a lot.
Doom Patrol is streaming now on HBO Max.
Bonus Features
We finally have an official synopsis for Amazon’s expensive new Lord of the Rings prequel series, and filming is set to begin sometime this month. Fans have been waiting nearly four years since the series was announced, and our upcoming quest through Middle Earth can’t come soon enough.
The Tonight Show’s ratings have been struggling for a while, and this week they fell to nearly a record low. Can host Jimmy Fallon find his way back to the top of the late-night leaderboard?
Netflix is apparently releasing at least one new movie each week in 2021. With movie theaters still out of reach for most of us, it’s a bold, expensive, but timely strategy for the streaming service. But will these many movies be good? There are some big names attached (including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Halle Berry, and Ryan Reynolds), but A-list talent doesn’t always guarantee A-list quality, so we’ll have to wait and see how these many, many movies do throughout the year.
That’s all for this week! As always, don’t forget to share this newsletter, and feel free to drop a comment.