Entry 665: TV Time

I'm trying very hard to catch up on my TV watching these days. I botched the timing with Succession. The move is to get caught up so that you can watch the finale in real-time with everybody else. That way you can be part of the cultural moment and you can avoid spoilers. If you miss that window, it's probably best to just put it out of mind for awhile and then binge watch it months or even years later. You might think you're more likely to encounter spoilers the longer you wait, but I found the opposite to be true. Spoilers come fast and furious for a week or two after the end of a big series, but if you don't know anything about the show they often don't mean anything to you even if you hear them. They go in one ear and out the other. So, you're usually safe coming back to it later. I've never seen Mad Men, for instance, and although I'm vaguely familiar with the characters through the myriad references I've consumed about the show via newspaper articles, podcasts, party conversations, etc., I have no idea about plot twists or big reveals or anything like that. So, if I do watch the show (and I probably will at some point), it will all be pretty fresh for me.

But I timed it perfectly wrong with Succession, which aired it's final episode last week. I just finished the second of four seasons, so I know all the major characters and plot lines, so the smallest hint of a spoiler can be revealing. And they are everywhere right now -- even on baseball podcasts because one of the main characters has the last name Wambsgans, and there was a shortstop named Bill Wambsganss who turned an unassisted triple play in the 1920 World Series. So, there was all this speculation going into the final episode about how this was an important Easter egg for viewers, until one of the show's executives poured cold water on it and said the baseball connection was completely coincidental. Anyway, I think I know who comes out on top, but I'm not 100% sure, and the journey is still fun, regardless.

That's the thing about spoilers. I do try to avoid them, but I think I'm much less militant about it than the average person. Sometimes knowing where things are going can even be more interesting to me because it's like: How are they ever going to get there? It's a fairly common storytelling technique actually. Think about how many shows/movies start with the end and then tell the story via flashback. Private Ryan is in fact saved at the end of Saving Private Ryan -- knowing this doesn't ruin the film. Also, some people have too broad a definition of a spoiler. I remember a few people on social media getting mad about spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I was like, uh... yeah... that one got spoiled in 1977.

In other TV news, S and I finished Ted Lasso. I've basically been hate-watching that show since the end of last season, but I legitimately enjoyed the final episode, perhaps because it was, in fact, the final episode. The first season was really good -- it felt like something different, and it was satisfying, in the midst of the pandemic and the social unrest, to watch characters who weren't cynical, awful human beings. My theory is that there was probably no way to keep this going for an extended period of time no matter what direction the show went. I think it was destined to fizzle out no matter what. It should have only been one, maybe two, seasons, in my opinion. But it was such a big success (one of the few for Apple TV) that the powers-that-be felt compelled to stretch it out as long as possible. Whenever this happens, the meat of the show gets pulled thinner and thinner, and the creators overcompensate by adding more story lines and more characters until the entire thing turns into an incongruent mess -- and boy did that happen with Ted Lasso.

Here's what I think went wrong with the show. (Spoiler alert!)

Characters Popping Into and Out of Existence Like Matter and Antimatter

I liked Zava. He was funny, and he served a purpose in the show, motivating Jamie to get better and providing a contrast between "hero ball" and the team style that Richmond would learn to play. But he was the only halfway decent new character. (Actually, I liked Barbara too.) Shandy was terrible; Jack was terrible; and there was no reason we needed to see Ted's mom, Rebecca's mom, Rebecca's psychic, Sam's dad, Jamie's mom, etc.

Boring, Unrealistic Story Lines for Main Characters with No Payoff

The Keeley story line is the epitome of this. She was probably my favorite character in the first two seasons, and her love triangle with Jamie and Roy was one of the main drivers of the show. I have no idea why the writers felt the need to effectively slice her off from the rest of the main cast and then put her in a lesbian relationship for half the season. It didn't work at all, and I think the writers recognized this because it just ended at some point and wasn't discussed ever again.

The Nate-heel-turn arc felt equally half-assed. It's like they needed a big cliff-hanger to end Season 2 but didn't want to actually commit to it in Season 3. It was one of the weakest redemption stories I've ever seen, and it didn't help that Nate was motivated largely by a nothing girlfriend (does she say more than three lines of dialogue in the entire series?), or that it was so unrealistic. If he really was the "Wonder Kid" of the English Premier League, he would've found another job right away, or he would've just finished the season and gone somewhere else the next year. Even the worst EPL managers make over a million dollars a year, and they depict him on the show as being super successful, making him in line for, like, a $10 million salary. Is anybody really giving that up to become a waiter at a restaurant and then an equipment boy? The whole thing somehow felt simultaneously super contrived and completely half-baked.

Then there were some lesser versions of this with the Colin-comes-out-as-gay story line and Sam shut-up-and-dribble episode. The former was a good arc (it gave Trent some purpose), but it made no sense that Isaac was so mad at Colin for not telling him about it earlier. It felt like the writers wanted controversy but didn't want any of the players on the team to be unsupportive, so they had to invent a bullshit reason for Isaac to be upset. The latter felt like they were out of ideas, so they just cribbed something almost exactly from the news, made an episode about it, and then never mentioned it again.

Melancholic Ted, Blah Roy

In a lot of ways, Ted felt like an afterthought this season, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but he was too in his feelings when he was on screen. As for Roy, I liked his bromance with Jamie, but overall it felt like the actor who played him, Brett Goldstein, had one foot out the door already. "Surly Roy" started to feel more and more stale (a beloved character becomes a caricature -- common TV problem), and, again, there's no real explanation as to why he broke up with Keeley in the first place. (I did like how they left it ambiguous as to whether or not she gets back together with him or Jamie or neither or, my favorite scenario, both.)

Filler Comedy Bits That Fall Flat

The strings around the penises was just weird, as was Dani intentionally breaking Van Damme's nose, as was the pillow fight in the hotel in Amsterdam. There were definitely still some moments that made me laugh -- Jamie answering the door with no pants on, Will pretending to be Beard, the short shorts coach -- but overall it just wasn't very funny. Actually, it was never really that funny, but it had a certain ineffable charm in its early days. Once that charm wore off, there just wasn't much left.

Like I said, however, I enjoyed the final episode, and I thought it was cool that they ended things by playing Cat Stevens' "Father and Son" followed by The Flaming Lips' "Flight Test." It's a little Easter egg unrelated to the plot of the show. They dropped a lot these throughout the series, and I always appreciated them when I noticed them. 

Alright, that's all for now. I have to finish up Succession and then move on to The Last of Us (convinced by my brother-in-law to see it through to the end) and then to the new season of I Think You Should Leave. Actually, I might do those last two in the other order -- get a comedic pallet cleanser in there between the two "serious" shows.

Until next time...