Ryan McGee
Monday Morning Critic: Is ‘Powers’ Worth a Playstation Plus Account?
Welcome back to another installment of the Monday Morning Critic. In this space each week, I’ll be looking at the week that was in addition to the week ahead in television. The format will shift each week, as the world of TV will dictate the form and content of each piece.
In this week’s installment: what makes The 100 a continual stand-out this year, and a review of Powers.
Monday Morning Critic: The Best Show You’re Probably Not Watching
Welcome back to another installment of the Monday Morning Critic. In this space each week, I’ll be looking at the week that was in addition to the week ahead in television. The format will shift each week, as the world of TV will dictate the form and content of each piece.
In this week’s installment: a look at the upcoming American Crime and praise for The Goldbergs.
Monday Morning Critic: What Is a Comedy, What Is a Drama and What Does It Matter?
In terms of its approach to the comedy/drama cut-off point, The Emmys have gone the way of pizza delivery: Television is apparently now thirty minutes or less, or it’s not funny.
That’s the takeaway from its announcement last week of certain changes to its awards structure in future years. Comedy series are now defined as being a half hour or less, while drama series are anything over that thirty-minute demarcation.
‘The Flash’ Review: “Fallout”
That shouldn’t be a revolutionary thing to say, and most of this stems from the type of TV logic that makes you look at blue sky and think, “Hmmm, but maybe it’s really orange?” Answers are rarely what they seem since shows often have something else up their sleeve to completely contradict the norm later on. Another reason why an unassailable fact stinks? Having answers is boring because then there’s no way for the audience to “participate,” as it were, in a piece of fiction. Yes, that participation is always an illusion, but simply mulling over possibilities (without the need to actually “solve” them) is one of the chief pleasures of serialized narration.
Monday Morning Critic: The Best SNL Cast Ever
Welcome back to another installment of the Monday Morning Critic. In this space each week, I’ll be looking at the week that was in addition to the week ahead in television. The format will shift each week, as the world of TV will dictate the form and content of each piece.
In this week’s installment: my all-time cast of SNL.
‘The Flash’ Review: “The Nuclear Man”
It’s somewhat ironic that an episode featuring this much Firestorm would leave me a little cold. But that’s where I am tonight with ‘The Flash,’ which did enough to keep things moving along even if its actual content was all over the map both narratively and tonally. There were about three or four solid episodes in “The Nuclear Man,” all fighting for the same space. But whereas the battleground over Ronnie Raymond’s body yielded a literal explosion, this episode yielded few fireworks.
Monday Morning Critic: Why ‘Arrow’ is Suffering This Season
Welcome back to another installment of the Monday Morning Critic. In this space each week, I’ll be looking at the week that was in addition to the week ahead in television. The format will shift each week, as the world of TV will dictate the form and content of each piece.
In this week’s installment: what is holding this season of ‘Arrow’ back, and what the film ‘Boyhood’ says about the state of television.
‘The Flash’ Review: “Crazy For You”
Bouncing back nicely after last week’s subpar episode, tonight’s episode of ‘The Flash’ didn’t rewrite the rules of television but provided an entertaining hour all the same. “Crazy For You” is the type of episode this show does well when not focused exclusively on the show’s über-mythology: It provided a villain-of-the-week that tied into the emotional states of the characters, deployed some inventive action sequences, and then made you cry a little at the show’s latest open-hearted expression of love between two people. Not that I cried, or anything. GORILLA GRODD 4 LYFE, RIGHT?
Monday Morning Critic: The Premiere of ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ and the Pleasures of “Anomaly Episodes”
Welcome back to another installment of the Monday Morning Critic. In this space each week, I’ll be looking at the week that was in addition to the week ahead in television. The format will shift each week, as the world of TV will dictate the form and content of each piece. In this week’s installment: a review of a new ABC comedy and a discussion of one of television’s most important narrative assets.
‘The Flash’ Review: “The Sound and the Fury”
Look, when you produce 22 episodes a year, there are going to be some terrible episodes. Heck, it happens on 10- and 13-episode seasons as well. It happens all the time, even on the best of shows. Even ‘Lost’ produced “Stranger In A Strange Land,” an episode devoted to Jack Shephard’s tattoos, kites, and Bai Ling. ‘Lost’ is one of my favorite shows of all time, and that’s one of the worst episodes of television that I intentionally watched. So saying “The Sound And The Fury” was awful doesn’t mean ‘The Flash’ is suddenly awful. It just means the show had a bad week, the equivalent of Barry Allen tripping over something at supersonic speed and then tumbling into a brick wall. Everything’s fine, except for this episode.