‘This Is Us’ Puts Jack to Rest, a Father-Daughter Moment on ‘The Middle,’ Fred Armisen’s Percussive Stand-Up
A selective critical checklist of notable Monday TV:
This Is Us (9/8c, NBC): Once upon a network time, being able to attract 27 million viewers in prime time was a big deal, but hardly historic. That was then, and This Is Us is now rightfully crowing about scoring the bigger numbers for a post-Super Bowl episode in six years. However, it’s time to come down to Earth, though with still respectable ratings on an ordinary Tuesday, for the aftermath of Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) death in an episode that NBC says reveals the history of the Pearsons through the life of their family car. (If my own family’s Buicks could talk …) The trailer promises a return from Gerald McRaney in his Emmy-winning guest role as kindly Dr. K, who back on another fateful day delivered the “Big Three.”
The Middle (8/7c, ABC): Norm MacDonald returns in the sitcom’s final season as Rusty, Mike’s (Neil Flynn) black-sheep brother, whose fancy gift for Sue (Eden Sher) makes Mike wonder if it’s stolen. Maybe he should just look the other way, because he’s also concerned that his bond with his only daughter has frayed since she went off to college. In the least surprising news of the week, Axl (Charlie McDermott) blows his first paycheck on a big-screen TV.
Fred Armisen: Standup for Drummers (streaming on Netflix): The Saturday Night Live and Portlandia comic takes a more musical approach than most stand-ups to his new set, which includes riffs on jazz, photography, American accents and, naturally, drumming.
Inside Tuesday TV: Joe Spano is back on CBS’s NCIS (8/7c) as former FBI Agent Fornell, once again teaming with Gibbs (Mark Harmon) when the body of a missing Navy commander is found. … Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes is developing a drama series for NBC on the subject, but PBS’s great history series American Experience gets there first in The Gilded Age (9/8c, check local listings at pbs.org), a two-hour study of the American period from the post-Civil War 1870s to the turn of the last century, when an economic divide grew between the newly rich and an impoverished working class. Upstairs downstairs indeed. … History buffs can also groove on National Geographic Channel’s Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake Kings (9/8c), revealing new discoveries about the Mayan civilization deep in the Guatemalan jungle. I’d see a movie with that title.
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It's "The Middle" for me, then the rest of my evening is mine!
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Don't watch much TV, do you?
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No, I'm very selective in what I watch - I also don't have a DVR and I've never used Netflix, Roku, Hulu or any other service. I also haven't stepped in a movie theater in nearly 7 years - if there's something I want to see, I wait for the DVD or Blu-ray, then check it out of my local library for a week for free.
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I haven't been to a movie theater since Titanic was first out.
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I'll watch NCIS (habit) and might give Black Lightning another look... not sure I'm going to stick with it, though. One of my PBS stations is airing a couple reruns of Finding Your Roots, and I might check that out as well.
Any Supergirl fans here? I have a question I've been wondering about. Samantha, the character who becomes Reign... seems to me we first met her last fall, altho not her name. Then she went to work for Lena Luthor, and on top of that, a few weeks ago she was suddenly BFFs with Alex and Kara, etc. I don't think we ever even saw her meet them, much less interact with them. Does that seem a little ridiculous to anyone else??
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I already decided to give up on Black Lightning. Aren't one of your PBS stations showing that Gilded Age program? It sounds interesting. I don't watch SG.
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Sometimes my PBS channel(s) air things a day later, so maybe tomorrow. But now that you mention it, I recall that "We Meet Again" is on tonight. I'll catch some of that, as well.
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Sam did fall in with Alex & Kara rather quickly, via Lena (which itself is kinda weird), but maybe you missed an episode or few. There's a lot about the show that's ridiculous, like the entire alien bar and the fact that the DEO is still apparently supposed to be a secret and how Supergirl's identity isn't being kept from anyone in the organization, which are more frustrating to me since there's also a lot to like about it. My big whiplash this week was Kara being totally in touch with her humanity and hopefulness in reaching out to Julia while Alex was 100% bad cop (not that it's necessarily out of character, but they barely paid lip service to the fact that Kara had gone full-on emotional shut-in recently, plus Alex really didn't let Kara try it her way first by continually interrupting her).
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I'm enjoying Black Lightning, myself.
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Yeah, it seemed that Alex and Kara ping-pong back and forth... one week one of them is depressed and not coping while the other props her up, and the next week suddenly it's the *other* one who's upset and grumpy, and the girls switch roles. It does sort of give you whiplash, doesn't it? 😀
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I'm trying to narrow down my list for tonight. So far, I'm thinking of watching The Flash, This Is Us, and Undercover High, and recording Lethal Weapon, LA to Vegas, The Mick, and Baskets. I'll watch The Middle on demand later.
Then, there are those two very interesting sounding historical shows about The Gilded Age and The Mayans. Hopefully, I can catch them when they repeat or watch them on demand or online later.
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