Comedy, take me away
Winter ushers in a flurry of chuckles in the way of amusing, diverting and sometimes cheap laughs but I'm here for it and then some
February came in and went out like a lion. It’s the shortest month of the year, but boy, even non-leap year withstanding, it packs a punch. It’s deceptively a reminder in equal parts that Spring is nearing with some fairly taunting warm days, but then cruelly forces a substantial snowfall and subarctic weather upon us. So escapism is so warranted, even when it takes the form of low-brow, slapstick comedy that has no home in our habitat normally and especially if it’s a caliber up from that level and it elicits a heartier belly ache-inducing laugh.
Just to recap here:
February vibes (pardon the bad quality but the panic in her voice creates the right effect):
Your antidote to those “had-enough-of-it-isms” moments
Ghosts on CBS (Available for streaming on Paramount Plus).
Ghosts is not an original American show. It’s a British import (like all really decent, inspired comedy) and it’s funny and smart. Per the premise, it stars a city dweller couple who learn that the female half of said couple and the show’s lead, Samantha (Rose McIver), has inherited a lovely country manor from a long lost relative.
Samantha and her husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) then go on to move from Brooklyn to inhabit said manor and by twist of fate, or near-death accident, Samantha is able to see and converse with the ghosts who live in the manor. The ghosts are memorable and hilarious and part of the funny factor is of course that Jay is left in the dark (he can’t hear or see them) but ultimately accepts that his wife can see dead people. I’m pretty sure that there must have been a The Sixth Sense joke in the pilot, but would need to rewatch to verify.
Sam and Jay also want to turn the manor into a swanky bed and breakfast/vrbo/Airbnb which makes total sense because afterall this is 2022 and secondly, it will allow for fresh storylines to prosper well into the future of a Season 2 with guest stars each episode. (As in the grand style of classic 70’s/80’s television “a-guest-star-a-week” shows like The Love Boat, Hotel, and Fantasy Island.)
Back to present Ghosts though…The ghosts are characters that have died at different times in history:
Thorfinn, a viking; Sasappis, a member of the Lenape tribe; Hetty, a robber baron’s widow; Isaac, a Revolutionary War soldier; Alberta, a singer from the Prohibition era; Flower, well you can guess when she’s from but a clue: starts with a “6” and ends with an “0’s”; Pete, a Boy Scout troop leader from the 80’s; and finally Trevor, a pantsless stockbroker and the most recently dead of the ghosts, who could be the love child of Tom Cruise from Risky Business and Leonardo DiCaprio from Wolf of Wall Street.
Why I’m recommending: Because it’s thoroughly well done and McIver and Ambudkar lead a healthy cast of talent who play their characters with the right amount of bravado, self-absorption, and cluelessness. For the nerds out there, there are enough American historical cultural jokes in this eclectic potpourri of people, that we just can’t help but laugh a lot.
The Righteous Gemstones on HBO Max.
I gave props to this show back in my January Bonus edition when Season 2 was getting kicked off and I stand by that. Of the Gemstone family pack, Danny McBride (Jesse), John Goodman (Eli), Edi Patterson (Judy), and Walton Goggins (Baby Billy) are the highlights of the show. While the shows centers around an incredibly narcissistic televangelist family who are corrupt, loathsome and at times, deranged, they are also the Gemstones, a very tight-knit family led by patriarch, Eli Gemstone, played by Goodman.
The intense sibling rivalry of Goodman, Patterson and Devine’s characters, their desires to beat each other at all costs to one day inherit the Gemstone ministry, coupled with the moral decay that Goodman is trying so hard to overcome within himself as their success and power has grown makes for an intricate and complex center. As an aside, Adam Devine (Kelvin) is hard to deal with in Season 2 because his character’s storyline as head of a God Squad of musclemen for Christ is tiring and boring. I literally rolled my eyes every time his storyline got airtime. And not because Devine is a bad actor. Just because he got the short end of the plot stick here.
Season 1 is better than the second season but both worth the watch, especially if you want closure and an Eli origin story all rolled into one. Oh, and second season has Eric Roberts, Jason Schwartzman guest star. That’s pretty rad.
Why I’m recommending: Great actors, good writing, and masterful execution. Yes, watch it. But don’t come back angry at me about some of the easy, cheap laughs. Those are free and yours for the taking.
A now for a little bit of trivia: McBride, Goggins, and Patterson all starred in Vice Principals together, with Goggins most recently in the CBS comedy, The Unicorn, which for a major network comedy, was also notable and a little more PG-13. Goggins, there starred as Wade, a widower trying to find his way, caring for his his daughters after the death of his wife. Of the two, I definitely recommend Vice Principals. Heck, even Bill Murray has a guest spot in the premiere, as the outgoing Principal.
Chalk one up for the “I admit it. I was wrong.” category:
How bad was The Woman in the House Across the Street from The Girl in the Window? On a scale of 1-10. It was a negative 4. Don’t see it. Run for the hills, but don’t because maybe that’s the very trope this show is peddling! This cringey satire is based on books and movies like Gone Girl, Behind her eyes, The Woman in the Window, where there’s an unreliable, flawed, trauma ridden female narrator and protagonist who gets embroiled in a crime, as a witness, and only we believe that she didn’t do it. Everyone else believes she’s guilty as sin. And if I’m being honest, I guess I vacillate to at times to reconsider culpability but then I remember this tired trope and I know to expect less.
Well, unfortunately, this series goes the extra marathon mile. It’s not funny and to boot, the whole time you are watching this train wreck go from bad in episode 1 to much worse by episode 3, you find yourself Googling spoilers, because you need to be put out of your misery, you can’t keep going, and you also have this nagging feeling of curiosity and how and why the heck would Kirsten Bell agree to this travesty. This momentum of the Bell Effect (The Good Place, Frozen, Armchair Expert podcast) which I translate as Bell’s immense talent and knack for attaching herself to worthy projects is the only thing which propels you to stay to the end. It’s a mind-mess people. Stop and turn it off.
Our Flag means Death on HBO Max.
Fred Armisen and Leslie Jones in a new show together? Yes, say it is so and it shall be granted. In none other than a Monty Python-esque comedy about a gentleman pirate, Stede Bonnet (an actual real life pirate, at that) and his merry band of unhappy pirates who would rather be pillaging and pirating then stuck with Bonnet (Rhys Darby) talking about their feelings and stitching together flags because, yes, real pirates know how to sew.
'I’m 3/4 of the way into the first episode, and on the verge of seeing what happens to Bonnet with his crew on the verge of mutiny, and excited to laugh my way into the next few.
Why I’m recommending: Too good of a comedic powerhouse to ignore and the first episode is off to a superb start. Taika Waititi is on tap as Blackbeard too. Can’t wait.
Murderville on Netflix.
Will Arnett (Job from Arrested Development, Batman from The LEGO Batman Movie and The Lego Movie, Smartless podcast) gives us much-needed laughs in this guest-star-an-episode premise playing a really bad detective named Terry Seattle (cue the jokes) who tackles a murder each episode with the help of a new detective, played by new guest stars each week.
While Arnett and his cast of regulars are all in the know on the script, the guest stars are improvising without a script. The best episodes feature Conan O’Brien, Ken Jeong, and Kumail Nanjiani but Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) packs a punch as well. At ~30 minutes an episode and 6 in the series, they go by too fast and you find yourself wanting more. Season 2 anyone? Anyone?
Why I’m recommending: The premise is fresh and different which is hard to come by in the Netflix algorithm or any streaming algorithm that’s not HBO Max. Also the Jennifer Aniston mystery tie-in is hilarious. For 80’s detective show fans, it harkens back to Sledgehammer a bit.