Worth Watching: A Sondheim Mock ‘Documentary,’ ‘Whiskey’ on Wednesdays, WGN’s ‘Gone’
A selective critical checklist of notable Wednesday TV:
Documentary Now! (11/10c, IFC): Alert to all musical theater and Sondheim buffs — and you know who you are: The “Original Cast Album: Co-Op” episode from this loving spoof of fabled documentaries is the wish-fulfillment dream of show-tune buffs John Mulaney and Seth Meyers. They collaborated on the Sondheim-styled lyrics to a faux musical whose 24-hour smoke-filled recording session is captured in a rigorously detailed facsimile of D.A. Pennebaker’s iconic Original Cast Album: Company film from 1970. Mulaney stars as the imperious composer, Simon Sawyer, whose love-hate supervision of a game but insecure cast (including Broadway veterans Renee Elise Goldsberry, Alex Brightman and Richard Kind) goes like this: “When you lean into a rhyme, you shatter the conversational tone of the lyric — it’s like nails on a blackboard to me, and I love you all.” It’s a spot-on recreation, culminating in Paula Pell channeling Elaine Stritch struggling through multiple takes of her anthem. The commitment is total, resulting in one of the most weirdly obsessive triumphs ever made for TV.
Whiskey Cavalier (10/9c, ABC): In case you missed the post-Oscars sneak peek — and I’m guessing that’s most people — the breezy spy caper takes up residence in its regular time period. In a gender-reversed twist on the formula, it’s the guy of the spy team — Will Chase (Scandal‘s Scott Foley), code name “Whiskey Cavalier” — who’s the sentimental softie, partnered with stone-cold CIA beauty Frankie Trowbridge (The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan) as they chase bad guys throughout gorgeous European locations. As sleek as it is silly, Whiskey goes down smoothly if pure escapism is your tonic of choice. (See my full review.)
Gone (9/8c, WGN America): The channel’s latest acquisition, filmed in 2017, is a 12-part “limited series” — meaning only one season has been produced — starring Chris Noth as an FBI agent who recruits former child abductee Kit “Kick” Lannigan (Leven Rambin) onto a task force dedicated to solving missing-persons cases and finding the abducted. It’s a solid procedural with a strong female character (based on a Chelsea Cain novel) at its core.
Finales: The unmasking comes to an end in a two-hour season finale of Fox’s silly The Masked Singer (8/7c), with the remaining three costumed “celebrities” (and we use that term even more loosely than on Dancing With the Stars) exposed in what so far has been a parade of anti-climaxes… Much more tempting is the eighth-season finale of USA’s Suits (10/9c), with the return of the firm’s nemesis, Daniel Hardman (David Costabile). He has come looking for retribution, which sends the rest of the team rallying to Harvey’s (Gabriel Macht) defense.
Inside Wednesday TV: More growing pains for undergrad Zoey (Yara Shahidi) on Freeform’s grown-ish (8/7c), when she faces a midterm the morning after the semester’s biggest rager… Mere days after a Netflix documentary on menstruation wins an Oscar, ABC’s Modern Family (9/8c) finds Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) experiencing her womanly rite of passage — and naturally, her two dads, Cam (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), aren’t prepared… Syfy’s first animated late-night series, Alien News Desk (11/10c), stars Saturday Night Live veteran Will Forte and current cast member Heidi Gardner as the voices of extraterrestrial anchors riffing on the idiosyncrasies of human behavior on a mock news show.
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O
Looks like a good evening to read.
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R
For me it\'s a good evening to get back into my writing.
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R
Interesting...Just checked my DVR and it\'s itching to record...
Survivor
Modern Family
Gone
The World\'s Best
Whiskey Cavalier
Pure
Deadly Class
I\'m Sorry
Schitt\'s Creek
Alien News Desk
Whew!!!
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G
How is WGN\'s Pure? Am I missing anything worthwhile?
Please let me know your thoughts about WGN\'s Gone also. Curious
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O
Ikr? Fridays are actually my busiest primetime television nights. The other nights there are maybe one or two shows I watch. Mostly watch recordings from my DVR from MeTv, Antenna, movies etc. Though, my relationship with Modern Family is like most other people where I long for the glory days this season there are some pretty decent episodes so far so Wedensdays until Empire returns, Modern Family is my go to
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P
\"D.A. Pennebaker\'s iconic Original Cast Album: Company film from 1070\"
1070?!?!? What did they even record on back then?
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C
Oops! Fixed.
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Good to hear!
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I\'m about to check out Whiskey Cavalier — only new (prime-time) show of the night, but we\'ve had lots to catch up on.
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R
Holy crap, I can\'t believe there\'s STILL no new episode of SEAL Team. I thought for sure I saw a promo last week that led me to believe it. Grrrr. I guess it\'s reruns for me tonight.
By the way, any Jeopardy! fans in the group? Wondering what people think of the All-Star tournament they\'re having. I\'m not loving it, personally.
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C
I think the Jeopardy thing is a big mess. They spend more time trying to explain what they\'re doing than they do actually doing it.
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R
Yeah, I\'m not a fan of all the touchy-feely-talky stuff. I want Jeopardy questions and answers. Or rather answers and questions. I really don\'t care about who chose which contestant, or why or how they decide who\'s going to compete in each segment. I bet this isn\'t going over as well as the Jeopardy people thought it would. (Oh and also, I don\'t care for \"Buzzy\"... I hope he\'s the first to go.)
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G
This very weird February (tons of reruns across the board especially CW) is ending tomorrow.
Ironically March which used to be an \"off month- lots of reruns\" will likely be mostly new for everybody and multiple new shows.
TV sure has changed.
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C
Back to a jam-packed Wednesday again! All the ABC comedies are new and so are Riverdale, World\'s Best, Deadly Class, and Suits! Then, there are the series debuts of Gone and Alien News Desk! It might take me a week to watch all that!
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G
Gone looks very good, but I don\'t have WGN any longer : (
Whiskey Cavalier is a fun show, I\'m for sure going to watch episode 2 next week.
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R
Last night\'s FBI was pretty good, but they went a little heavy with all the males-disrespecting-women stuff, and peeks of women empowerment. Rather than hit us over the head with it twelve times in one episode, why not spread it out throughout a number of them? Every guy in this episode seemed to exhibit some level of douchebaggery, but we probably won\'t see another instance of that for the rest of the season.
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G
I actually fell asleep after the first 15 minutes or so. But will catch up soon.
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G
I wonder if the spin-off next season will be looser and more creative. This show is basically the same every single week:
Opening scene- usually a high profile person or someone connected to a high profile person, murdered .
Next act- Two main characters at the crime scene checking out evidence
Third scene- The headquarters where the supporting characters attempt to figure it out.
Latino guy always yelling his lines, Sela Ward putting on glasses when she needs to concentrate and the smarty pants young black woman on the computer analyzing and correcting her superiors.
Never watched such a rigid show, but I like it, what can I can say.
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R
Haha, at least you recognize the elements of a \"procedural.\" My problem with the Jubal guy (the one who shouts in the \'bullpen\') is that he is never seen doing anything else. His role seems to be completely superfluous. The ONLY purpose he really serves is to give us, the audience, all the details that the agents uncovered and summarize what the next steps will be. (in writing, this is called an infodump) And I think the show really should cut back on all those people. Jubal will shout things, like \"we need to know where this guy is, where he works, and who his friends are,\" but nobody is ever given a specific assignment. What if they all rushed around, and all ended up getting the same info--for example, the bad guy\'s name--and nobody had looked for the other stuff? :-p
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Well, it\'s from Dick Wolf who did all the \"Law and Order\" series so repetition is in his DNA...
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G
hahaha, so true. Jubal (if that\'s his name) is annoying. The show needs to give the supporting players more to do. I think there was one above par episode that had them go undercover.
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G
Just finished the episode. Actually the supporting cast had more meaningful lines and Jubal was more involved. The new agent Briggs is a similar character to the OCD guy from Designated Survivor . Same actor , I think, if not they look exactly alike. He shared a lot of scenes with the boss Dana (Sela Ward).
Soid ep, but your right way too much discussion about sexism for one episode.
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C
Gone was ok...nothing great. I\'ll only watch it because it repeats at midnight. I wouldn\'t if it didn\'t.
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