Idiot Boxing: What We Do in the Shadows, season 2 (2020)

The crew celebrates Nandor's 800-somethingth birthday in
typically foolhardy fashion.

No Spoilers, so read away!

A still funny but slightly lesser sophomore season from the brainchild of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi.

The show still focuses on a quartet of vampires living in Staten Island, New York. Three of them embody the classic vision of vampires, hailing from the Europe of centuries past and exhibiting an unfailing sense of superiority, despite the fact that they are often hopelessly out of touch with modern times. They are also looked down upon by nearly every other vampire in the vast underworld community of nightwalkers. The fourth - the energy vampire Colin Robinson - may be more in tune with modern times, but is so horribly boring that he's equally derided by his vampiric peers. The big twist at the end of the first season was actually about Guillermo, the semi-pathetic familiar to the especially dim-witted, 800-year old vampire Nandor. Guillermo, long awaiting his master to fulfill his dream and turn him into a vampire, learns that he is a descendent of the renowned vampire-slayer Abraham Van Helsing. This syncs up with the fact that Guillermo had accidentally slain several vampires through the course of the first season, including the powerful and feared (but also completely deranged) "Baron."

This second season follows a similar rhythm to the first. Each mockumentary-style episode is mostly stand-alone, with the overarching story continuing to be Guillermo's attempts to reconcile his still-present desire to become a vampire with the fact that he is a world-class vampire killer. This is a skill that he finds himself using more than he would like, as many other vampire clans are constantly sending assassins after Nandor and the other vampires in their home, due to the belief that it was they, not Guillermo, who killed The Baron. Mostly, though, each episode has its own self-contained focus.

Laszlo squares off against a dangerous rival in a sleepy town
pub in Pennsylvania, where he's been hiding out in the episode
"On the Run." This was my favorite episode of this season.

I thought this season was still quite funny, though not as consistent as the first season. Of the ten episodes, there were a few that I found were noticeably less funny than most entries into this still-young series. Oddly, it was the first three episodes - "Resurrection," "Ghosts," and "Brain Scramblies" - in which I found more gags that were only so-so, mixed in with some really good moments. Once it got to the middle part of the season, things picked up noticeably. "Colin's Promotion" was a good one, in which Colin Robinson works his way up the chain of command at work and sees his energy-siphoning powers grow immensely strong. And "Witches" was a solid entry with plenty of sexual humor - something that is always Laszlo's strong point. My personal favorite, though, was "On the Run," in which Laszlo flees Staten Island, fearing for his (after?)life. The always-over puffed up vampire takes refuge in a small Pennsylvania town, and there are a ton of hilarious moments as he "blends in" with the locals.

Season two also had a bit of a "reveal" at the end of it, which I won't spoil for anyone, and a third season has been confirmed. However, I seem to recall reading that show co-creators Jemaine Clement or Taika Waititi may step away from the show going forward. If that is, indeed, the case, then I hope whoever picks up the reins can keep the show going strong. It's really one of the best comedies that I know of on TV right now, and one could see it remaining so for several more seasons. 

Idiot Boxing: Party Down, the complete series (2009-2010)

A hilarious, R-rated sitcom that aired on the Starz network and about which I knew nothing until my wife's hairdresser recommended it to her. Great call, Molly.

The premise is simple: follow a Los Angeles-based catering company - the titular Party Down company - as they provide food and beverage service to the wide variety of oddball individuals and groups in and around the L.A. area. The catering crew is made up of an aspiring but dim actor, an aspiring but aloof sci-fi writer, a long-since washed-up actor, a recently washed-up actor, and an aspiring comedian. They're headed up by a semi-pathetic crew leader whose big dream is to manage his own all-you-can-eat soup and salad franchise restaurant.

This was a great little sit-com that had all the right ingredients. Hilarious writing and comic actors all around, and a conceit that allowed every episode to feature different situations and characters. One episode, the crew is serving at a community theater, and the next they're at an ill-conceived orgy. Or they're catering a sweet sixteen on a yacht for the daughter of a big movie producer, then the next episode sees them in a bar with Russian gangsters. The set up provided such a great variety of setting for comedy, and the writers took full advantage.

The know-it-all, aspiring sci-fi writer Roman (left) tries to
help a host get his orgy off the ground. Of course, Roman's
knowledge of sex and orgies is laughably limited, but it
doesn't stop him from dishing out advice.

Just as strong as the writing, though, is the comedic acting. There are all sorts of familiar faces playing the main parts. Adam Scott plays the most prominent role as Henry Pollard, an actor trying to rebound from irrelevance after a brief moment of fame stemming from a beer commercial. But Scott is only one of several comic actors who would later become far better known, with Jane Lynch and Martin Starr being the most obvious. But there were more than a few established comic actors, too, several of whom viewers may remember from the comedy troupe The State, who were on MTV for a few years in the early and mid-1990s. The primary one is Ken Marino, who's great as Ron Donald, the trying-to-make-it-work team leader, but several other members of The State show up in individual episodes, and each and every one of them nails their roles, whether it's as an aspiring orgy leader, a delusional community actor, or a high school buddy who's never matured beyond his senior year.

This show was consistently funny enough that I had to check and see why it didn't go beyond its two ten-episode seasons. Turns out that, being on Starz, it just didn't have a ton of exposure. It had also already lost Jane Lynch to the far bigger smash hit TV sit-com Glee after her first season on Party Down, which was a blow to the cast (the hilarious Megan Mullaly was brought in, but her character was a bit too straight-laced to fully allow Mullaly to flex her comic muscles). And apparently, the show was about to lose Adam Scott to soon-to-be new hit show Parks and Rec. So they pulled the plug, which I get.

Still, I recommend this one to anyone who likes some solid, R-rated humor and silliness. This is definitely a hidden gem that I was really glad to discover. 

Idiot Boxing, HBO Finales Edition: Game of Thrones, season 8 (2019); Veep, season 8 (2019); Crashing, season 3 (2019)

The dour faces depicted here match what many viewers felt
about this final season of the titanically popular series.

Game of Thrones, season 8

Spoilers Coming (which frankly, you deserve if you haven't caught up and watched the show by now)

Well, that was a bit of a letdown.

Not that we couldn't see it coming, but the final season of the insanely popular fantasy TV show maintained the high-gloss, rather puzzling mediocrity that had been set up during the previous season.

The end of season 7 of the show saw Daenerys joining her forces with Jon Snow and several northern factions, including wildlings from beyond The Wall and other assorted motley bands. These uneasy and unlikely alliances gather at Winterfell to try and fend off the Night King and his ever-growing army of White Walkers, including a zombie ice dragon. Meanwhile, Cersei is down south in King's Landing. Though she had promised to send soldiers to the north to assist the presumptive Targaryen queen, it is all a sham, as Cersei plans to wait for the Night King's forces to, if not defeat, then at least weaken the northern forces before they attempt to wrest the Iron Throne from the domineering Queen Lannister.

Season 8, further winnowing down the established 10-episode pattern of the first 6 seasons, restricted itself to 6 episodes, the last four of which clocked in at nearly 90 minutes each. Despite having about the same running length as most previous seasons, this final season featured the sloppiest, choppiest hacking and slashing away of nearly every subtle, nuanced plot and character point built up during the show's first five or six seasons. There was evidence of this in the penultimate season, but it is often painfully obvious in this one. I needn't go through them all, as more dedicated and sensitive GoT geeks have done all of that legwork for me and unleashed their ire upon every social media outlet known to man. For my part, I agree with much of the frustration felt, though I hardly take it as personally as many seem to have. I'll stick to just a few major points.

One of a few cringe-worthy moments of romantic cheese in
this season. In hindsight, it may have been a clumsy attempt
to throw viewers off the scent of where the story was going.

Firstly, the idea of Daenerys "breaking bad" was very poorly executed. I don't think it's a terrible idea to run with the notion of "power corrupting," and even throw the audience a curve-ball by having a beloved character get warped into a dark version of themselves. But Daenerys's turn into a murderous, egomaniacal tyrant is barely organic in any way. Like so many things about this season, it felt as if the writers started with a contrived concept, and then worked backwards to shoehorn a "they'll never see this coming" notion into an incredibly undersized time allotment. I think Daenerys's arc could have worked, if it had been set up and alluded to more delicately along the way. As it is, it felt like it was tacked onto the end for shock value more than anything that served genuine character development.

Then there's Bran ending up on the Iron Throne. Again, this perhaps could have been an intriguing and satisfying story element had Bran done anything more than sit around in a wheelchair, staring blankly into space for 99% of the last two seasons. While his powers are intriguing, they were never explored or much explained, and Tyrion's grand speech about Bran "having the greatest story of them all" is baldly insulting. For me, this was yet another idea that seemed to be included for the sole purpose of keeping us viewers off balance. Having surprises in a story is great, but they have to feel logical within the story. Bran ending up on the throne felt far from that. You want a great story, Tyrion? How about your wife Sansa, who matured and survived the machinations of several of the most devious and evil bastards in all of Westeros? Or how about Jon Snow, the guy who was literally brought back from the dead and saved everyone from the savior-turned-psycho Danaerys? That's a pretty good story, eh? But no, let's wheel out the catatonic weirdo that barely anyone knows and have him rule the joint. Makes sense.

There were moments and elements of this eighth season that I did enjoy. The quieter second episode had some strong moments of interpersonal dialogue in it, and some of the battle scenes and fights were quite memorable. On the whole, though, I have to say that this was easily the weakest season of the entire series. Now granted, for a show that set such an incredibly high bar, this was almost inevitable. But the dropoff was more precipitous than I had expected.

The good news for people like me, who had been avidly reading the source books for many years before the show existed, is that there are still two more novels to come (if the George R.R. Martin eventually gets around to them). And I feel confident that they will be far more satisfying in their conclusions than the show was. Perhaps the saddest thing about the HBO adaptation is that, despite how incredibly strong the first five seasons are, I doubt that I'll ever bother re-watching the series due to the knowledge that it all ends with a bit of a "thud."

Selena Meyer, along with a few of her brutally incompetent
staff. In the finale season, Selena tries one more shot at
winning the presidency.

Veep, season 7 (final season)

In a fortunate contrast to the far more famous Game of Thrones, the scathing HBO comedy series Veep went out on a hilarious high note.

After what I found to be relatively more mean-spirited and narratively scattershot 6th and 7th seasons, the final season of the political parody show found that great groove that it had in its stronger earlier seasons. Despite every sign in the world telling Selena Myer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) not to make yet another run at the presidency, her unfailing ego and narcissism saw her once again ignore any sense of reality or what might be best for the country as she kicks off her campaign at the beginning of Season 8.

This season made full use of the political realities at work in the United States over the last several years, featuring thinly-veiled references to Russian interference in elections, the frighteningly broad appeal of ignorant bigots like the current Commander in Chief, and the crippling identity politics of the far left. Many characters who had previously been smaller players become concentrated versions of figures who we know all too well in reality. The moronic Jonah Ryan actually finds a support base for his platform of toxic idiocy. The oblivious Jordan Spleth finds himself backing up the political ladder through a series of gaffs and accidents on the parts of leaders above him. And plenty of others with no business making public policy are whipped around by the vortex of their own reckless ambitions within the maelstrom of U.S. politics. I’ll have to go back and watch the earlier seasons again, but my initial reaction was that this last season may have been the show’s best, which is really saying something.

The humor was fully back on point here, too. As stated, I found some of the humor in the previous two seasons a bit dark and disturbing to be terribly funny. While season eight certainly keeps things cynical, I felt that it rediscovered the right balance in order to keep things humorous rather than downright upsetting. In this final season, the political and social commentary and the vicious insults come as fast, furious, and hilarious as any of the best seasons earlier in the show's run.

I'm not sure what can be said about the cast that one wouldn't have already seen in any of the previous seven seasons. Nearly a decade ago, virtually the entire cast came into this series as well-seasoned comedy acting pros, so it was no surprise that they finished the run just as strongly as they all started. One could spend multiple paragraphs breaking down the hilarity behind the various characters and the actors' portrayal of them, but I'll reserve it for the star Julia Louis Dreyfus, who is arguably on the Mount Rushmore of modern era TV comedy. Just between her turn as Elaine on Seinfeld and Selina Meyer on Veep, she's a living legend in the field, never mind some of her great turns on lesser-known shows and movies. It was great to see her end such a great series on top.

There is no doubt that before long, my wife and I will go back and do a steady rewatch of this show over several weeks or a couple of months. From the very first moments we began watching years ago, we knew that we were missing certain moments because we were laughing so hard and the jokes were coming so fast. That's a mark of great comedy, and I'm already looking forward to the time when we work out way through the over-the-top madness of this show again.


Crashing, season 3 (2019)

Pete's new girlfriend, Kat. Pete may be getting his professional
comedy feet under him, but his relationships can still be messy.

Unlike the previous two HBO shows reviewed, this season was not expected to be the show's final one, with it being officially cancelled shortly before the end of this third season. This is unfortunate, as both my wife and I highly enjoyed all three seasons of this stand-up comedy-focused series.

This third season sees Pete Holmes continue to make a more serious living out of stand-up comedy. At the start of the season, he has wrapped up the lucrative-but-limiting college comedy tour that he netted at the end of the previous season. Through this season, he keeps trying to find a bigger break at more noted comedy clubs. This doesn't immediately go very well, but Pete finds romance with a strong, free-spirited woman, Kat (Madeline Wise). Pete has some successes and failures, both professionally and personally, and by season's end, he does find himself in a better place than at season's start. He's certainly not "big time" yet, but he is a solid, professional stand-up.

Once again, the show was hilarious from start to finish. From the jump, Crashing had the built-in humor of having an aspiring comedian interacting with well-known, well-established, extremely funny stand-up comedians. This season is no different, although at this point, the show relied less on famous guests and allowed Pete and a few other, lesser-known characters take more center stage. We also continue to get a bit more insight into the world of stand-up comedy, where success or failure can sometimes be infuriatingly out of one's control, even if a person is genuinely funny. I also found the fourth episode engaging, as it focused on the changing perception of offensive, Andrew Dice Clay-type "shock comics" who were big in the 1990s but who have lost nearly all favor in the wake of social movement such as #MeToo.

Although the creators of the show were planning on further seasons and HBO's cancellation was a surprise for them, this season did actually have some sense of closure to it. For a show whose plug was unexpectedly pulled, this is about all one could ask for. I'll be grateful to Pete Holmes and everyone involved for putting together such a fun show and introducing my wife and I to several comics whom we hadn't heard of before but whom we are now fans of. I still highly recommend this show to anyone who digs stand-up comedy. In a very manageable twenty-seven episodes at about 30 minutes each, it's easy to dive into the whole series and get plenty of great laughs.

Idiot Boxing: The Good Place, seasons 1 and 2 (2017-2018); Castlevania, seasons 1 and 2 (2017, 2018)

The Good Place, seasons 1 and 2 (2017-2018)

A really fun, often smart show that exhibits plenty of sly and absurd humor. My wife and I jumped on this train just a little late and barely missed the third season, but we were glad to have discovered it while it's still in the middle of its run.

The show follows Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) as she awakens in a strange place, sitting face-to-face with Michael (Ted Danson). Michael informs Eleanor that she has died and is now in "the good place," (a rather non-specific term for the general idea of an idyllic after-life existence, or "heaven" to some of us). This is all fine and good to Eleanor, except that she is sure that there has been some mistake, seeing as how she had been far from a "good" person during her life on Earth. As she meets more and more other amazing people, including her "soul mate" Chidi (William Jackson Harper), she grows ever-more terrified of being discovered and sent to "the bad place."

It is tempting to say more about the plot, but one of the great strengths of the show is its unexpected plot turns and how it reveals everything to the viewers. As such, I'll leave any further description alone.

The dynamics between Eleanor and Michael shift several
times through the first season, allowing Ted Danson and
Kristen Bell to show off the varieties of their comedy chops.

The show does a brilliant job of having an absolute blast with concepts about life after death and what constitutes people's "heaven" and "hell." And the creativity behind the mythology is as impressive as it is fascinating. The writers clearly have plenty of fun working with the hierarchy of everything, revealing the greater workings of the fantasy world which they've created. There are plenty of fun sight gags to go along with the characters and dialog, and the cast all seem to revel in embracing the often strange tones and shifts which they must portray. As the circumstances change wildly around them, the six primary characters are buffeted about, creating for some surprising and hilarious reactions.

The cast is phenomenal. Bell and Danson are well-established actors. For me, though, the two great revelations are William Jackson Harper as Chidi and D'Arcy Carden as Janet, the artificial intelligence informational system in The Good Place. And there are even some recurring characters who just nail their often-specific roles with hilarious precision. Jama Williamson as Val and Jason Mantzoukas as Derek come to mind, but they're hardly alone. All of these comedy acting pros bring an already-great script to its best comedy life.

I've only just read that the show runners have stated that the fourth season will be the last, as they would rather tell their original story and conclude it there, instead of dragging it out for other motivations. This will likely be for the best, though it will be a shame to say goodbye to such a clever, funny show as this.

Count Vlad Tepes "Dracula." The show does a decent job of
making the classic horror character a bit sympathetic, but
spends way too much time in the second season on his
underlings and their selfish plots.

Castlevania, seasons 1 and 2 (2017, 2018)

A made-for-Netflix adaptation based on the immensely popular, three-decades-old video game series. I found it to be modestly entertaining, but no more.

I've been a fairly avid video-gamer for most of my life. Despite this, I never feel the need to watch TV or film adaptations of games, as they have a horrible track record. The only reason I watched Castlevania was that it is written by highly creative and talented comic book writer Warren Ellis, whose work from the 1990s I read and enjoyed quite a lot. And given that the first season was composed of a very manageable four 25-minute episodes, it seemed like a small initial commitment.

The first season was fairly compelling. Taking narrative elements from the video game mythology, which itself borrows heavily from classic horror literature such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and other noted vampire tales, Castlevania begins its focus on Dracula (Graham McTavish) himself. In roughly the 15th century, the immensely powerful and mostly reclusive Vlad "The Impaler" Tepes - a.k.a. "Dracula" - is approached by a young woman, Lisa, hoping to learn arcane medical arts from the intimidating alpha vampire. Though it may seem so, this is not an unusual request, as Dracula is actually a highly learned creature who has amassed vast troves of literature and knowledge on human health and medicine. Lisa and the count soon fall in love, and even marry. Tragedy strikes, however, when Lisa is one day taken and burned for a witch by the regional religious zealots. When Dracula returns and learns of his, he vows to destroy all of mankind as a blight on the earth.

The first season briskly tells the tale of how a handful of talented fighters come together in a desperate attempt to thwart Dracula and his hordes of dark, supernatural monsters from obliterating humankind. Primarily, the sorceress Sypha (Alejandra Raynoso) tracks down the legendary monster hunter Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage), whom she finds in a drunken, cynical stupor in a remote tavern. Once convinced to lend his skills to the fight, Trevor and Sypha help humans take a small stand against the forces of darkness, and they literally unearth a mysterious and powerful ally in the fight - a vampire named Alucard (James Callis) who has his own reasons for seeking Dracula's demise.

That first season served as an entertaining teaser for the larger story, and it embraced its "mature content" label by not holding back with the animated violence, rough language, and occasionally deeper themes around religion and the darkness inherent in human beings.

Sypha, Trevor, and Alucard. The first season suggested some
really intriguing possibilities for this trio of monster hunters,
but only a few of them were realized through the 2nd season.

The second season changed focus a bit, spending a great deal of time on the machinations in and between Dracula's monstrous forces. We meet and follow the schemes between his most powerful lieutenants and the "architects" who animate the horrific creatures that make up his armies. Frankly, I found these storylines mostly dull, often wishing the tale to turn back to Sypha, Trevor, and Alucard. However, even when the show did focus on that heroic trio, the pace was often rather slow and meandering, seeming to want to build relationships and rapport between them, but never coming together or feeling as organic as it could have.

There were a few interesting action sequences, and some funny moments, courtesy of Warren Ellis's sly, dark wit. But by the end of the second season, I really had no desire to see any more from this series. A third season has been confirmed, but I won't be bothering with it. I found the show to be decent, but there are just too many excellent television shows out there for me to spend any time with something that I only find "decent."