8.5/10. I'm impressed at how South Park was able to stick the landing here. It's a little convoluted, I'll admit, but connecting gentrification, PC culture, and advertisements with the idea that this type of sanitized world, in both speech and environment, is the place where ads thrive, was an interesting way to tie it altogether. It's still a little forced, but with all the build up, it also feels earned.
I was a little wary when they brought guns into the story, not because I object to any particular take on the issue, but because this season, the show's second attempt at crafting a season-long plot, was already starting to feel pulled in different directions between the PC theme and the ad conspiracy and throwing in yet another hot button issue into the mix could have made it hard to come to a good resolution.
But instead, it was a delightful argument from absurdity - the way in which everyone having guns nigh-magically solved everyone's problems without anything devolving into violence. In classic South Park style, the kinds of disputes that guns could resolve just kept escalating, to enjoyably irreverent levels. It was, frankly, the funniest way to satirize the gun debate, by taking the "everyone would be safer if they had guns" argument to a ridiculous extreme, and it actually worked well to help resolve the bigger story.
And the finale did a good job at bringing in several details of the season so far, from Kyle remembering that he doesn't give speeches, to Butters and his Canadian girlfriend, to even Tweek and Craig walking together in the hallway. I'd be lying if I said that it was all completely coherent, or dovetailed perfectly, but Matt & Trey clearly made an effort to connect all the various issues and story beats they'd touched on this year, and the end result was satisfying, even if it's hard to nail down a central thesis for the whole thing.
It's clear that the folks behind the show object to ads, and on the line between real content and paid promotions, but it's not necessarily clear what their position on PC culture is. On the one hand, Nathan's speech to Jimmy seems to suggest that they're against it on the basis that environments where we don't allow people to push each others' buttons or offend anyone foster the type of anodyne world in which advertisements seem to flourish. But in the end, PC Principal is still around, and presented as the vanguard against the ads. Maybe it's Matt & Trey acknowledging the complexity of these issues, or maybe it's just them trying to tell an enjoyable, entertaining, and laugh-worthy story regardless of whether it fits into a coherent philosophy, and in that, I think they succeeded.
Season 19 will certainly go down as one of the landmark seasons in this show's storied history. It was ambitious, trying a mode of storytelling that the show had only attempted in smaller bites in prior years, and had some of the series' most salient and resonant social commentary in years. The execution was not quite flawless, but it was still very well done, and delved deeper into the topics the show took aim at than in past years. You'd be hard pressed to label Season 19 as anything but a rousing success.
Spoiler free review
Do yourself a favour, don't waste your time on this. It's a perfect example of all sizzle no steak. The show starts off weak then eventually hints at a decent mystery which you expect will come to some satisfying conclusion, but as the season reaches its crescendo it turns into one of the biggest let downs ever.
Admittedly it has some pretty moments but is mostly shot in drab, uninteresting settings, which doesn't really feel intentional. All the characters apart from the OA are wildly predictable, but she eventually falls into this category once you learn more about her. Any character relationships that are built up don't feel at all worth investing in, and any semblance of a subplot is swept under the rug quickly. Despite being eight episodes the show feels heavily padded, yet they decided to barely dedicate any time to develop side characters, because Brit Marling has to dominate every scene she's in, and the result of which feels massively self-indulgent.
If there's one thing I have to warn anyone watching The OA is that it completely cons viewers with a vague, nonsensical ending. I can only assume that they thought they were a shoe-in for a second season from Netflix and left it completely open, or they were trying to create an ending that was open for interpretation - which this show definitely didn't have the smarts to accomplish. The ending literally makes no sense, and only serves to add another gaping space to a plot already filled with holes; after seeing it I thought "wait, is that it? What the hell was that?" It's honestly like they reached the deadline for the script and figured "screw it, we'll make it vague, I'm sure Netflix will throw cash at us next year, we'll pretend to explain it then".
The OA is a interesting but lazy and frustrating mess. If you can put aside common sense and a desire for a decent plot and story for eight hours, then by all means go for it. The ending was such a huge "screw you" to the viewer that I refuse to return for resolution should they get another season. Oh, and this show shouldn't be called sci-fi at all, it couldn't be any further from it, if anything it's profoundly anti-science and unashamed of it.
8.3/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale. As the son of a Bostonian mother, whose Patriots fandom I disdain, this one hit close to home. But what I liked about the episode apart from its riffs on Beantown culture is that it's a well-written, well-structured story. Bart wants to go be a part of Boston; Homer wants his son to hate it, and when they actually get there, each finds that the reality is very different from the place they imagined in their heads.
Homer's derision for Boston stemming from sports is very much in character (and the riffs on the Patriots were amusing and exaggerated, if likely to date the episode a bit), and bowling being the thing that changes his mind is similarly inspired. (To that end, I appreciated the theme of "life giving us a third ball.") At the same time, Bart being inspired by Boston bad boys on TV in various forms is also very true to what we know of the character, and his realization that Boston is a metropolitan progressive city and not a the rough and tumble place he imagines from thinly-veiled parodies of The Departed and the like is a nice twist. It's some Dan Harmon-esque story circle narrative-crafting that I appreciated.
It's another check mark in the win column for substitute showrunner Matt Selman. I don't love every episode produced when he's subbing for main showrunner Al Jean, but his episodes tend to be a cut above for that very thing -- his ability to center stories on who the characters are and structure them around those characters getting things they want but finding that the results aren't quite what they expected. The various gags about Boston and its culture are fun, and as has become typical in these "The Simpsons are going to _____" episodes, the designs and backgrounds for the new locale are beautiful, but what really makes this episode a cut above is its attention to character and story.
I'll admit that Night Gallery is not on par with Serling's original Twilight Zone. While TZ was a fantasy series made up largely of morality tales, NG is a Horror series that was not nearly as interested in couching messages within its episodes.
Night Gallery is a collection of stories, none of which have anything to do with each other. There's no need to watch anything in order, there's no never-ending story arcs to stay abreast of. It's like opening up a book of short stories and picking one from the lot. Sometimes NG reminds me of the old EC Comics, and maybe some of its TV successors like Tales from the Darkside or even Creepshow. And what I think is most interesting is that many of these stories are adopted works of short Horror by acclaimed writers like August Derleth, H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson and more.
Rod Serling was not as involved in this even though the series features his name and episode introductions prominently. In fact, much of this series is very of its time and budget. The fashions are garish, and the special effects are often wonky. A few of these segments will leave you scratching your head with an abrupt ending, and some will leave you fascinated by their impact. Some may make you fall asleep while others may piss you off because you'll feel like you've wasted your time. But some of them will make your jaw drop or send a chill up your spine. And THAT'S the hook. You never know what you're going to get. They're the TV equivalent of Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, I suppose.
Like the Twilight Zone, there are so many stories that if you spend time away from the series, the rediscovery ratio is high because there is no overarching single story. Rediscovery is the beauty of anthologies.
