September Roundup, '20
Y'all see the debate last night? lol, j/k. Me neither. Nobody needs to see that shit to know who to vote for. So, vote for Biden. 'Cause we FUCKING HAVE TO. Anyway, onto the good TV (including quite a lot about voter suppression and the piece of shit we need to work extra hard to kick the fuck out)...
Watch This Shit:
A pretty fascinating look at the teachers and students at a Massachusetts high school for drug addicts.
Hey, true crimers! This one’s for you. An Army surgeon's wife and daughters are found murdered, with him sleeping soundly next to his wife's body. He claims a group of hippies did it, Helter Skelter-style, but the prosecutors were having nooooone of it.
A two-part, four-hour docuseries explaining in great detail precisely how fucked we were in 2016.
Amber 👏 Ruffin 👏 is 👏 ev 👏 er 👏 y 👏 thing [and, sorry, way better than Wilmore] and 👏 you 👏 need 👏 to 👏 fucking 👏 watch 👏 her 👏 fucking 👏 show. #shitballsfartbutts
Gilmore Girls meets Britain meets a wank at a spank bank.
Samuel L. Jackson traces his lineage and ends up, quite literally, taking a deep dive into the transatlantic trade of the enslaved in this amazing historical docuseries.
Werq the World: UK. Unlike its US counterpart, this series doesn't focus on just one queen per episode, which I much prefer.
Kal Penn Approves This Message
Kal Penn, doing his damnedest to be the Linda Ellerbee of the 2020 election.
I mean, why not? Sure, there are subtitles, but they do randomly speak in English! And none of them Dutch bitches are fracking! Plus, there's ChelseaBoy. Gurl, can you even? Give it a fuckin' go.
In all honesty, I wanted to avoid this miniseries because the description of it sounded simultaneously like too much and not enough. But when it comes down to it, watching it makes you feel like you're in some kind of art house freak-folk fever dream. Which... yeah, I'm here for. It'll probably all end with a thud, but I don't even mind.
Netflix's addition to the 2020 "wake the fuck up, America" electoral campaign. It's just three half hour episodes and the first one's available for free on YouTube, so there's no excuse not to watch it!
Syfy continues its attempt to compete with Adult Swim (which, for the record, I'm not mad at) with this post-apocalyptic zoo full of bored animals doing whatever they can think of to pass the time. It's dumb. Get into it.
Keef is a successful cartoonist who gets woke-the-fuck-up (after years of being Switzerland when it comes to race relations) by way of shitty cops treating him the way they treat black men: they tackle him to the ground and point guns at him for posting flyers while black. (#acab)
The trauma that comes from such an experience is probably a bit different for everyone, but for Keef in particular it... makes inanimate objects speak to him, Wonderfalls-style.
Meh:
I want to tell you not to watch this, as it's based on James Comey's book, and James Comey can eat a fat herpes-laden dick as far as I'm concerned, but the people behind this 4-hour limited series are unquestionably making this to get a true Trump-as-awful story out into the world before the upcoming election. Therefor: watch it to get that picture painted clearly. Especially for your dumb drunk uncle. But ignore every single itty-bitty bit of them trying to make Comey sympathetic in any fatherfucking gotdamn way.
Another Syfy adult animated entry comes in the form of a talking red panda (who is not Isis!) that makes a couple of 20-somethings magical via its butthole. #fuckyeah
It's only in Meh because it's sort of a grown-ish version of Steven Universe, but feels (ironically) a bit less magical. Worth a silly watch nonetheless.
Let's talk about Nurse Ratched for a hot second, shall we? Admittedly, I was a terrible watchaholic for never having seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest before, so my impression of the character was just what the world's was: bitch is evil. So, I made sure to watch the painfully realistic film before the first episode of Ryan Murphy's campy mess of a prequel series. Throughout it, I found myself waiting and waiting for her to be awful. For her to lose her cool. For her to raise her voice. For her to secretly inject a patient with poison and leave the room while smirking at the camera before disappearing into the shadows. Because surely something like that was going to happen. But no. None of it did. A female nurse in a mental institution had to deal with 19 mentally ill men, one of whom (surprise, surprise) was absolutely sure he didn't belong there and, to prove that "fact," he raised hell a few times and eventually forced someone to have sex with a prostitute. After taking a whole-fucking-lot of shit, Nurse Ratched finally goes full-evil and earns herself a spot in cinema super-villain history by responding to the night of reckless debauchery with a simple, "I'm going to tell your mother."
Now, look... I realize she said it to a disturbed man and perhaps she knew it would affect him greater than it would others, but as far as evil deeds go, threatening to tattle is not high up on the list. And she gets choked nearly to death for it! Did she then choose for the man who tried to murder her to get lobotomized? Or was that shit completely out of her hands? Perhaps, just maybe, that's how things fuckin' went down back then when you're committed to an insane asylum and then try to kill someone who works there. I'm certainly not saying that it's right or just or should have happened at all, but neither should a woman doing a hard job as calmly as humanly possible 99.99% of the time being remembered as the cunt of the century.
So, here we are now at Murphy's take. It's the making of a "monster," set against a ridiculous backdrop of greens and blues, surrounded by nary an unattractive man, one (count 'em: ONE) of whom is black. It's much of what we've come to expect from him. The performances are a massive plus, but the actors are giving everything they've got to a series that frankly doesn't deserve them. And that’s that on that.
This one's for the comic book nerds who wish the Heroes reboot was better. The long lost sequel to a prophetic comic book goes up for sale and, uh... the battle to stop the apocalypse begins. #Natch.
It's a remake of a 2014 British series, which I haven't seen, so I'm enjoying it. But, fair warning, those who have seen the original seem to really dislike this new version.
I mean, Larry Wilmore's got important and timely shit to say which I'm sure is why he pressed on with saying it on this new Peacock series despite the ever-present covid nightmare, but... oof. I wish it could've waited until having an audience again was possible because without any kind of reaction, him sitting in a room talking alone gets a bit cringe-worthy. Again, though: the shit's important. So, let's just hope he does more zoom calling in future episodes.
Don't Watch This Shit:
Stop it.
More rich white assholes being rich white assholes. Even if it is about their hypocrisy, we've got enough rich white hypocrites to deal with in real life. We don't need any more of that shit in our "entertainment."
Fox, it's long been time for you to get your shit together. Get fucking to it already, will you?
🤦
Sorry, Tituss. This new singing competition series you're hosting isn't a good one. The contestants aren't great and you're way too excited about it.
Honorable Mention:
A breathtaking documentary short, equal parts beautiful and painful, about the life of Latasha Harlins who was murdered, on camera, in 1991 at the age of fifteen. Her killer received no jail time.
All In: The Fight for Democracy
An important. as. fucking. fuck. film about voter suppression in the US.
The Babysitter was a damn good time and this sequel doesn't quite live up to it, but it's still worth a watch for many reasons. Bella Thorne isn't one of them, though. Personally, I've always felt the need for her to fuck right the hell off, but even more so now that she's taken a massive shit on OnlyFans.
Anyway, her bullshit aside: this is definitely the horror-comedy thumbs up of the month.
Michelle Buteau: Welcome to Buteaupia
The comedy jem of the month. It's J.Lo and pet peeves and it's a real good time.
Facebook Is Killing Democracy: The Docudrama. Mark Kennedy says it best in his review: "'The Social Dilemma' is the first film you'll watch and immediately want to toss your smartphone into the garbage can. And then toss the garbage can through the window of a Facebook executive."
The Shit I Missed:
A really fun short-form queer workplace comedy set at an Australian sexual health clinic, with a stupidly pretty man at the forefront. After originally premiering for Aussies back in December, Crackle's imported it this month for us stateside.
A New Zealand murder mystery, a cursed bridge, and a new-in-town detective with second sight. Originally airing back in April, it got its stateside premiere this month on Sundance Now.