TV
Mr Inbetween
I hadn’t even heard of this FX show until a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t because I saw a trailer or commercial for it on TV or online. I only heard about Mr Inbetween because I happened to see a poster for it that caught my eye, otherwise I doubt I’d have checked out this wonderful series at all since I can’t watch what I don’t know about.
Originally developed for FX Australia but airing here on FX since that channel went “belly up,” Mr. Inbetween follows Ray Shoesmith (Scott Ryan), an underworld hood who’s equally at home tossing guys off of balconies as he is threatening someone for owing $10,000 to the wrong people. As Ray puts it, “I’m the guy who’s here to make you regret not paying up.”
And since Mr Inbetween is an FX show I figured it would have all these over-the-top action scenes of machine guns and violence like practically every other original show they air but that’s just not the case here. There is violence in the first episode, Ray does toss one unsuspecting man off a balcony and onto the hard ground below and in the second he murders a man who might not had it coming, but Mr Inbetween is much more nuanced, grounded, and much more a character piece, than say a similar show on FX like Mayans. Ray feels like a real person with real problems from his job to being a single dad who’s also on the wrong side of 40 for someone who needs to stay in top condition to beat people up for a living.
Unfortunately, I suspect because Mr Inbetween is grounded and because there aren’t machine gun fights every episode, it seems as if FX is burning this one off, airing two episodes back-to-back Tuesday nights at 11:30 PM Eastern. I guess the prime-time slots on FX are already full of things like airing The Avengers for the 100th time.
Oh well. If you’re interested in quality programming that’s character based, checkout Mr Inbetween while you can.
The Good Place
Most sitcoms ascribe to the rule that nothing ever changes. Just look at something like Big Bang Theory. That series has been on the air 12 seasons yet new episodes today aren’t that much different then the ones that debuted more than a decade ago. Which is perfect for shows headed towards syndication where episodes air out of order all the time which might lead to confusion if shows tied together in any real meaningful way. Sitcoms are the comfort food of the TV world where viewers know they can tune into just about any episode and spend a half hour or so with their TV friends. All of which is fine, I just find those kinds of shows in permanent stasis boring.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, there’s one network sitcom that breaks this mold and that sitcom is The Good Place On NBC. In The Good Place characters change all the time.
Spoilers for the first few seasons of the show follow.
In the first season Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) awakens in heaven after an accident only to realize that because of a mixup she was supposed to go to the bad place but switched places with another person who just so happens to also be named Eleanor Shellstrop too. As the season progressed and Eleanor did her darnedest to turn good and really earn a spot in the good place it was revealed that, a) there were others in the good place who were supposed to be in the bad as well and b) it was all a ruse by supposedly good overseer Michael (Ted Danson) who reveals that they’re really in the bad place.
And the second season starts with the characters having their memories wiped and Michael starting over tricking everyone that they’re in the good place. Only this time if Michael fails he’ll be put in a very bad place himself.
The third season begins right after the end of the second where Michael, not wanting to be burned alive for all eternity on the surface of a star, helps Eleanor and her group find a way to the real good place. But in order to do so they’re all sent back to the Earth as if they never died in order to prove to the universe they really do deserve a place in the good place. The group comes together not realizing they already know one and other but there’s one small problem, a new member who just so happens to be a demon (Adam Scott) sent to make sure they don’t earn a ticket to the real good place.
What I dig about The Good Place is that the characters have evolved and changed throughout the series. If in the first season Eleanor is a self-centered destructive person then by the second she’s actively looking out for others in her group, going as far as turning down a spot in the good place if it meant that everyone else couldn’t go with her. And the same goes for Michael, who’s the character who’s changed the most in the series. If in the first season he’s a goofy, lovable guy who can’t understand why his perfect creation is failing in all these weird ways, he’s trying to trick Eleanor into believing it’s because of her, then in the second he starts as this slimy demon who’s actively trying to hurt the main characters of the show until he comes to the realization, abet over hundreds and hundreds of times of “rebooting” everything and trying to convince Eleanor and her group that they’re really in the good place, that what he’s doing is wrong until he goes about helping them escape.
Not only do the characters change but each episode of the show builds upon the last which is death for syndicated series. Viewers can’t start with a random episode and enjoy the show. The only way to watch The Good Place is to start from the first episode and watch from there. Though the series might be bad for syndication it’s great for binge watching via streaming services.
But that’s why I think I like The Good Place so much. I never know what’s lurking around the next corner or how the characters will evolve as the season progresses.
Manifest
The plot to the new NBC series Manifest is genuinely interesting. In it, a airliner takes off from Jamaica in 2013 but lands in New York in 2018. Five years have passed outside, but inside the plane it’s only been a few hours. For some like Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) it means a mother who’s passed away and a fiancé who ended up marrying her best friend. For others like Ben’s (Josh Dallas) son, it means treatment options for what was considered five years ago terminal leukemia.
Now the idea that a plane taking off and landing someplace/somewhen else isn’t unique, “The Odyssey of Flight 33” from The Twilight Zone and the Stephen King novel The Langoliers immediately spring to mind. Still, Manifest could be a really interesting series about what it’s like to fall asleep in one world and wake up in another.
Some of which is present in Manifest, there are interesting ideas about what happens to a family separated for years and brought together and a woman trying to pick up the pieces of a life broken while she was away and how these people are seen by the outside world.
But in the first episode of Manifest the show takes a bizarre left turn. Instead of focusing on the whole time travel thing, which is pretty interested in itself, the creators of it decided to insert a weird, almost superhero, thread to the series. Here, Michaela begins hearing voices, one warns that a bus she’s riding in is about to hit a little kid and another tells her that she needs to release a few dogs locked behind a gate. She thinks she’s going crazy until her brother shows up after hearing the same thing. And it turns out letting the dogs go was the beginning of cracking the case of two missing girls.
I don’t know how interested I am in sticking with Manifest, the whole voices thing has me really worried. Like, isn’t the whole airplane full of people traveling in time five years interesting enough, isn’t there enough material for at least one season of a show from that all by itself?
Murphy Brown
I remember I used to watch Murphy Brown when it was originally on but honestly can’t remember when I stopped. I wasn’t watching it up until the series ended in 1998 after 10 seasons, nor can I honestly even remember a single episode of the show. Some of that has to be that as far as I can tell other than the period Murphy Brown aired the series never ran in syndication. I’m assuming this is because episodes were sometimes very topical so that jokes about Dan Quayle that worked in 1988 might not be as funny to those alive today who weren’t even born with he was Vice President.
I take it back, I do remember two things about Murphy Brown. The first was that one of the running gags on the show was the character of Murphy Brown had a rotating cast of characters who played her secretary with a new face at the desk every week. That and she had a guy played by the late Robert Pastorelli who spent the seasons constantly renovating her house.
But as for actual episodes and stories, I don’t remember a single one.
And now 20 years after the series originally ended comes another season of the show also on CBS. This time instead of being a brash 40-something Murphy’s a retired 70-something who’s watching the world change around her with no outlet for her opinions. So she decides to get the gang back together and take a job hosting a new show.
I though the first episode of Murphy Brown was interesting, if I’m not sure that I’ll stick around for many more. Sitcoms that measure success by how many jokes they can deliver per minute usually aren’t my thing.
Comics
Marvelocity
Comic book artist and illustrator Alex Ross has already had a collection of his work from DC published with Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross and now comes a collection of his work at Marvel with Marvelocity.
Here is the beloved Marvel Universe of comics characters, brought to thrilling life as only Alex Ross can. They’re all here: Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, and many more—all seeming to leap, blast, and launch off the page.
For almost thirty years, Ross has been working nonstop to create some of the most astonishing images in comics, and while Marvelocity collects the very best of that oeuvre, it’s much more than that. Inside are hundreds of drawings, paintings, and photographs that have never been published before, including an original ten-page story featuring Spider-Man versus the Sinister Six, redesign proposals for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and a re-creation of an epic battle between the Sub-Mariner and Iron Man.
But this isn’t just the story of the Marvel characters—it’s also the incredibly inspiring true tale of a little boy who only ever wanted to draw and paint super heroes. And with enough determination, talent, and very hard work, that’s precisely what he did. Marvelocity is the result, and is sure to entrance and delight fans of all ages.
Swamp Thing: The Bronze Age Vol. 1
If you’ve yet to checkout the early appearances of Swamp Thing you might want to pick up this reasonably priced collection that retails for just $25.
Deep in the bayou of Louisiana, far from civilization’s grasp, a shadowed creature seen only in fleeting glimpses roils the black waters…a twisted, vegetative mockery of a man…a Swamp Thing! These are the tales that introduced Alec and Linda Holland, Anton Arcane, Abigail Cable, the Patchwork Man, the Un-Men, plus an appearance by Batman! Collects THE HOUSE OF SECRETS #92 and SWAMP THING #1–13.
Movies
The two classic Kolchak TV movies get a first-time-ever release on HD this week from Kino Lorber. This is a “must buy” for me as these movies were some of the best things to ever air on broadcast TV.
An investigative journalist takes a stab at the supernatural. This unforgettable first entry in the Night Stalker series introduced the world to the quirky reporter with a penchant for the paranormal and became one of the top-rated TV movies of all time. Investigating a series of Las Vegas murders, Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin, The Night Strangler) discovers that each victim has been bitten in the neck and drained of blood. Though Kolchak’s outlandish theory about the murders gets him nowhere with the police, his initiative to apprehend the killer himself gets him into hot water… with a modern-day vampire…Teleplay by legendary sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man).
Supernatural phenomena, baffling murders and offbeat humor mark this second Night Stalker offering with a great cast and suspense so palpable, it’ll feel like a presence right there in the room with you. Surfacing in Seattle, Kolchak (Darren McGavin, The Night Stalker) uncovers another maddening mystery: Every 21 years—for the past century—a serial killer commits a spree of murders, drains his victims’ blood and then quietly disappears. But Kolchak is onto this monster and is about to discover a shocking underground lair… an army of rotting corpses… and the ageless madman behind it all. The great Dan Curtis (Burnt Offerings) produced and directed this highly-rated TV movie written by legendary sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson (I Am Legend).
Dark Phoenix trailer
What To Watch This Week
Tuesday
The most recent Marvel Studios movie Ant Man and the Wasp gets a release on digital this week.
Wednesday
HDNET Movies will be airing one of the greatest horror movies of all time today, The Evil Dead.
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: A truly bizarre horror flick from 1986 Deadly Friend that has one thing going for it — it was directed by Wes Craven — airs very early Saturday morning on TCM.
Quite possibly my favorite classic sci-fi horror movie of all time The Thing From Another World also airs on TCM Saturday afternoon.
The Reading List
Cool TV Posters of the Week
Supergirl 
The Haunting of Hill House
