A generally competently-made episode with lengthy, sustained stretches of legitimate intensity undone here and there by "Hollywood-isms" (for lack of a better term, realizing this is a British-made program): character quirks (she HAS to have her LUCKY pliers/cutters); forced character banter and handshakes to forcefully show how close the partners are that come across very forced and scripted; her blaring music and bobbing her head along in sync with the bobble-head dog; a lot of lone wolf moments where she takes off her helmet and goes straight towards the potential bomb, protocols be damned!! (major eyerolls at those moments) to, what, show how independent she is? how much she cares about innocent people? Then there's that one bound character with an explosive vest on freaking out, very annoying. idc how people would react in real life but watching someone flailing around and panicking when directly and clearly being told not to and to be still so the experts can disarm the explosive vest they're wearing is always annoying and makes you want to smack the character. Watching 3 people behave calm and cool under pressure and have the silence filled with dread and nervous anticipation beats trying to calm down a panicky character any day.
Forced bits of dialogue to give exposition about the characters' personal lives and background to make us care about them or whatever
Still, overall competently made. The intense moments are effectively so and even when characters banter in moments of respite, there's a sense of lingering dread clinging heavily in the air as I half-expected an explosion to happen in the more relaxed moments (so I certainly saw the last moment happening). The explosion was kind of janky though? Like a bag of dust just went off? It was explosion that seemed to be quite free of any fire
Saw Jed Mercurio's name in the credits at the end, makes sense
May or may not watch more, but as background noise
carried by the charm and charisma of its cast (namely Antonia Thomas and Craig Roberts but also Blake Harrison and Luke Fetherston who are likeable in their few minutes of screen time). Thomas and Roberts bounce off each other well despite never being in the same physical location so props also to the editor who made the scenes zippy and flow well
Roberts and Thomas really carried this and elevated the hell out of the dialogue and show that was quite sitcom-y at times for all the wrong reasons: faking a lie about going to Disneyland and having to hide from their neighbor for a month (how is that not a plot line from like, Full House or something) and lying about not buying calamine lotion. So many times a simple/better lie would've been more believable from these characters who are shown as generally intelligent people (Danny awkwardly waving to the woman picking up her prescription at the end could've said he's training her which explains why he's on a video call, why she's being so awkward, and in today's digital/remote work world is quite believable; Lisa could've said she's picking up calamine lotion for her niece which is not the best lie but is better than 'no I'm not buying the calamine lotion I'm awkwardly holding behind my back')
will watch more as background noise just for the actors
Scattered Thoughts:
Love Song (Ebon Moss-Bachrach's Version)
Someone fucking give Richie a hug. I've loved Ebon Moss-Bachrach's portrayal of him since s1 and his character has just been shat on so much as the restaurant moves in another direction and he feels increasingly out of place there and somebody needs to tell him he's worth something. He fucks up and his instincts/execution/ideas are sometimes bad(/very bad) but his heart has always been in the right place and to see him increasingly feel like a stranger in the place he was running (for years?) tears me up. I don't know where his storyline is going (loved him growing but still staying Richie throughout the ep) but his character is so isolated and doesn't seem to have friends/a network/support system outside of the restaurant and I so badly want someone to just tell him he's good enough and worthy and even if he didn't have the restaurant that he'd still have value and even if his ex is re-marrying he's still a good person idk why his storyline is getting to me so much. I wanted Carmy so badly to finish saying what he was saying to Richie on the phone and even if Chef Terry/Olivia Colman eventually said what Carmy was gonna, Richie needs to hear it directly from Carmy imo
Vague possibly-wrong potentially major overall Season 2 Spoiler: I think I spoiled the end of the show for me and God oh God have I been hoping I'm wrong but it definitely feels like they're setting it up over the past couple episodes and I truly truly hope I misinterpreted the meme I misinterpreted the meme allahu akbar
This show is a DRAMA not a comedy ! ! !
Expected a Bo Burnham cameo, got Olivia Colman instead and I'm okay with that
Casting truly is on point, loved all the restaurant worker guest stars
2 of the best scenes this season has been 2 people prepping and talking and shot really simply. When your dialogue is good and your actors can bring the words to life for a visual medium, just set the camera tf down and let them shine
Scattered thoughts:
Love Abby Elliot being more and more enmeshed with the restaurant crew, she was on SNL for "only" 4 seasons but I'll always have love for all the (early) 2010s SNL castmembers
excellent directing from Ramy Youssef, putting the damn camera down for 4 wholeass minutes and just letting the dialogue carry the scene while doing they're dough stuff, love it. love it.
putting respect on Scottie Pippin's name YES :heart_eyes:
just absolutely love the vibe of this ep, could've easily been shot/editing in a boring way but it was so watchable total fly on the wall feel
having liked the individual parts of season 1 but not loving it nearly as much as everyone else, am really vibing w/ this season much, much more
might not mean anything/reading too much into it but:
"Do you have any siblings?"
"Yes. You?" (asked that follow-up real quick before Luca had a chance to ask why the younger sibling wasn't pitching in to take care of mom)
"Uh, um, er, yeah. Younger sister" (stammered quite a bit for a question as simple as 'do you have siblings Y/N' did he USED to have a younger sibling and didn't want to get into it? :thinking:)
Original Israeli version ("On the Spectrum" currently available on HBO Max) is superior
Scattered thoughts:
-Leads are serviceable but all the neurotypical supporting characters (especially Mandy the aide) are bland and forgettable (save for Jack's dad, a character added in this adaptation)
-A bit distracted about their splitting Ron's character's plotlines between the two male characters but sort of understandable given the storylines of Amit (Harrison) in the original series was kind of just him being a creep to women
-Not as immediately winning as the original where I had to keep watching more episodes
-When the leads are onscreen, it's watchable. When they're not, it's not
-Seeing as how much I love love love the Israeli actors in the original (especially ESPECIALLY the one for Ron (Jack)), that I don't feel these leads are lesser-than knock-offs speaks to their abilities
-"I don't like to talk when I eat, I want to eat when I eat"
"Then how about we talk after you finish eating"
"After I eat I have to digest"
I fucking felt that.
-Jack got a few laughs (audible nasal exhalations) out of me, truly the best
-The female's skills at going from zero to absolute freakout in a few seconds just may well be on par with the original series's actress
-Still an aura of typical heart-pulling Very Important Drama (again, way more so when the leads aren't on screen) which is very much not my thing, this'll stay at 1 episode watched
-Perhaps unfair to constantly compare it to the original but I absolutely loved the original so so much, they didn't butcher the adaptation but there was such an effortlessly likeable watchability about On the Spectrum that I'm not finding here
I've written before about how the US's condensation of a 5-part BBC series into <2 hours really stripped away so much necessary and important material and context that ended up turning it into a straightforward just-the-facts-m'am retelling of Iraq that made it indistinguishable from umpteen other lookbacks at the Iraq war whereas the original BBC 5-parter was probably my 3rd-favorite show of 2020 and painstakingly fleshed out multiple perspectives and angles of a story that has been scrutinized a million ways over the last 2 decades (https://trakt.tv/comments/318428), so, while watching this 3 years later after the original aired (I can't recall if they just used the exact BBC version of the episode or made some edits/culled together material from the 3 hours they didn't air for the US broadcast, if I had to guess I'd say the former) it was sort of nice to see them add a piece to a story that felt half-told and half-baked when condensed from the OG BBC version, I was slightly disappointed it wasn't an actual new episode but just stuff I already saw when I watched the BBC version.
Still, a lot of it continues to be powerful stuff (though the story of Fallujah probably works better when told in the context of the 5-parter as this wasn't really a play-by-play of Fallujah as it was almost sold as, rather overlapping stories taking place in and during the battle of Fallujah) which speaks to how good the OG version was
Been watching since the first episode and while it's never been a particularly good show, there was enough behind-the-scenes/how-the-sausage-is-made material there for political junkies thanks to the level of access afforded to veteran political journalists Heilemann (and formerly Halperin)
I found this episode especially lacking in a reason for the show to exist, nothing about the interviews proved particularly insightful, just the candidates/their campaigns doing their best to spin recent election results, nothing really meaningful, no candor, nothing one couldn't read in the plethora of political reporting out there (digital/TV/print) or in official statements. Pulling in interviews with insiders of campaigns on yester-year also prove little worth given how little anything prior to 2016 applies to the political landscape post-2016.
I hate hate hate how hyperbolic the show is, which has more-or-less always been the case with the show but 5 seasons in is proving especially annoying (everyone on the show is guilty of over-the-top soundbite but Alex Wagner is probably the worst among them). When there's a new scandal or bombshell everyday, then it's not really earth-shattering or game-changing is it. The world continues to spin in these politically-overdosed times and the language should reflect that and stop treating every little thing like a 'campaign-killer,' 'gamechanger,' or 'catastrophe'. The show plays more and more like political National Enquirer
Jennifer Palmieri adds absolutely nothing. Just a political-operative-of-failed-campaign-turned-employed-turned-pundit-for-hire (wavering on whether or not to call her a hack) that still can't wrap her head around, let alone articulate, the rise of the insurgent progressive left. As MSNBC takes steps to better report on the rise of the progressive right and rethinks about its mixture of establishment/inside-the-beltway talking heads, The Circus's left-of-center talking heads seems to have the same problem. Steve Schmidt's appearances in prior seasons (who was received similarly by the Trump-right as an establishment-right as Palmieri is with the left) was far better even if fleeting.
Completely fucking over the 3 minutes of them orgasming to food at the top of every episode. Completely. Fucking. Over. It.
total mixed bag, Ed McVey continues to do good work, imbuing William with the sense of isolation of a future monarch and, while Luther Ford looks nothing like Harry, I enjoy his mischievous take on him and the rapport between him and McVey is solid ("I want you to stay with the family" was SO heavy-handed as a piece of dialogue though)
definitely felt like a throwaway filler episode but the above positives really carried it through and just barely prevented me hating it. compared to the other 'isolated royal males at school' episodes (Season 2's Paterfamilias and Season 3's positively great Tywysog Cymru) it's easily the weakest. The courtship with Kate just feels so lightweight and the writing of the episode feels more informed by gossip and tabloids than substantive research and as another commented, it's so recent as to feel superficial in its import to the crown. I don't need these episodes to be 100% factually correct if it can get at some sort of relational/emotional truth but these last 2 seasons (and bits of 4 tbh) have had me unable to suspend my disbelief as I more and more often during an episode question how much of it is fiction
i keep wanting to be interested in this more than i actually am
They kept the snoozefest of a host?! Honestly they should make the woman (Dr. Jessica Harris) who literally wrote the book this series is based on be the host. She's so much more insightful and interesting as a speaker in 2 minutes than Stephen is throughout the entire series. Granted maybe she declined doing so given all the travelling and interviewing and agreed to take part in every other thing but still the main guy is so disengaging as a host, a total non-presence
All his questions seem to so effortfully be trying to pull out a faux-profound soundbite from the interviewees but it's trying too hard and fails every time, like, a journalist/reporter's questions can sometimes be too journalisty and you just need an open-ended question to let your subject run with it instead of something so obviously trying to shake out an iNsIgHtFuL answer
Whenever there's younger folks on the show their contribution is just to nod their heads at the profundity and murmur mmhmm or that's right (how many shots has there been of Stephen just nodding his head vigorously in reaction to what he's hearing)
Bad tech aspects too:
When interviewing the guy on the plantation they included not one, but TWO shots of him wiping his head, why?!?!? If I'm wiping sweat from my head with a handkerchief I sure wouldn't want that blasted out on an international streamer. Just let the man wipe the sweat from his head in peace without using the shot?! Why did the editor choose that?!
And when talking to the two men in the Pullman cars, one of them is telling a story of a racist experience he had while working and the friggin' camera kept moving and shaking and was unsteady as hell, what in amateur camerawork hell?!?!
I'm not a huge foodporn-y type of person but the shots of the food are immaculate. Could definitely do with 100% less "mmmm!" "this is SO good" reaction shots though
-loved the bit with the Spanish cook asking that chick if she's stupid and to stop calling people lest it causes their ringtone to go off and alert the shooters to their location
-these stupid fuckers should've set their phones on silent asap though. as should every fucking character in any movie/show trying to hide from attackers
-have an idiot husband break a phone 'cause he got his feefees upset from seeing his wife's sort-of-sexts with his best friend. mate you're in an active shooter situation, prioritize and compartmentalize that shit
-how the hell did that best friend struggle to fight off that Spanish twink shooter though? the dude had at least 20 lbs on that twink, he could've knocked him on his ass easy
-can i plz get one hostage/shooter movie/show where every character is fcking competent? like 6 Keely Hawes characters plz. BuT tHaT'S hOw PeOpLe WoUlD ReAcT irl sure 'k w/e but it's not entertaining or interesting to watch a bunch of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. why did everyone feel the need to run back to the pool to check on someone? like, it's an active shooter event, put on your own damn life-mask before putting it on someone else.
-why the f did the fat dude (Ben?) tell the kids to hold hands and follow the group? he had to take literally 1 minute to help the old lady down the ledge, he could've told the kids to sit tight and have them all walk together. did the writers have a hemorrhage while writing this? did Ben? am i? is this stupidity all imagined by me as I lay on the ground with a brain vessel bleeding internally?? what a shite way to go
-i hate hate hate when scenes don't actually complete and just cut off in the middle of action (when the Spanish twink shooter finds that dude and aims his gun at him and then it cuts to a flashback or whatever? Spinnin' Around is a bop but...), it's supposed to have you on the edge of your seat or whatever but it's just lazy artificial tension (ahem Stranger Things 4 finale...)
a dumb ending for a dumb season
1-dimensional Villain of the Season Sister Elizabeth has been playing chess while everyone else has been playing checkers and they GOTCHA her by having her contradict herself within 2 sentences in the dumbest way possible?! am I suppose to care about Mrs. Neergaard and the surgeon doctor? because I don't at all. Anna's such a brat, yelling at her dad to never offer her b/f a job again only to come back to her dad one episode later and ask for a job and immediately ask for a kr2000 advance. Why'd they break up Lis and Peter and pair her with Dr. Friis? Peter Romer knew how to appreciate her and support her when she felt down herself and Dr. Friis only does when she's well in the throes of a crisis in confidence. the whole Peter-Head Nurse's daughter storyline felt like the writers threw a wrench in their relationship just 'cause the relationship was going too well and they had to turn up the dRaMa. And the transfer nursing girl tells the whole classroom she got r---d by the doctor in her old hospital and all of sudden she's able to have human contact again?? they built up that whole trauma backstory and all she had to do was say it aloud and just like that she can hold hands with her boyfriend that night?
i get it, it's a light-hearted soft drama, I shouldn't get this worked up about a Danish show about nursing in the 1950s, but but...
the nadir of this show (so far)
Anna still sucks so much as the de facto lead character. Absolutely unable to carry the show. She means well but she always comes across as a nag or just intruding on people's personal lives
Ole also super boring. Anna-Ole the power couple of being the blandest mfers on the planet. A charmless couple with the same level of charisma as the pairing of a clump of dirt and some wet sand
Mrs. Neergaard's character has been so so so awfully done, she was a strong independent woman not only willing to divorce her doctor husband but continue working in the same hospital because that was the career she had before she met him and she'll be damned if she lets her learning and experience go to waste to all of 2-3 episodes spent infantilizing her into a PTSD-ridden character that breaks down if she even smells smoke and removes ALL the competence we'd seen in the prior 2 seasons to this women pining for some dude and just generally looking forelorn and abandoned. How to Ruin a Strong Female Character 101. And the thing is ALL the plotlines from the PTSD to the latest happenings in this episode could've been done well but sometime between seasons 2 and 3 they switched writers to a room of 100 monkeys simultaneously typing on 100 typewriters
The most obvious of outcomes happened with the boxer and Lis (OF COURSE the boxer's wife remembers Lis and OF COURSE she blames her)
Last and least Sister Elizabeth. To quote Carrie Mathison to Peter Quinn in an episode of Homeland "Shouldn't you be hiding up a tree or something?" my god this women JUST happens to be standing at the right place at the right time all the time (sure, a sin committed by many shows but especially this one lately, see also: Else walking in on Anna and the new-ish transfer nurse talking; Dr. Neergaard walking in on Nurse Madsen trying to hide the sample)...or was she just standing behind those doors at night with a scowl on her face waiting for the new-ish transfer nurse to show up to threaten her to keep her mouth shut?? In her time standing there, how many people did she inadvertently spring on when they opened the doors??
They've shown Sister Elizabeth being deeply committed to a very narrow idea of how nursing should be done but now she's straight up stealing and hiding important documents? Everything she does is due to a strong sense of right and wrong, and anybody who strays even a little bit away from right meets her wrath, stealing...stealing is wrong and she knows that and her character has always been portrayed as someone who will reinforce her idea of right NOT a character who believes the ends justifies the means. Out of character and just to keep building her as some one-dimensional antagonist character. We're one episode away from her shouting RELEASE THE KRAKEN as she cackles while stormclouds gather behind her or some shit.
Also they spent a whole lot of time this season showing how in the closet Nurse Madsen was and she just blurts it out??? Just letting Dr. Neergaard believe she had broken up with a man was believable but then trying to use this as an awwwww coming out scene was dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb (which, I believe, was the original motto to market this season)
I really am gonna end up writing scathing reviews after watching every single episode this season...i don't want to i just have to get this off my chest
where to start where to start, this one was promising for the first half or so of the episode (promising in being thoroughly middling instead of maddeningly dumb) and then it sunk quickly:
- procedurals aren't inherently bad but my god something procedural shows can feel so procedural e.g. the husband just changing his mind off screen for absolutely no reason other than just 'cause and to resolve the one-episode chararacters' storyline
- maybe it was a consequence of pandemic shooting but my god they just forget half the cast exists every episode this season, like the cast (which isn't even that big!) just alternates having a storyline every other episode between the 6 of them. the extent of Lisa's appearance is just reading a medical textbook out loud? after getting physically assaulted at the end of the prior episode? toft and peter are just there and the not-Erik replacement isn't even on screen. only Anna and and Madsen really get a storyline this episode with the other nursing student girl getting a B-line about her budding salon
- speaking of Anna my god she can NOT carry the show. the more episodes feature her the more bland it is. the interplay between her and erik worked so well because they were so different as characters and had that great push-and-pull of characters who don't like each other but not enough to not be attracted to each other, without Erik Anna is so so so so so boring. and her character is so annoying and has 0 tact in just inserting herself into the personal lives of every patient with no subtley
- and her boyfriend ole's gambling storyline is on episode 2 and i'm already so tired of it. he's so bland and boring the writers decided to spice him up by giving him a gambling debt storyline out of no where that's just fuckin' annoying as hell. poor jazz musician has debt oh wow who cares show me cool 1950s danish medical shit please
- the dialogue is so obnoxiously on the nose. every single plot point is telegraphed so loudly and obviously helen keller could see them from 500 miles away
- salon nursing student is still such a pill
- the moment head nurse told sister elizabeth she's consigned to administrative duties and she'd be taking over the duties I KNEW something would be contrived to get her out of the picture and lo and behold her daughter has an accident at the end of the episode which will likely take her out of the picture and allow for sister elizabeth's reign of terror to resume leading to some dumb climax where the doctors and nurses see her assaulting students or she beats someone up so badly they get visibly injured or coma'd or some dumb shit
- the stolen wool clothes are gonna be blamed on lis aren't they? the mixed up vial of stomach contents is gonna be blamed on lis isn't it?
- characters developed over the last 2-3 seasons are just thrown in the trash for the sake of dumb contrived plot shit. nurse madsen messed up but the madsen of seasons 1-2 wouldn't dig the hole deeper, she'd fess up to giving the wrong food/medications to the wrong patients and not sneak around and hide shit (literally why wouldn't she just pour the stuff down the drain instead of hiding literal stomach bile in her room if she didn't want to be caught...so she can have a big change of heart 1-3 episodes later and confess of course!! / so someone can just so happen to stumble upon it in her room 1-3 episodes later and confront her/rat her out of course!!)
- sister elizabeth pops up every single time someone is having a hushed conversation about her. wtf is she filch? is this hospital hogarts with secret passageways? does she have supersonic hearing??
someone please invent a time machine and go back to 2021 and prevent the the rest of this season from being produced so i won't subject myself to the last 3 episodes plz i beg of u
the writing has gotten SO bad...they added an Erik-replacement but do nothing with Aksel and give his character absolutely no stories of his own??
Ole is such a boring character that boils down to Anna's boyfriend that plays in a jazz band so they had to turn him into some gambling addict who maybe owes large debts?? smdh
The misery-tragedy-bullying porn of Lis's character this season is so disappointing, looks like they might be setting up the groundwork for Lis & her Dr fiance to be leaving the hospital?
and OF COURSE it took a literal assault occurring before Anna's eyes before she finally believed Lis. just absolutely trashed her character and friendship built up over 2-3 seasons to make her suddenly neither care nor believe Lis
The new transfer nurse girl and Toft's potential friendship/romance is nice at least
They haven't managed to destroy Peter Romer's character yet but hate his bros just being shitheads about his relationship, actually resenting the dude instead of normal bro teasing. The 2 best characters of the show are just having their season-long storylines be got bullied, boo hoo :cry:
hate the dumbass writing on this show now but the completist in me won't let me give up a show midway through a season lord help me
every once in a while I poke my head back in and check out Vice News Tonight to see if it's improved since it moved to ViceTV and became a much lesser version of itself than it had been on HBO (last checking in for a few episodes at the beginning of this year), I've left equally disappointed time and time again and seeing how the show has been moved around the schedule (now at the late hour of 11p) and shown with less frequency (now down to twice a week instead of five), one can read into the reasons why
and so I came back to VNT to check it out this week and...it...wasn't bad?? hell, I didn't cringe once (or not much anyways) watching the two episodes that aired. why was that?
-looks like they got rid of the anchor (at least they did this week), easily one of the most baffling and awful decisions made in the transition from HBO to ViceTV, it didn't need an anchor and VNT on ViceTV held on to that role for way too long. too much awkward banter too much too-scripted throws to packages, bad stuff.
-VNT had the unfortunate timing to launch in March 2020 and as such a lot of their ability to report (especially internationally, which (imo) is their sweet spot) was severely hampered. This was also noticeable in their VICE weekly program (that moved to Showtime from HBO), with some of the earlier episodes from season 7 that were shot pre-pandemic outclassing those deeper in the season that had to work around COVID. With most pandemic restrictions worldwide loosening/dropping, the reporters' ability to travel and do international reporting has returned and deep dives into places like Italy and Chile were pretty much just as good as they had been in the newscast's earlier days
-still a 45-minute newscast but the packages tend to run longer and usually it doesn't feel like fluff but rather news packages that deserve to run for 5, 6 minutes
it's not quite HBO quality but it's certainly watchable and given some of the stuff they spotlit were stories I hadn't heard before but were interesting and informative and things I feel will serve as a base of knowledge going forward as I consume news in other places (the rise of a far-right candidate that stands a shot at being Italy's next PM), I'll be checking back on VNT next week and if it maintains its quality it'll go into my regular rotation of TV shows
This show was pretty much always driving to eventually reach this episode/point in Sheila's story, where she would need/be forced to get help and when I realized what this episode was (I seem to always need to re-orient myself for a few minutes at the beginning of each episode this season, thinking I missed an episode but they seem to just have these sudden jump in events, not necessarily bad or a demerit on the show, just something I constantly find myself having to adjust to) I was interested/concerned how the show would tackle it. This show has been a pitch black comedy with highly unlikeable (but interesting! and watchable!) characters for all 18 episodes before this one and any sudden epiphanies or breakdown/breakthrough on Sheila's part could so easily come off as trite/forced but they managed to make it happen and still fit within the deeply dark and biting tone of the show (Rose Byrne's great acting, possibly the best of the series, went a long way to making it work along with a bevy of solid guest actresses doing solid work, definitely an Emmy-submission episode for next year). The writing and acting are so good it made me wonder how personal (if at all) the issues of the show/episode were to Rose/the writers.
This show has really flown under the radar but its dark tone is so up my alley, really hoping they get a season 3 but afraid that's a bit of an uphill climb given how many shows Apple TV+ has that are making bigger splashes and getting more acclaim.
A lot of the charm disappeared in this episode of the show which has operated much better when in Spanish than English and unfortunately an excursion to America made the show 60%+ English making for some very clunky dialogue.
Was initially interested in a Spanish/European eye/critique of America but unfortunately it boiled down to trite hurrdurr aMeRiCa LoVeS gUnS And Is AlL dUmBaSsEs wHo ThInKs AlL FoReIgNeRs CoMe FrOm SoUtH aMeRiCa which, alright, might not necessarily be wrong but was delivered with such clunky heavy-handedness as to come off as reductive.
Courtroom scenes were equally bad, falling into nearly all the trappings and cliches of courtroom dramas that are overwritten to overcompensate for typically staid and dry proceedings but with the effect of coming off as hyperbolic and soap operative: cue murmuring court audience, dramatic confrontation between the opposing sides when they just happen to run into each other after trial, big ass speechifying from a lawyer that would've been halted not even a quarter of the way through by a judge in real life, just eye-rolling stuff.
The teenage daughter was (and has been) also very annoying as are 99% of teenage children characters, hope she's off to college and never to return for the rest of the series.
not as good as the show's peak episodes, hopefully a lesser episode of the season than indicative of season 2's average quality (but a so-so episode of TGWS is still good for some laughs)
Less good:
Characters being idiotic and doing nonsensical things for the sake of a forced joke...it's okay to have less-than-intelligent characters or one or two very silly things but having the guy eat a galosh AND the woman wear goulash (instead of, idunno, simply swapping out the two when she got the goulash presented to her?) didn't play as well to me. I did enjoy the wordplay involved in mixing the two up but in practice having someone pick up a goulash, walk all the way across the stage, and place it on the floor without realizing she picked up the wrong thing is uhhhh, requiring more suspension of disbelief than I'm willing
Characters whispering to one another out-of-character is one thing but having them repeatedly speak at normal voice ("DON'T SAY HARD AGAIN") works less well and tries more than it succeeds at being funny
Robert (new director)'s physical comedy pratfalls are more miss than hit for me but that's probably just a matter of comedic taste
Too small a part for British Beanie Feldstein Annie, a consistent highlight of season 1
Good:
Jonathan Sayer character's flubbing his lines is consistently funny (but perhaps use it a bit more sparingly as in past episodes instead of so prominently here)
All the lines about the former director 'eating manure' etc and him staying one step ahead of the curve (using oven mitts to handle the hot tea kettle + his smug look at being clever; pointing at the firewood and it magically getting chopped)
By the third time they restarted the first act I saw the fast-forward through the rest of the play bit coming but it was still amusing
It's like someone watched the 2019 HBO Theranos documentary and tried to do the same thing with JUUL but worse in every aspect.
Episodes of The New York Times Presents (and its precursor The Weekly) are very hit and miss (more so the latter) and not really having any stand-out episodes (even its biggest hit the Britney Spears episode felt so copy-pasted from prior reporting that even someone with only cursory knowledge of the FreeBritney campaign would find little new or enlightening) but I'd never been as frustrated watching an episode as this.
Why why why did they spend SO much time with the one teenage(?) girl??? If there was a 'teen smoking/vaping epidemic' as the episode repeatedly mentioned, it'd be useful to back it up with more stats & figures (other than the 3 charts they showed) instead of repeatedly coming back to a total of ~15-20 minutes on one anecdotal story so patently portrayed to pull at heart strings. So she ended up smoking 2-3 pods a day (with the episode saying one pod ≈ 1 pack of cigs)...how is that the fault of JUUL? JUUL was not saying go out and smoke multiple pods a day (or was it? the episode doesn't dig into it!). Taking one extreme example to represent a larger problem undercuts the position the episode is trying to put out there (or WAS it an extreme outlier? the episode doesn't dig into it!). Digging deeper into the company's advertising practices and comparing how it's different/more insidious than other companies (especially ones that are restricted from advertising to youth) would bolster the story's case a lot more (and when the girl's mom starts crying 'cause she found e-cigs in her teenage daughter's room was...not as big of a bombshell as the episode's director/editor thought it was...lingering on the shot long after it was obvious the episode was trying to hit you over the head with a Big Emotional Scene). The story was told from a generalist point of view when someone from the digital advertisement/tech beat would be better suited to add a lot more background and details around companies skirting age-restrictions in advertising as more money & focus flows towards digital.
This episode, more so than others in the series, was clearly trying to make a case against JUUL instead of a more objective documentary, and there probably is a case to be made against them, but this was so sloppily made I finished the episode with frustration, not at JUUL but at NYTP for wasting an hour of my time on such a scatterbrained, unfocused, poorly-argued episode. It flits from subject to subject instead of building its case brick by brick, it spent a decent amount of time on Monsees's childhood and education, but sort of just flits past Monsees's demotion to CPO (why? did other co-workers see any problems with him? he gave one bad performance at a congressional hearing but WHY was he so unprepared? the story barely delves into what he did day-to-day)? Every speaker feels like they're in on a hatchet job on JUUL which actually makes it less effective. There's a lot more meat in the story of the way JUUL presented itself as better than smoking and how much worse the health effects are than what it originally put out there, and the episode touches on that but more science and more breaking that down was needed to drive the point home than how it was conveyed (talking head of someone slanted against the company, footage of health official's dry press conferences). And again, Instead of covering any of that it spent almost half the bloody episode on one anecdotal human-interest-angle interview that was a lot less effective than the reporter seemed to think.
At the end of the day, the tone (quickly) devolves into Helen Lovejoy shouting "won't somebody please think of the children!" and being shocked that teenagers smoke. Not that teenagers smoking is a good thing, but your argument is made much less effective and causes the audience to instinctively tune out when your tone (for a whole hour!!! this could've been 45 minutes!!) is so strongly of paternalistic moral shock.
Shoddily directed, shoddily edited, falls well short of the strong long-form video journalism being put out there by other outlets.
