Between writing deadlines, committee deadlines, and navigating my dad’s health issues, life has been super stressful this spring. Now that the writing deadlines are done, the committee work is all caught up, and my dad is safely settling into an assisted living facility, I gave myself permission to veg out over Memorial Day weekend and catch up on all the shows I’ve been missing.
WARNING: THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SEVERAL TV SHOWS.
First up: Ted Lasso
Because I needed the emotional release, I decided to catch up on Ted Lasso first. I have to say, I found Nate’s arc incredibly confusing at first. They set him up as such a villain at the end of the second season, I expected lots of drama and fireworks coming right out of the gate. Instead, they humanized Nate by showing that getting what he thinks he wants ends up being disappointing on multiple levels. From trying to recreate the Diamond Dogs dynamic with his new coworkers to getting dumped by a model who hated his favorite restaurant, we see him learn the lessons he needed to experience first hand in order to appreciate what he had at Richmond. And, of course, there was a healing conversation between Nate and his father. All in all, I didn’t really like or understand his arc until I realized that it was the only way the Ted Lasso writers could have handled it and still been true to the ethos of the show: that hurt people hurt people, and you have to forgive people not for their benefit, but for yours. Those are lessons no one can teach you, in the long run. Nate had to go off and experience the results of his actions for himself, and no explosive confrontation could ever have had the power of Coach Beard’s confession.
In a world full of toxic masculinity, where we expect verbal if not physical violence to erupt before understanding and forgiveness can even be considered, it’s beautiful to see male characters modeling a different path. I’ve seen a lot of conversation around this choice, some of which questioned whether or not it was good storytelling. Personally, I think it was great storytelling because season two set us up to expect a continuation and escalation of hostilities, but season three subverted that expectation and got us all talking about it.
Second on the Agenda: Star Trek: Picard
Now, I am a massive Trekkie and Star Trek: The Next Generation is far and away my favorite of the series. I love the fact that Picard brought on Seven of Nine, giving her space to flesh out her story and explore living as a Borg among the actual Federation. I was super excited about all the TNG cameos and getting to see what everyone had been up to over the years, though I kinda dreaded the return of Data. He’s my favorite character, and I’ve sobbed watching him die TWICE now. I couldn’t take the possibility of them killing him yet again, and it seems like the epitome of being out of stories when you have to keep reviving one character so you can kill him in a new and different way. I mean, that gets old even when the character in question is the Big Bad of a show, but Data? STOP KILLING MY FAVORITE CHARACTER!
Anyway, I went into the season expecting a lot because I’d seen so many people talking about it as the best season of Picard, and that it was basically a fabulous TNG reunion, etc. My hopes were high, which is why the season was so terribly disappointing to me. The whole thing was such a soap opera melodrama, I struggled to keep watching through the end.
It wasn’t just the return of Data—which, I have to admit, they at least pulled off in a believable way—or the fact that Crusher kept Picard’s son from him for decades. It was the cheesy dialogue, the way Riker blamed Picard for getting them stuck in the “nebula”, and the long drawn-out pace of the entire show. It was bringing back the Changelings as a villain yet still having it be a Borg plot. It was having Seven and Raffi break up for no good reason, having Geordi lose his curiosity and adventurousness, and basically having Riker and Deanna regress in their grief over their son’s death. It just felt like the writers and producers threw everything but the kitchen sink into the script, then crowbarred a wedge to put the kitchen sink in.
I’ve been loving this new era of Star Trek, but I’m glad they’re not planning any more episodes of Picard. I would watch a show about Seven in a heartbeat, and I’m thrilled that Strange New Worlds is coming back soon…but I hope this puts the TNG storylines to rest.
Third in Line: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
I queued up episode one of the final season and got twenty minutes into it before realizing that I must have missed some episodes. Turns out, I’d missed the entire previous season, so I got to binge two instead of one. Let me tell you, episode one of the final season makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE when you watch them in order LOL!! Anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, I used to be a costume designer and I’m a raging feminist, so I’ve loved this show from the beginning. I also have terrible taste in men, so I’d been rooting for a Midge-Lenny Bruce hookup from the moment he first appeared on the show. Not only do I love that the show delivered, I love the way they delivered it. I hate how his arc ends, but it’s true to his reality.
One thing that bothered me at first was the flashforwards to the 80’s, 90’s, and beyond that they started doing in the last season. I didn’t like suddenly seeing the end of the story when it had been told in such a linear way. I get why they did it, though. Telling the story linearly would have taken another half-dozen seasons, but they instead wove just enough details in just the right order to keep viewers engaged despite knowing quite a bit about how the story unfolds. I don’t particularly like that Midge never finds happiness in love again, but I understand it. She’s not the type of person to be happy with what she has. She was always going to be reaching forward, grasping for the next shiny brass ring.
Last but Not Least: Our Flag Means Death
I love everything Taika Waititi touches, so this show has been on my “to watch” list for ages. Unfortunately, I was too cheap to get an HBO Max subscription until this year…just in time for it to drop the “HBO” and half of its programming. Yay? Anyway, OFMD was just as good as I expected it to be, and just as absurd. Given the cliffhanger ending, I’ll be so pissed (and yet entirely unsurprised) if season two never happens. I need to see Ed and Stede make up!!
Esmari Writes 