The end of the 2018/2019 TV season meant a lot of finales recently but I’m stuck in a place where most of the finales that I had left were on The CW and my viewing partner for them has been MIA, leaving me with a lot of incomplete shows. That meant I got to take the time to do some serious binging this past week, which worked out well in my favor.
First, a moment of silence for the loss of A.P. Bio as it was canceled. I’m not surprised but it’s disappointing – but not enough to hope for a pickup elsewhere.
This week had me essentially finishing four shows. Last things first was the recent Netflix addition of The Society. This was something I put on as a bit of a background watch but then became shocked and surprised by two things. The first was that it filmed in a town nearby that I lived in for several years which made it surreal to see the town green and other locations I spent a lot of time on playing out in the show. Small things like that can delight. The other is that while the show is yet another young pretty people surviving strange situation thing, it’s pretty fun as we get a senior class that ends up in a closed off copy of their town with no adults or younger people around at all. And that leads into the struggle of trying to maintain things. It’s fairly predictable in a lot of ways if you’ve read/seen similar, but it’s well-executed, the cast is delightful and feels like they’re playing it more honestly, and it’s washing away the taste of Under the Dome which just ramped up bad storylines and characters.
I also burned through a show that I had in my queue for awhile with the Aussie drama Tidelands. There’s less to say about this but it’s an interesting way to play a mermaid society that’s blending in while trying to bring about something bigger. It’s the kind of thing where you could change it to crime family hiding crimes and it would largely play out the same, but the fun in these things are the power dynamics, family elements, and cutthroat aspects of it all. It also doesn’t hurt that it plays to the shoreline a lot and like the show above has alot of pretty people. It’s a bit too drawn out and really needed to be a few episodes shorter. but it did play well to a particular void.
One show I had started last week I finished out with The Rain. The Danish series was a short six episodes and a bit more stationary than the first season as we get the characters whittled down – even after meeting a new group – with a focus on the main infected lead and trying to cure him while the evil corporate organization is after him to use him for their own ends. It’s a bit roundabout in some ways but the first season earned itself some promise of potential and it matures up just a little bit more here with a few areas getting serious and it doesn’t hesitate to eliminate characters in order for the story to progress.
Realistically, however, the best show of the past week for me was watching the remaining half of Lucifer. The first season itself a few years back was a shock in how delightful it was even as it avoided any semblance of the books from which it came, and I was fine with that because it was as strong as it was. This condensed ten-episode season, the first Netflix Original season, kept a lot of the procedural side that makes it great but got to expand it a bit and fill more of it with character material thanks to no commercial considerations, giving each episode almost ten minutes more running time. This season had a lot of twists and turns to it and the introduction of Eve really hit a great sweet spot as it altered the dynamic a bit. Everyone put in great performances, especially Tom Ellis with what he goes through as Lucifer, and the couple of musical bits we get here and there just made me grin widely. The season does end with a huge hook for a fifth season, which I suspect Netflix will order even if this one doesn’t do fantastic since it’s a big enough investment, but it also has a complete-enough feeling about it that works with a mild downer but one that is definitely tantalizing.
This coming week has me polishing off some finales (Supergirl, Flash, Riverdale) and starting in on some iZombie, so lots for me to look forward to.
