June Roundup, '18

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Summer TV premiere time is in full effect and there is some major goodness and even more terrible badness to go around. Microreviews of the premieres are below, with the especially good goodness in bold.

Watch This Shit:

  • Dietland

    An overweight advice columnist, forced to care about her weight only because of the atrocious shit this world puts people through, meets a god damn magical-unicorn-of-a-woman who couldn't care less about her own weight (other than the back problems she wants to fix) and, more importantly, a weird stalker (sidebar: are there non-weird stalkers?) who just wants our dear advice columnist to have a good day. And by "good day" she means "badass life of hurting men who hurt women, vigilante style." It's Sweet/Vicious meets Weight Watchers. Plus it's Marti Noxon. MUST watch.

  • Impulse

    A "troubled" teen/the new kid at school, who keeps having seizures (#funstuff), realizes she's not actually ill. She just has the ability to teleport is all. Fair warning: this ability accidentally results in her rapist becoming paralyzed. A large portion of the series apparently deals with her facing consequences for that. Whether they're legal consequences or not, I'm not sure, but if they are, I'm definitely not looking forward to any of that bullshit in any way.

  • Love Is ____

    This. Shit. Is so. Adorableeeee. A couple who met each other in the '90s tell the tale a few decades later, The Notebook style, except no miserable ending! Plus a soundtrack chock full of the jams of my childhood. It's a good time, y'all.

  • Pose

    Category is: Living for the Ball, But You're Sometimes Stuck in an '80s After-School Special. If you think you're in for some good ol' Pride-Month-premiering trans primetime goodness, allowing you to escape from this shitty world for an hour every week, then keep this series away from your televisions because FAIR WARNING: Trump shows up about half-way through the pilot in the form of Dawson Fucking Leary introducing Ryan Murphy's biggest knob gobbler (because what is an FX series if Evan god damn Peters isn't whipping his nipples out in it?) to fill the rich/white/cocaine quota of the '80s. It was almost enough to land this shit in "Meh," but, come on... how am I not gonna recommend mother fuckin' Pose?

  • Unapologetic

    Aisha Tyler's late night talk show disguised as the Dietland aftershow.

Meh:

Don't Watch This Shit:

  • America Says

    When a show is called America Says and someone at some point during the show says the sentence: "Put a little paprika on your wheelchair" . . . then I'm out.

  • American Woman

    A.k.a. "So You Think You Can Make a Real Housewife's Origin Story Seem Feminist."

  • Animals Doing Things

    This one's for when you're, like, 60 years old, stoned, and probably in a bad mood. Or when you're a child. It's viral videos of animals being animals, with Howie Mandel making it about him.

  • Cloak & Dagger

    Marvel's gross attempt at being "woke." It's exploitation disguised as... what even is this? Drama? I count two black bodies brutalized and one attempted rape, all within the first fifteen minutes, and not a single discernible plot. Other than, of course, life generally sucking for two orphans who survived bad accidents as kids and now have glowey and/or smokey fucking hands or something? It's pretty dumb, y'all. Also, for good measure, the attempted rapist makes a reappearance around 40 minutes in. To try to rape again. Folks, when the depiction of violence becomes the entirety of the storytelling, it's a fucking problem.

  • Five Points

    I'm too annoyed to articulate why you shouldn't watch this shit. Just don't.

  • Just Another Immigrant

    A successful British comedian chooses to move himself and his entire family to America because... he wants to sell out a venue and make a TV series in the process. Might be more impactful if it were someone actually forced into immigration whose goal is to not fucking die, while keeping their family alive and together in the process, rather than some dude trying to get a gig.

  • Reverie

    Someone lame at NBC really liked San Junipero.

  • Strange Angel

    I tried real hard, y'all. There's apparently crazy "sex magick" (whatever the fuck that shit is) which, let's be real, I was definitely looking forward to seeing... but I just could not get past the utter boringness of everything else. I found myself thinking "Wasn't Manhattan canceled?" And I liked Manhattan! This show made me dislike another show that has absolutely nothing to do with it. That's how much it sucks.

    Plus, it's on CBS All Access. Quit acting like that's something you use.

  • Succession

    People need to quit pretending that "rich white assholes being rich white assholes" is entertainment. Seriously, cut it the fuck out. Enough already.

Honorable Mention:

  • Believer

    That Radioactive guy thinks shitty Mormons need to cut it out and love them some gays. #agreed

  • Hannah Gadsby: Nanette

    I guarantee a friend of yours has posted about this on Facebook, so I'm not going to dive deep. You already know what it is. It's comedy. It's shattering. If you haven't watched it yet, you're not my friend.

  • It Will Be Chaos

    Actual stories of actual refugees trying to live through the crisis.

ReviewsAlan CibaA&E, ABC, Aisha Tyler, AMC, America Says, American Woman, Animals Doing Things, Believer, Big City Greens, CBS, Cloak & Dagger, Cultureshock, Dan Reynolds, Dietland, Disney, Evan Peters, Facebook, Felicity, Five Points, Freeform, FX, GSN, Hannah Gadsby, HBO, Hey Arnold, Howie Mandel, Impulse, It Will Be Chaos, James Van Der Beek, Jerry Springer, Just Another Immigrant, Love Is ____, Manhattan, Marti Noxon, Michael Jackson, Nanette, National Geographic, NBC, Netflix, OWN, Paramount, Pose, Reverie, Ryan Murphy, Showtime, Strange Angel, Succession, Sweet/Vicious, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Hollow, The Last Defense, The Notebook, The Osbournes, The Twilight Zone, Unapologetic, Viola Davis, Weight Watchers, YouTubeComment