Of all the characters on Superstore, Amy is the only real grown-up. She's the one who has to make sure everyone is doing their jobs. She's the one who has to put up with complaints when she tries to make people do their jobs. She's the one who has to put the happiness of her husband over her own (at least the couple of times we've heard from her husband). She's the responsible one, and she hates that she has to be the responsible one but someone has to keep the store together, and Guns, Pills, and Birds is a prime example of why that person has to be her.
The main story in Guns, Pills, and Birds deals with Amy assigning Jonah to work the gun counter. Of course Jonah hates guns and would prefer not to be on the gun counter but letting him switch off would only lead to everyone else trying to switch off their assignments and possibly Mertle refusing to sell rice so he has to stay. Now gun ownership is of course a very hot-button issue, but Superstore handles it with grace and finesse, letting Jonah be anti-gun but not letting the episode become a lecture on guns and whether or not selling them in stores is a good thing. Instead, after Jonah exercises his right of refusal and doesn't let a clearly dangerous person buy a gun, Jonah begins increasingly stretching his definition of "dangerous" and denies guns to more and more people for increasingly absurd reasons (the best one being "I just don't trust redheads".). Jonah is taking a policy meant to keep people safe and exploiting it because he doesn't want to do his job. The show doesn't take a stand on whether Jonah's opinion on guns is right or wrong but it makes it clear that Jonah's actions are wrong, while also getting a fair amount of jokes out of Jonah's discomfort.
Amy meanwhile is preparing for a rare weekend to herself. Her husband Adam is taking their daughter on a camping trip and she's worked two doubles this week, so she's ready to just eat pizza, drink wine, and watch Freddie Prinze Jr. movies all weekend. Until her husband calls, begging her to take Emma camping because his friend just scored last minute tickets to an entrepreneur conference. This of course is a major blow and while Amy agrees to it, she is not happy. This is understandable and is something the episode expertly builds to by having Amy's excitement about this weekend to herself be present in almost every scene she's in until it's taken away by a man who thinks he can do whatever he wants and that Amy should "just be cool for once". So Jonah, who won't sell guns to anyone and is mad at Amy for putting him in this position and the Open Carry protesters who quickly storm the store to protest become a stand-in for her frustration at her husband and her frustration that she's the one who has to be the grown-up. Jonah's story has turned into Amy's story and it makes it a more effective story because now instead of being a story about guns, it's a more personal story about Amy's frustrations. When Amy takes Jonah and the protesters to task in the middle of the store, it's a funny scene (mainly for the protester who asks if Freddy Prinze Jr. is dead and how that throws Amy off), but also a big moment for Amy. It's a moment that clearly has an effect on Jonah, who decides to just work the gun counter. The show leaves it ambiguous if he's just doing this out of pity for Amy though, which is a smart call.
If the "Guns" part of the episode is light on laughs (though still has some good ones), the "Birds" portion is heavy on them. It's a simple story. A crow gets into the store and Garrett, Dina, and Mateo try to catch it, but one the store uses for great laughs, especially when the efforts to get the crow out bring in a whole murder of crows. It's also a story that lets us see new sides of all the characters involved. Garrett has been the aloof cool guy for the entirety of the show's run so far, so watching him panic and be freaked out by the crows is hilarious. A scene where he tried to hide in a tent that turns out to have a crow in it is the funniest part of the episode and it even leads to a nice scene at the end where the crow lands near him and he realizes it's not so bad. Meanwhile, after two episodes of Dina being at her most insufferable and Mateo in "eager to please" mode, it's refreshing to see them in a different context. Dina's love of birds has been one of her earliest character traits, so her desire to see the birds unharmed makes sense. Mateo meanwhile gets to be a little unhinged, which Nico Santos plays gloriously. The story ends on a dark note with Mateo misunderstanding Dina's request to "take care of the bird" leading to him beating the bag with the crow in it against the ground repeatedly as Dina and Garrett talk about being compassionate to animals, but it's a note that's hilarious and earned. Hopefully we can continue to see new sides to all of these characters in the future.
Glenn meanwhile is also given a story about a hot-button issue, but it's a story that winds up feeling like a missed opportunity. Spinning out of Jonah's discomfort with selling guns, Glenn mentions he'd have a problem if the store was selling morning after pills, only to find out the store does in fact sell those. So he tries to prevent Tate (Josh Lawson) from selling them and eventually goes to buy them all himself, only to discover after sale that he just spent over 1100 dollars on pills he can't afford or return, leading him to try and sell them himself. It's a funny story that ties into the themes of the main plot well. Mark McKinney is hilarious playing Glenn's panic and discomfort as he tries to sell something he doesn't believe in and Lawson is always a treat as the world's douchiest pharmacist. The problem is it's a story that's just kind of there and doesn't tell us anything new about Glenn. The "Guns" portion of the episode was funny but also told a strong character story for Amy (And Jonah to a lesser extent.). The "Birds" portion is mostly just an excuse for wacky comedy, but still managed to show off new sides of Glenn, Dina, and Mateo. The "Pills" portion just settles for being funny without the character work and it's a bit of a letdown. The show had a chance to look at Glenn's pro-life perspective and his objections to the morning after pill in the same nuanced and emphatic way it handles other issues and pushed that chance to the side for a story that's ultimately weightless.
My disappointments with the "Pills" portion aside though, Guns, Pills, and Birds was another very funny episode of what's becoming a very confident second season of Superstore. The show has gotten to the point where the writers know the characters well enough to just put them into all kinds of crazy situations and let them fly. And yes, it doesn't always work but the sum of the whole manages to easily be greater than the parts. Hopefully Amy is given some kind of a break soon though. It must be hard always having to be the grown-up.
Memorable Moments
-Best Interstitial: Mertle sits on a bench feeding crows.
-Garrett keeps a list of all the "crazy white-person things" Jonah does or says. It includes, wearing boat shoes, fencing, BBC America, makes his own trail mix ("You love my trail mix", Jonah protests), and the phrase "I want my objection noted".
-Amy's idea of an amazing movie differs from Jonah's substantially. "I'm thinking mid-'90s Rom-com, like Freddie Prinze Jr. takes the nerd to the prom because underneath those glasses, she's really beautiful, Jonah. She's beautiful".
-"Big weekend. Gonna get all liquored up and promiscuous". Glenn's whole storyline is worth it for his delivery of promiscuous.
-Garrett has had it up to here with Amy and Jonah. "Oh, god, can you guys just act like adults and have an affair or something?"
-The sequence where the gun protestors, Amy's frustrations, Glenn's efforts to sell Morning After Pills and the crows collide is a thing of beauty.
-"Bag of blood! It's a bag of Blood! Oh, you monster." The perfect way to close the episode.
-Don't worry Amy. Freddie Prinze Jr. is definitely still alive.
Friday, 7 October 2016
Monday, 3 October 2016
Timeless Is Dumb Fun, And That's Great
Are you looking for the next great Television drama? One of those shows that sends your jaw to the floor every week and leaves you in chills? Well you should probably stop reading this then because Timeless is not going to be that show. Try Westworld or Pitch or something among those lines. Watch The Americans if you haven't yet. Now are you looking for something that's utterly ridiculous and quite flawed, but manages to sell it with a game cast and pure audacity? Well then, you just might want to check out Timeless, which debuted tonight on NBC.
Created by Eric Kripke (Supernatural) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield), Timeless establishes its premise and characters at breakneck pace. We open with the Hindenburg disaster. Then we cut to a present-day lab where primary villain Garcia Flynn (a fairly menacing Goran Visnjic) and some henchman steal a big machine and disappear into thin air. We then meet our hero, history Professor Lucy Preston (A wonderful Abigail Spencer) as she's turned down for tenure and frets over her very sickly Historian mother with her sister before getting picked up by Homeland Security and getting put in a van with Major Sergeant Wyatt Logan (Matt Santer). They're taken to the lab where special agent Denise Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey) and famed inventor guy/lab owner Connor Mason (Paterson Joseph) inform them that time travel is possible, Flynn has stolen the main machine (The Mothership) and they have to chase and capture him with the back-up prototype (The Lifeboat). Lucy has doubts that are assuaged, they figure out he's gone to the Hindenburg and then she, Logan, and Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett), a coder on secret orders from Mason who's sent to be their pilot go to 1937 to chase Flynn. All that happens in the first 15 minutes. The episode slows down a little bit after that for banter and time travel rules (Mainly don't change anything and don't go anywhere you already exist) but keeps a brisk pace which helps paper over some clunky storytelling.
By the end of the pilot we have a basic template for the show going forward: Flynn goes somewhere in time to change history, the team follows him and tries to stop his plan, the plan is thwarted but Flynn escapes for another week and our heroes contend with any changes they've inadvertently caused, while the show's myth arc is slowly revealed. So yeah, Timeless is basically a procedural show except instead of the "case of the week", it's the "Significant Historical Event of the week". That's not a bad thing though. Even if most episodes follow the basic template laid out by the pilot, there's a lot of room in that template for some interesting storytelling. The various mysteries set up in the pilot (Mostly involving a possible future connection between Lucy and Flynn and the reason Rufus was sent along on the mission) are also promising and as long as the show isn't too cagey with its reveals should be enough to sustain interest when the novelty of going to different eras wears out and the budget for depicting those eras runs out (The Hindenburg effects in the pilot are cool but it'll probably be a while before we see something like that again). Additionally, the pilot suggests that the show is willing to alter actual historical events to a degree with legitimate ramifications for the character's personal histories, which has lots of cool possibilities if handled correctly. And while again, a lot of the show is utterly ridiculous, the tone of the show lands on the right side of utterly ridiculous, taking things seriously but with a light and fun tone.
Also helping keep Timeless on the right side of ridiculous are Abigail Spencer and Malcolm Barrett. Spencer is a tremendous actress and she brings a lot of depth to the character of Lucy to make her a compelling lead. She has a warmth and a humanity that makes it easy to feel the things she's feeling throughout the pilot, from the claustrophobic fear of her initial time travel journey to the sense of wonder when she lays eyes on 1937 New Jersey to the mix of relief, pain and confusing after surprising events happen late in the pilot. A show like this needs a strong lead to keep it grounded in some kind of emotional reality even as events get more and more ludicrous and Spencer is definitely the right person for the job. Meanwhile, Barrett is a delight as Rufus, taking the familiar "comic relief nerd" type and breathing new life into it, giving Rufus a nervous energy that feels both familiar and fresh. Rufus also works because he's reluctant about travelling through time for the obvious reason of it sucking to be a black man in basically all eras of American history. This, along with Lucy as the lead gives the show an organic way to look at the racial and gender issues of the time, and though the pilot lays it on a little thick in a scene where Rufus informs a racist Prison guard of all the things he wants the guard to live to see black people accomplish, it's still looking at issues worth exploring.
The one clear weak link of the Pilot is the character of Wyatt Logan. Matt Santer does a fine job with him, but he can't help the character from coming across as the "generic snarky handsome hero type" he's clearly written as. It's not that there's a problem with this kind of character, but nothing about Logan is that new or interesting. He's gonna do things like call Lucy "Ma'am" or "Professor" or try to save people even though they're not supposed to change anything. He has a troubled past and a dead wife to motivate his pain. He skates by on charm and a half-smile. All of this has been done before and done better than Timeless does it in the pilot. It's not awful but it is kind of boring and that's the thing Timeless can't afford to be. Who knows though? Maybe by the end of the season, Wyatt will turn out to be much more interesting than he initially seemed. That'd be cool. It'd also be nice to see more depth to the character of Flynn going forward. Goran Visnjic does well with what he's given but Flynn doesn't come off as much more than a moustache-twirling villain here and that won't be sustainable for long.
Look, Timeless is not going to be the next great Television drama. It's probably not going to inspire the kind of devotion and lavish critical attention a genre show like Battlestar Galactica or Lost got. And that's fine. It doesn't have to do those things. What Timeless is shaping up to be is a fun, dumb show that gets to play with big moments in history (press releases for the next few episodes are promising the Lincoln Assassination, Rat Pack-era Vegas, and Nazi Germany) while slowly spooling out it's mythology and mysteries to keep people hooked and giving Abigail Spencer a chance to do her thing and class up the joint. Which might not be everyone's thing but sounds pretty great to me. Is there a chance this show will either go wildly off the rails or take itself too seriously and become a boring slog? Yes, definitely. I'd be surprised if one of those things didn't happen. That being said, there's enough promise in this first episode to make it worth the risk that it'll become unwatchable down the line. So if you're looking for something fun and ridiculous to watch this fall, take a chance on Timeless. It's not going to rock your world or anything, but it should easily be worth your time (Yes, I'm ending this on a dumb pun).
Created by Eric Kripke (Supernatural) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield), Timeless establishes its premise and characters at breakneck pace. We open with the Hindenburg disaster. Then we cut to a present-day lab where primary villain Garcia Flynn (a fairly menacing Goran Visnjic) and some henchman steal a big machine and disappear into thin air. We then meet our hero, history Professor Lucy Preston (A wonderful Abigail Spencer) as she's turned down for tenure and frets over her very sickly Historian mother with her sister before getting picked up by Homeland Security and getting put in a van with Major Sergeant Wyatt Logan (Matt Santer). They're taken to the lab where special agent Denise Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey) and famed inventor guy/lab owner Connor Mason (Paterson Joseph) inform them that time travel is possible, Flynn has stolen the main machine (The Mothership) and they have to chase and capture him with the back-up prototype (The Lifeboat). Lucy has doubts that are assuaged, they figure out he's gone to the Hindenburg and then she, Logan, and Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett), a coder on secret orders from Mason who's sent to be their pilot go to 1937 to chase Flynn. All that happens in the first 15 minutes. The episode slows down a little bit after that for banter and time travel rules (Mainly don't change anything and don't go anywhere you already exist) but keeps a brisk pace which helps paper over some clunky storytelling.
By the end of the pilot we have a basic template for the show going forward: Flynn goes somewhere in time to change history, the team follows him and tries to stop his plan, the plan is thwarted but Flynn escapes for another week and our heroes contend with any changes they've inadvertently caused, while the show's myth arc is slowly revealed. So yeah, Timeless is basically a procedural show except instead of the "case of the week", it's the "Significant Historical Event of the week". That's not a bad thing though. Even if most episodes follow the basic template laid out by the pilot, there's a lot of room in that template for some interesting storytelling. The various mysteries set up in the pilot (Mostly involving a possible future connection between Lucy and Flynn and the reason Rufus was sent along on the mission) are also promising and as long as the show isn't too cagey with its reveals should be enough to sustain interest when the novelty of going to different eras wears out and the budget for depicting those eras runs out (The Hindenburg effects in the pilot are cool but it'll probably be a while before we see something like that again). Additionally, the pilot suggests that the show is willing to alter actual historical events to a degree with legitimate ramifications for the character's personal histories, which has lots of cool possibilities if handled correctly. And while again, a lot of the show is utterly ridiculous, the tone of the show lands on the right side of utterly ridiculous, taking things seriously but with a light and fun tone.
Also helping keep Timeless on the right side of ridiculous are Abigail Spencer and Malcolm Barrett. Spencer is a tremendous actress and she brings a lot of depth to the character of Lucy to make her a compelling lead. She has a warmth and a humanity that makes it easy to feel the things she's feeling throughout the pilot, from the claustrophobic fear of her initial time travel journey to the sense of wonder when she lays eyes on 1937 New Jersey to the mix of relief, pain and confusing after surprising events happen late in the pilot. A show like this needs a strong lead to keep it grounded in some kind of emotional reality even as events get more and more ludicrous and Spencer is definitely the right person for the job. Meanwhile, Barrett is a delight as Rufus, taking the familiar "comic relief nerd" type and breathing new life into it, giving Rufus a nervous energy that feels both familiar and fresh. Rufus also works because he's reluctant about travelling through time for the obvious reason of it sucking to be a black man in basically all eras of American history. This, along with Lucy as the lead gives the show an organic way to look at the racial and gender issues of the time, and though the pilot lays it on a little thick in a scene where Rufus informs a racist Prison guard of all the things he wants the guard to live to see black people accomplish, it's still looking at issues worth exploring.
The one clear weak link of the Pilot is the character of Wyatt Logan. Matt Santer does a fine job with him, but he can't help the character from coming across as the "generic snarky handsome hero type" he's clearly written as. It's not that there's a problem with this kind of character, but nothing about Logan is that new or interesting. He's gonna do things like call Lucy "Ma'am" or "Professor" or try to save people even though they're not supposed to change anything. He has a troubled past and a dead wife to motivate his pain. He skates by on charm and a half-smile. All of this has been done before and done better than Timeless does it in the pilot. It's not awful but it is kind of boring and that's the thing Timeless can't afford to be. Who knows though? Maybe by the end of the season, Wyatt will turn out to be much more interesting than he initially seemed. That'd be cool. It'd also be nice to see more depth to the character of Flynn going forward. Goran Visnjic does well with what he's given but Flynn doesn't come off as much more than a moustache-twirling villain here and that won't be sustainable for long.
Look, Timeless is not going to be the next great Television drama. It's probably not going to inspire the kind of devotion and lavish critical attention a genre show like Battlestar Galactica or Lost got. And that's fine. It doesn't have to do those things. What Timeless is shaping up to be is a fun, dumb show that gets to play with big moments in history (press releases for the next few episodes are promising the Lincoln Assassination, Rat Pack-era Vegas, and Nazi Germany) while slowly spooling out it's mythology and mysteries to keep people hooked and giving Abigail Spencer a chance to do her thing and class up the joint. Which might not be everyone's thing but sounds pretty great to me. Is there a chance this show will either go wildly off the rails or take itself too seriously and become a boring slog? Yes, definitely. I'd be surprised if one of those things didn't happen. That being said, there's enough promise in this first episode to make it worth the risk that it'll become unwatchable down the line. So if you're looking for something fun and ridiculous to watch this fall, take a chance on Timeless. It's not going to rock your world or anything, but it should easily be worth your time (Yes, I'm ending this on a dumb pun).
Friday, 30 September 2016
Jason Mendoza Wants To Be True To Himself In The Good Place
While I was watching the first two episodes of The Good Place one of the biggest questions I had was how the show would handle Jianyu (Manny Jacinto) going forward. Blabbermouth Tahani having a silent monk as a soulmate was a funny concept but one that seemed like it was quickly going to go stale. The end of last week's episode however revealed that there was much more to Jianyu than had been let on and Jason Mendoza takes that revealing and runs with it, giving Jacinto an excellent showcase for his comedic chops and making "Jianyu" a much better and funnier character in the process.
Now that he can talk, we learn a ton of information about Jianyu this week. His name is Jason for starters, he's Filipino not Taiwanese like everyone thinks he is. ("Heaven is so racist", he bemoans), and he was an amateur EDM DJ from Jacksonville, along with being an amateur hip-hop back-up dancer and body spray inventor who made money selling fake drugs to college kids. He's also shallow, simple-minded and not that bright, only managing to avoid detection through dumb luck (The first thing Michael brings up when he arrives is the vow of silence the real Jianyu is under so he latches onto that). Now the "dumb guy" is a classic sitcom staple that Good Place creator Mike Schur is quite familiar with (and which he practically perfected on Parks and Rec with Andy Dwyer), and Jason with his perpetually stoned bro vibe, lazy pronunciation (there's much confusion when he shows Eleanor his "bud hole"), and low ambition (His dream was to DJ all around Florida) is a fresh variation on the archetype. Jason also gives The Good Place a purely comedic character they can lean on for quick, fast punchlines, something the show could definitely use more of in this early-going period. Sure enough, Jason Mendoza is probably the funniest episode of The Good Place so far, with lots of humour derived from the goofy dumbness of Jason and Jacinto's stellar delivery and mannerisms. It turns out last week's "I'm freaking out homie!" was just the beginning of Jason's charm. Jason Mendoza is also probably the most tension-filled episode of The Good Place so far, as Jason proves to be the biggest threat to Eleanor's secret yet.
See Jason is driven by desire and his key desire is to always be himself. Flashbacks (the first time the flashback aren't about Eleanor and hopefully not the last) take us back to Jason's DJ days where he gets a chance to fill in for DJ Acidcat, wearing a big helmet and pushing a button every night while the real deal is elsewhere. It's more recognition than he's probably ever gotten as Mr. Music, the DJ (best DJ name ever, by the way) but it's not good enough for him so he unmasks, plays one of his own beats and gets promptly booed and pelted with garbage. Sued for breach of contract, Jason decides never to pretend to be someone else again, lest it cost him his dreams in life and then blows up DJ Acidcat's speedboat in retaliation. Now though he finds himself forced to be someone he isn't once again, with his "bud hole" (described as 12-Year-Old Boy meets 13-Year-Old Boy by Eleanor) the only place he can be himself. This isn't sitting right with him though and coming clean to Eleanor has made him decide to stop pretending and be himself again. It doesn't matter how much danger this puts himself, Eleanor, and Chidi in or how it might affect Tahani (still sad about her inability to click with who she thinks is his soulmate). Jason just can't take being Jianyu for one more minute so at The grand opening of The Good Plates (a new restaurant where you're served your favourite dish in the world.) where Michael and Tahani are under the impression that Jianyu has gained the courage to start talking, he decides to start talking about his real favourite meal (Jianyu's is a block of tofu), the buffalo wings at Stupid Nick's Wing Dump. It's an act that's understandable and relatable. No one wants to be someone they're not after all, but it's also incredibly selfish and dangerous. So to protect herself, Eleanor does something equally understandable, but equally selfish and dangerous.
Destroying the cake the chef at The Good Plates has spent all week working on is the first time since arriving that Eleanor does a bad thing on purpose with the intention of creating havoc. It's something she has to do to protect her secret but it doesn't make it right and the consequences reflect that. Selfishness has only begat more selfishness and the sinkhole that results is the most destructive thing she's caused since the storm. She tells Jason she did it to save him from himself but really she did it to save her and she knows it. It hasn't fixed anything either. Jason still wants to be himself, even rejecting Chidi's gracious offer of a spot in his Ethics class. This is when The Good Place flips the traditional lesson of "Be true to yourself" on it's head. Jason wants to be himself, but "himself" sucks. "Himself" is a selfish person who puts his desires above everyone else. Sometimes you need to change and become a better version of yourself. Eleanor has been trying to better herself, but she hasn't been giving it as much effort as she should or given Chidi the appreciation he deserves. It's when she sees Jason reject Chidi's offer that she gains a new appreciation for what Chidi has been doing and is able to recognise that they both need to be better, even if it's not as easy as just being themselves. This allows her to give Jason the wake-up call he needs to accept Chidi's help and learn "ethnics" as he calls it. It's not going to be easy and Jason's "dumb guy" status makes him a much tougher student than Eleanor but it's worth a try to be someone better than himself.
It might be too-little too-late for Eleanor and Jason though as the damage their actions led to in the restaurant proves more significant than initially thought. Michael assures Tahani that the sinkhole should fix itself within a few days but the end of the episode shows it's still growing. Eleanor was able to clean up the garbage storm and make Tahani's plant go from on fire to blooming but this sinkhole won't be as easily fixed it seems. This is an interesting but welcome note for the episode to end on because although it's not a huge twist like the Jason reveal, it doesn't let us feel at ease with how things are. Just like the aftermath of a cruel act in life, the danger has subsided but the damage remains and it's not going to magically fix itself. It'll be interesting to see what it will take to fix it.
Memorable Moments
-Tahani and Michael spend the episode getting ready for the restaurant opening, dealing with Tahani's soulmate issues (Michael assures her that her problems are normal and most soulmates take a few months to click) and deciding to help keep the neighbourhood together. It doesn't do much beyond keep the story in motion but that's fine. Hopefully they'll have more to do next week though.
-William Jackson-Harper continues to delight as Chidi. His shock and "You broke Jianyu" reaction to seeing Jason in all his douchey glory has to be seen to be believed.
-The "bud hole" confusion was funnier the first time than the second. Hopefully that's a one-episode gag and not a recurring thing.
-Michael drops an interesting fact. "Any place or thing in the universe can be up to 104% perfect. That's how you got Beyoncé."
-If we don't see more of the restaurant, I at least hope we see more of Chef Patricia, a very intense woman who angrily yells positive statements and remarks ("Change the floor plan an hour before opening?! Of course! The more the merrier!").
-The other Eleanor's favourite meal was the hunger strike she went on to protest Bolivian sex trafficking so our Eleanor doesn't get a meal at The Good Plates.
-Michael reassures someone who fell in the sink hole. "Glenn, stay calm. We're gonna get you out of there. And we'll put your soup in the fridge so it won't go to waste. I know that may not be your number one concern right now, but-" "It was up there. It's real good soup."
-Jason has two questions about the ethics class. "When are football tryouts and does this school have a prom?" This won't be easy.
Now that he can talk, we learn a ton of information about Jianyu this week. His name is Jason for starters, he's Filipino not Taiwanese like everyone thinks he is. ("Heaven is so racist", he bemoans), and he was an amateur EDM DJ from Jacksonville, along with being an amateur hip-hop back-up dancer and body spray inventor who made money selling fake drugs to college kids. He's also shallow, simple-minded and not that bright, only managing to avoid detection through dumb luck (The first thing Michael brings up when he arrives is the vow of silence the real Jianyu is under so he latches onto that). Now the "dumb guy" is a classic sitcom staple that Good Place creator Mike Schur is quite familiar with (and which he practically perfected on Parks and Rec with Andy Dwyer), and Jason with his perpetually stoned bro vibe, lazy pronunciation (there's much confusion when he shows Eleanor his "bud hole"), and low ambition (His dream was to DJ all around Florida) is a fresh variation on the archetype. Jason also gives The Good Place a purely comedic character they can lean on for quick, fast punchlines, something the show could definitely use more of in this early-going period. Sure enough, Jason Mendoza is probably the funniest episode of The Good Place so far, with lots of humour derived from the goofy dumbness of Jason and Jacinto's stellar delivery and mannerisms. It turns out last week's "I'm freaking out homie!" was just the beginning of Jason's charm. Jason Mendoza is also probably the most tension-filled episode of The Good Place so far, as Jason proves to be the biggest threat to Eleanor's secret yet.
See Jason is driven by desire and his key desire is to always be himself. Flashbacks (the first time the flashback aren't about Eleanor and hopefully not the last) take us back to Jason's DJ days where he gets a chance to fill in for DJ Acidcat, wearing a big helmet and pushing a button every night while the real deal is elsewhere. It's more recognition than he's probably ever gotten as Mr. Music, the DJ (best DJ name ever, by the way) but it's not good enough for him so he unmasks, plays one of his own beats and gets promptly booed and pelted with garbage. Sued for breach of contract, Jason decides never to pretend to be someone else again, lest it cost him his dreams in life and then blows up DJ Acidcat's speedboat in retaliation. Now though he finds himself forced to be someone he isn't once again, with his "bud hole" (described as 12-Year-Old Boy meets 13-Year-Old Boy by Eleanor) the only place he can be himself. This isn't sitting right with him though and coming clean to Eleanor has made him decide to stop pretending and be himself again. It doesn't matter how much danger this puts himself, Eleanor, and Chidi in or how it might affect Tahani (still sad about her inability to click with who she thinks is his soulmate). Jason just can't take being Jianyu for one more minute so at The grand opening of The Good Plates (a new restaurant where you're served your favourite dish in the world.) where Michael and Tahani are under the impression that Jianyu has gained the courage to start talking, he decides to start talking about his real favourite meal (Jianyu's is a block of tofu), the buffalo wings at Stupid Nick's Wing Dump. It's an act that's understandable and relatable. No one wants to be someone they're not after all, but it's also incredibly selfish and dangerous. So to protect herself, Eleanor does something equally understandable, but equally selfish and dangerous.
Destroying the cake the chef at The Good Plates has spent all week working on is the first time since arriving that Eleanor does a bad thing on purpose with the intention of creating havoc. It's something she has to do to protect her secret but it doesn't make it right and the consequences reflect that. Selfishness has only begat more selfishness and the sinkhole that results is the most destructive thing she's caused since the storm. She tells Jason she did it to save him from himself but really she did it to save her and she knows it. It hasn't fixed anything either. Jason still wants to be himself, even rejecting Chidi's gracious offer of a spot in his Ethics class. This is when The Good Place flips the traditional lesson of "Be true to yourself" on it's head. Jason wants to be himself, but "himself" sucks. "Himself" is a selfish person who puts his desires above everyone else. Sometimes you need to change and become a better version of yourself. Eleanor has been trying to better herself, but she hasn't been giving it as much effort as she should or given Chidi the appreciation he deserves. It's when she sees Jason reject Chidi's offer that she gains a new appreciation for what Chidi has been doing and is able to recognise that they both need to be better, even if it's not as easy as just being themselves. This allows her to give Jason the wake-up call he needs to accept Chidi's help and learn "ethnics" as he calls it. It's not going to be easy and Jason's "dumb guy" status makes him a much tougher student than Eleanor but it's worth a try to be someone better than himself.
It might be too-little too-late for Eleanor and Jason though as the damage their actions led to in the restaurant proves more significant than initially thought. Michael assures Tahani that the sinkhole should fix itself within a few days but the end of the episode shows it's still growing. Eleanor was able to clean up the garbage storm and make Tahani's plant go from on fire to blooming but this sinkhole won't be as easily fixed it seems. This is an interesting but welcome note for the episode to end on because although it's not a huge twist like the Jason reveal, it doesn't let us feel at ease with how things are. Just like the aftermath of a cruel act in life, the danger has subsided but the damage remains and it's not going to magically fix itself. It'll be interesting to see what it will take to fix it.
Memorable Moments
-Tahani and Michael spend the episode getting ready for the restaurant opening, dealing with Tahani's soulmate issues (Michael assures her that her problems are normal and most soulmates take a few months to click) and deciding to help keep the neighbourhood together. It doesn't do much beyond keep the story in motion but that's fine. Hopefully they'll have more to do next week though.
-William Jackson-Harper continues to delight as Chidi. His shock and "You broke Jianyu" reaction to seeing Jason in all his douchey glory has to be seen to be believed.
-The "bud hole" confusion was funnier the first time than the second. Hopefully that's a one-episode gag and not a recurring thing.
-Michael drops an interesting fact. "Any place or thing in the universe can be up to 104% perfect. That's how you got Beyoncé."
-If we don't see more of the restaurant, I at least hope we see more of Chef Patricia, a very intense woman who angrily yells positive statements and remarks ("Change the floor plan an hour before opening?! Of course! The more the merrier!").
-The other Eleanor's favourite meal was the hunger strike she went on to protest Bolivian sex trafficking so our Eleanor doesn't get a meal at The Good Plates.
-Michael reassures someone who fell in the sink hole. "Glenn, stay calm. We're gonna get you out of there. And we'll put your soup in the fridge so it won't go to waste. I know that may not be your number one concern right now, but-" "It was up there. It's real good soup."
-Jason has two questions about the ethics class. "When are football tryouts and does this school have a prom?" This won't be easy.
Superstore Makes An Impression Getting Back To Work
Someone tries to hide a major problem from their boss only to make the problem worse. Someone tries to teach their difficult co-worker how to get along better with others and fails. Someone tries to impress their boss by acting like someone they aren't or by trying to hard. An employee on leave comes to visit and gets sucked right back into working. All of these situations are classic sitcom tropes (with a couple bordering on being straight-up clichés.) and all of them were featured on Superstore tonight. This could've made "Back To Work" feel unoriginal and tired, a bit of a comedown from last weeks episode. Instead, "Back To Work" manages to be just as strong as "Strike" by rooting things in the strong setting and character work Superstore has been doing since it started and tying it to the fall-out of last week's strike, giving each story a specificity that either transcended the trope or made it funny enough to be irrelevant.
Like last week, much of the episode's action is spurred in response to Jeff (Michael Sutton), the mild-mannered district manager who Corporate sent in response to the strike. Jeff has decided to stick around for a day to observe and see what can be done better. Once again, Sutton plays Jeff perfectly as an ordinary guy trying to do his job in the face of the other character's shenanigans and watching him be perplexed and slightly frustrated about the craziness around him, while being a reasonable guy is a treat. The just trying to do his job part also remains key to the character's success. He's not a corporate monster but he does work for corporate and he represents their interests. He's willing to listen to the Cloud Nine employee's suggestions and concerns about how corporate could improve but he's also going to give them suggestions of his own because "everything is a two-way street". For Amy, this is enough to write him off entirely as someone who will listen to their complaints but not actually respond to them. This seems accurate, but we never get to find out if this is the case though because Amy winds up being too busy looking for a missing thumb to actually give Jeff her concerns and suggestions.
For the second week in a row, we see nothing spurs Amy into making rash decisions like the casual callousness of corporate. Only this time, instead of leading the employees to strike, Amy is hoping for a perfect day, like the fabled "March 14th" of a few months ago. What better way to prove Jeff and his "two-way street" remarks wrong than by giving the impression that there's no way for the employees to improve? Unfortunately days like "March 14th" can't be manufactured and when Amy tries to get Marcus, a less-than-bright employee to help her with a staff shortage in the deli, he promptly slices his thumb off in a shocking and hilarious sequence. Amy quickly springs into action, storing the thumb in a container of guacamole and trying to get Marcus to the hospital before Jeff can discover what happened. Unfortunately their efforts to conceal the incident lead to the container with the thumb getting lost in the store. Here, Amy's efforts to avoid confirming Jeff's suggestion that improvements could be made by them as well as corporate lead to the quick derailment of her big chance to get her concerns listened to, which was her original goal. It's funny watching her, Garrett and others scramble around the store in search of the thumb and blow off Jeff's efforts to listen to their concerns because this is a time-sensitive matter but it's poignant too. Trying to create perfection has only led to chaos and trying to hide the chaos only leads to a customer producing the thumb in front of Jeff, making this all an exercise in futility. Entertaining futility with lots of funny moments for Amy and Garrett, but futility all the same, and the irony was Jeff didn't wind up having suggestions for improvement. Had Amy not caused an incident trying to prove him wrong, she'd have proven him wrong.
It's a good character story for Amy, well played by Ferrara, and it's good to see Amy's growing resentment with corporate carrying over from the last episode. It also suggests an interesting lesson. Amy wants change but after the failed strike and the thumb fiasco, it's clear she doesn't know how to actually make this happen. Jeff's "two-way street" remark rubbed her the wrong way and rightfully so, but maybe if she took it to heart and worked to manage her frustrations with corporate, she might be able to cause the corporate change she so badly wants after all. It's an interesting implication (though never outright stated in the episode) and whatever direction Amy's story goes as the season progresses, I hope this will be further explored.
Also an exercise in futility is Jonah's efforts to improve Dina's standing in the eyes of her co-workers, all of whom still resent her for not walking out with them. After a season where most of Jonah and Dina's interactions revolved around her one-sided feelings for him, it's refreshing to see them in a story that has nothing to do with that. Dina remains a female copy of Dwight Schrute (both the "gifts" she gives to her co-workers by breaking into their lockers and her attempt at reading the apology letter Jonah writes her are things I could easily see Dwight doing) and the show's broadest character, but the material here (her disdain of the motivating story Jonah tells her leading her to give him a book on how to tell better stories is one of the better jokes of the episode) is funny enough to work, and Ash's performance continues to be strong enough to avoid steering Dina into the caricature territory that most Dwight Schrute imitators are in. the story does serve to teach us something important about Dina though: she doesn't care if people likes her, she cares about doing what she thinks is right. When the store walked out, she stayed behind because she felt it was the right thing to do and when she sees Amy fretting to Glenn about possibly getting fired over the thumb incident, she blackmails Jeff into not submitting his incident report for the same reason. The "jerk actually cares" moment has been done to death in fiction to the point where I knew how Amy and Dina's story would resolve the moment Dina walked into frame, but it works here because it doesn't feel like the writers are showing us a secret, sensitive side of Dina. They're showing us the same Dina we know and tolerate doing something to help a co-worker and it feels honest. Dina's a jerk but she's not heartless. It also works because the show does a convincing job of making us think the story will end on Jonah contemplating his need to be liked so that when Dina does walk into frame in Amy's story, the dovetailing of the two plots is unexpected. Feldman also shines in this plot, not having much to do beyond react to Ash, but doing that reacting like a champ.
Glenn, Mateo, and a returning Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) wind up in stories that are much slighter, but manage to add to the comedy and poignancy of the episode. Glenn's attempt to come off as a hardass boss isn't even a story as much as it is a running joke/excuse for Mark Mckinney to steal every scene he's in but it's a great joke because of how well we know Glenn at this point. Watching him get stuck in a chair he's knocked over or calling an employee's appendicitis "Argle Bargle" or trying to be mean to Garrett only highlights the sweetness of the character. Meanwhile Cheyenne makes her return to the show in a sad, short story where she stops in for a few minutes to see people and show them baby pictures, only to be blown off by a frantic Amy and winding up back on the cash register when she tries to ring herself in, while most of the employees are away meeting with Jeff, and reamed out by a customer for talking to her baby on the phone while at the register, a phone she then puts in the customers bag. It's a brief story but a nice reintroduction to Cheyenne and a good showcase for Bloom after sitting last week out. Finally Mateo's efforts to impress Jeff is basically his exact same story from last week (Though Jeff calling him Ma-Tah-to is quite funny), but it ends on an unexpected note that suggests much more promising things are to come. Jeff assuring Mateo he noticed him before putting his hand on his shoulder and saying he definitely noticed him is a welcome swerve because of how ambiguous it is. Is Jeff going to be a love interest in addition to his role as foil/slight antagonist? What does "I've definitely noticed you" mean anyways? It's hard to say but whether this leads to a story we've seen before a hundred times or something fresh and unexpected, if Superstore puts in the same kind of thought and effort as it did with Back To Work, it's bound to be a winner.
Memorable Moments
-Best Interstitial: A man and a woman grab the same tube of Hemorrhoid's Cream. Their eyes meet and they smile. The start of a beautiful love story.
-It's nice to see Superstore keep introducing new possible side characters instead of leaning on the ones they established and developed in season 1 week after week. Besides Marcus, the one that makes a big impression this week is Peter, who's annoyed by the Gay Guy mug Dina gets him but drinks from it anyways later in the episode.
-Garrett is relegated to the sidelines this week but he gets a lot of great moments, from undermining Glenn's attempt to pretend to be mean to him by acting oblivious and then hurt ("He's right. Actually I am kinda lazy", he eventually concedes to Jeff.) from casually rifling through customer's carts in search for the thumb ("Ooh beige. That's a crazy colour for a towel".).
-Marcus' refusal to confirm that that's his thumb lying on the ground leads to a great sequence scored to We Belong Together, one of the rare times muzak plays in a non interstitial scene.
-Mateo's efforts to get a customer to repeat her calling him a lifesaver in front of Jeff don't go so well. "Now tell him what you said to me." "You're hurting my arm".
-And following that: "In the future, I'd love you to not grab our customers. Okay, Ma-tah-to?" "It's Ma-tato. I mean Mateo."
-Dina's disgust at the apology speech Jonah has written is a familiar scene, but a funny one. "Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong"? Ugh, starting with a quote. It's like a middle-school book report."
Like last week, much of the episode's action is spurred in response to Jeff (Michael Sutton), the mild-mannered district manager who Corporate sent in response to the strike. Jeff has decided to stick around for a day to observe and see what can be done better. Once again, Sutton plays Jeff perfectly as an ordinary guy trying to do his job in the face of the other character's shenanigans and watching him be perplexed and slightly frustrated about the craziness around him, while being a reasonable guy is a treat. The just trying to do his job part also remains key to the character's success. He's not a corporate monster but he does work for corporate and he represents their interests. He's willing to listen to the Cloud Nine employee's suggestions and concerns about how corporate could improve but he's also going to give them suggestions of his own because "everything is a two-way street". For Amy, this is enough to write him off entirely as someone who will listen to their complaints but not actually respond to them. This seems accurate, but we never get to find out if this is the case though because Amy winds up being too busy looking for a missing thumb to actually give Jeff her concerns and suggestions.
For the second week in a row, we see nothing spurs Amy into making rash decisions like the casual callousness of corporate. Only this time, instead of leading the employees to strike, Amy is hoping for a perfect day, like the fabled "March 14th" of a few months ago. What better way to prove Jeff and his "two-way street" remarks wrong than by giving the impression that there's no way for the employees to improve? Unfortunately days like "March 14th" can't be manufactured and when Amy tries to get Marcus, a less-than-bright employee to help her with a staff shortage in the deli, he promptly slices his thumb off in a shocking and hilarious sequence. Amy quickly springs into action, storing the thumb in a container of guacamole and trying to get Marcus to the hospital before Jeff can discover what happened. Unfortunately their efforts to conceal the incident lead to the container with the thumb getting lost in the store. Here, Amy's efforts to avoid confirming Jeff's suggestion that improvements could be made by them as well as corporate lead to the quick derailment of her big chance to get her concerns listened to, which was her original goal. It's funny watching her, Garrett and others scramble around the store in search of the thumb and blow off Jeff's efforts to listen to their concerns because this is a time-sensitive matter but it's poignant too. Trying to create perfection has only led to chaos and trying to hide the chaos only leads to a customer producing the thumb in front of Jeff, making this all an exercise in futility. Entertaining futility with lots of funny moments for Amy and Garrett, but futility all the same, and the irony was Jeff didn't wind up having suggestions for improvement. Had Amy not caused an incident trying to prove him wrong, she'd have proven him wrong.
It's a good character story for Amy, well played by Ferrara, and it's good to see Amy's growing resentment with corporate carrying over from the last episode. It also suggests an interesting lesson. Amy wants change but after the failed strike and the thumb fiasco, it's clear she doesn't know how to actually make this happen. Jeff's "two-way street" remark rubbed her the wrong way and rightfully so, but maybe if she took it to heart and worked to manage her frustrations with corporate, she might be able to cause the corporate change she so badly wants after all. It's an interesting implication (though never outright stated in the episode) and whatever direction Amy's story goes as the season progresses, I hope this will be further explored.
Also an exercise in futility is Jonah's efforts to improve Dina's standing in the eyes of her co-workers, all of whom still resent her for not walking out with them. After a season where most of Jonah and Dina's interactions revolved around her one-sided feelings for him, it's refreshing to see them in a story that has nothing to do with that. Dina remains a female copy of Dwight Schrute (both the "gifts" she gives to her co-workers by breaking into their lockers and her attempt at reading the apology letter Jonah writes her are things I could easily see Dwight doing) and the show's broadest character, but the material here (her disdain of the motivating story Jonah tells her leading her to give him a book on how to tell better stories is one of the better jokes of the episode) is funny enough to work, and Ash's performance continues to be strong enough to avoid steering Dina into the caricature territory that most Dwight Schrute imitators are in. the story does serve to teach us something important about Dina though: she doesn't care if people likes her, she cares about doing what she thinks is right. When the store walked out, she stayed behind because she felt it was the right thing to do and when she sees Amy fretting to Glenn about possibly getting fired over the thumb incident, she blackmails Jeff into not submitting his incident report for the same reason. The "jerk actually cares" moment has been done to death in fiction to the point where I knew how Amy and Dina's story would resolve the moment Dina walked into frame, but it works here because it doesn't feel like the writers are showing us a secret, sensitive side of Dina. They're showing us the same Dina we know and tolerate doing something to help a co-worker and it feels honest. Dina's a jerk but she's not heartless. It also works because the show does a convincing job of making us think the story will end on Jonah contemplating his need to be liked so that when Dina does walk into frame in Amy's story, the dovetailing of the two plots is unexpected. Feldman also shines in this plot, not having much to do beyond react to Ash, but doing that reacting like a champ.
Glenn, Mateo, and a returning Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) wind up in stories that are much slighter, but manage to add to the comedy and poignancy of the episode. Glenn's attempt to come off as a hardass boss isn't even a story as much as it is a running joke/excuse for Mark Mckinney to steal every scene he's in but it's a great joke because of how well we know Glenn at this point. Watching him get stuck in a chair he's knocked over or calling an employee's appendicitis "Argle Bargle" or trying to be mean to Garrett only highlights the sweetness of the character. Meanwhile Cheyenne makes her return to the show in a sad, short story where she stops in for a few minutes to see people and show them baby pictures, only to be blown off by a frantic Amy and winding up back on the cash register when she tries to ring herself in, while most of the employees are away meeting with Jeff, and reamed out by a customer for talking to her baby on the phone while at the register, a phone she then puts in the customers bag. It's a brief story but a nice reintroduction to Cheyenne and a good showcase for Bloom after sitting last week out. Finally Mateo's efforts to impress Jeff is basically his exact same story from last week (Though Jeff calling him Ma-Tah-to is quite funny), but it ends on an unexpected note that suggests much more promising things are to come. Jeff assuring Mateo he noticed him before putting his hand on his shoulder and saying he definitely noticed him is a welcome swerve because of how ambiguous it is. Is Jeff going to be a love interest in addition to his role as foil/slight antagonist? What does "I've definitely noticed you" mean anyways? It's hard to say but whether this leads to a story we've seen before a hundred times or something fresh and unexpected, if Superstore puts in the same kind of thought and effort as it did with Back To Work, it's bound to be a winner.
Memorable Moments
-Best Interstitial: A man and a woman grab the same tube of Hemorrhoid's Cream. Their eyes meet and they smile. The start of a beautiful love story.
-It's nice to see Superstore keep introducing new possible side characters instead of leaning on the ones they established and developed in season 1 week after week. Besides Marcus, the one that makes a big impression this week is Peter, who's annoyed by the Gay Guy mug Dina gets him but drinks from it anyways later in the episode.
-Garrett is relegated to the sidelines this week but he gets a lot of great moments, from undermining Glenn's attempt to pretend to be mean to him by acting oblivious and then hurt ("He's right. Actually I am kinda lazy", he eventually concedes to Jeff.) from casually rifling through customer's carts in search for the thumb ("Ooh beige. That's a crazy colour for a towel".).
-Marcus' refusal to confirm that that's his thumb lying on the ground leads to a great sequence scored to We Belong Together, one of the rare times muzak plays in a non interstitial scene.
-Mateo's efforts to get a customer to repeat her calling him a lifesaver in front of Jeff don't go so well. "Now tell him what you said to me." "You're hurting my arm".
-And following that: "In the future, I'd love you to not grab our customers. Okay, Ma-tah-to?" "It's Ma-tato. I mean Mateo."
-Dina's disgust at the apology speech Jonah has written is a familiar scene, but a funny one. "Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong"? Ugh, starting with a quote. It's like a middle-school book report."
Friday, 23 September 2016
Superstore Fights The Power On Strike
Superstore ended a first season that started out good and kept getting better as it went along with a powerful sequence that was the culmination of where the season has taken these characters. Amy (America Ferrara) and Jonah (Ben Feldman) leading a walk-out to protest the firing of Glenn (Mark McKinney) for giving Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) paid maternity leave, only for Dina (Lauren Ash) to fire them and declare the store would be fine without them was a strong ending that raised plenty of questions of where the show would pick up when it returned and where the characters would go from there. As it turns out the characters also have plenty of questions about where they go from there and Strike picks up immediately where we left off with everyone unsure what they're doing or if they're even on strike (Amy says they aren't, but Jonah disagrees, which becomes a running gag throughout the episode). It then proceeds to write itself out of the corner Labour left Superstore in in a way that's funny and disheartening and true to the world of the show, while promising interesting things to come in Superstore's second season.
Helping things out is Jeff (guest star Michael Bunin), the district manager Cloud Nine Corporate has sent to diffuse the situation. Bunin is sent to recur throughout the season, which is good because Jeff provides an excellent foil for the rest of the cast. He's not some soulless corporate monster, he's a regular guy who just wants to resolve the situation peacefully and calmly so he can get out of the motel he's been put in. At the same time, he represents corporate interests and certainly isn't going to cede the moral high ground to the employees. He offers to rehire Glenn and give everyone else their jobs back if they sign an apology letter and that's it. He's perfectly willing to bring in scabs and cut out the employees if they won't sign the letter but he would prefer not to have to. It makes him a complex antagonist and it should be interesting to see how he plays off of everyone else in future episodes with the status quo restored
The most interesting journey of the episode as usual belongs to Amy. She starts off the episode adamant that the workers are not on strike and that all they want is Glenn's job back. When Jeff brings up the apology letter though, that's when she snaps and decides to go on (or continue on if you ask Jonah) strike because she can't stand the way Cloud Nine stomps on the rights of their workers and her pride is hurt when Jeff suggests they're in over their heads. Making real change is a lot harder than her and Jonah anticipated though, and once the strike becomes a reality things start OK quickly deteriorate. The episode's best scene has Amy go on local news to talk about the strike, only for that to be hijacked when other protesters (who have shown up thanks to a vague #protestcloudnine tweet from Jonah) announce they're there to protest Transgender Bathroom rights. It's excellent commentary on how protests can grow out of hand and become about things they were never meant to be about, while getting solid comedy about a contentious subject. Amy soon leads the striking employees into the store to try and drive customers away but is only able to convince one person to stop shopping and leave through her argument and not the other's disruptive ploys. As Jeff brings in employees from Kirkland scabs and gives an end-of-day ultimatum for signing the letter, interest in the strike quickly fades. It's poignant watching everyone slowly cave in, even with great jokes like Amy and Dina fighting over Sandra like a dog having to pick between owners. Eventually we're down to Amy and Jonah who finally give up the 1-day (2 if you ask Jonah) strike and let corporate win but resolve this was the only beginning. Hopefully they mean that because there is a lot to mine from Amy and Jonah trying to fight for worker's rights through other means. In the meantime it's a slightly downer beat to end on and a great choice for the show.
The other characters are mostly relegated to the background in Strike, but they're all given something funny to do in the background. Most substantially, Garrett (Colton Dunn) meets Nikki, a protester who's perfect for him, at least until he realises she's also against Trans rights. It's a slight, but funny storyline and it has a good pay-off when Garrett decides to sleep with her anyways even though she's a bigot. It's a funny beat that feels true to Garrett's character. Mateo (Nico Santos) gets an even slighter storyline where he keeps sneaking away from the strike to work and try to impress Jeff. It's more of a running gag than a story and there's basically no pay-off or ending beyond Amy thinking he was one of the strong ones when he wasn't, but it highlights Mateo's ambitiousness and hopefully is setting up things for down the line. The only story that didn't really work for me was Dina's efforts to break the strike and regain her old job. It had funny moments (Dina accidentally breaking all the windows on Glenn's car with the power washer chief among them) but kept Dina overly broad without the subtle characterization that Ash brought last season. Also restoring Dina to her old position this early is a bit disappointing, seeing as the show had only begun to explore the idea of Amy as assistant manager last season. Hopefully there's better things ahead for Dina as the season goes on that allow her to feel more human.
Overall there, Strike is a strong return for Superstore, serving as a great re-introduction to the characters and resolving last season's cliffhanger in a way that was entertaining and didn't feel like too much of a cop-out. Superstore has a lot of potential to be one of the best comedies on TV and hopefully this is the start of it realising that potential.
Memorable Moments
-The show continues fleshing out their side characters by introducing Dougie, who seems like a loveable wreck.
-Mertle has some reasonable demands. "I want Cloud Nine to be closer to my house".
-Jonah and Amy raid Cloud Nine's business wear before their meeting with Jeff, leading to a great sight gag of Amy in a pink suit and Jonah with a dumb fedora he won't take off.
-Jeff is not that happy with the motel he's been put in. "It says continental breakfast but it's like cereal and toast, and I'm like I can make that at home".
-Jonah's efforts to quote Dr. Martin Luther King are quickly and rightfully shut down by Garrett.
-"I just want you to know that not all Christians are bigots, OK? Well that one is. That's Maggie. She goes to my church. She thinks she's sooo great because she has a karaoke machine". Mark McKinney's delivery can make anything funny.
-"We are down to only one raccoon in the store. Unfortunately that raccoon has grown powerful beyond our wildest fears".
-Jonah tries to dumb himself down for the shoppers. "I don't know about youze guys but this broad's making some good sense, huh".
-Jeff mistakenly assumes Brett is Glenn, because "he just has an air of authority about him".
-Amy tries to rally the troops. "What are they gonna do? Find someone who stocks go-backs like Mateo or who works the cash register like Elias?" "Yes. Those are both very easy things to do".
-"This is what Martin Luther King would do"- Garrett on his plan to sleep with Nikki a time or six and then withhold sex until she takes a look at who she is as a person and make some serious changes.
-Best Interstitial: A boy with his head caught in a chair quietly struggles as everyone ignores him.
Everyone's A Bit Insecure on The Good Place, Even Tahani Al-Jamil
The first two episodes of The Good Place seem straightforward enough. Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is a selfish person who mysteriously wound up in paradise and needs to learn how to be good before she's discovered. It's a solid premise but also the kind of premise that seems like it could grow tiresome or unsustainable pretty quick. Having Eleanor be the one thing wrong in paradise can only go so many directions. Luckily, Tahani Al-Jamil reveals that there's a lot going on here then meets the eye, which is very welcome news indeed.
As the title suggests, perfect neighbour Tahani (Jameela Jamil) is the focus of Tahani Al-Jamil, as Eleanor gets to know her neighbour as an excuse to find out if she's the one who left her the "You don't belong here" note at the end of the last episode. It also gives us an excuse to get to know Tahani, who didn't have much to do in the first two episodes beyond serve as a symbol of irritating perfection to contrast Eleanor with and try to connect with her soulmate Jianyu (Manny Jacinto). So what do we learn about Tahani? Well it turns out the reason she seems so perfect and friendly is because she just really is that perfect and friendly. She raised over 60 billion dollars for charity in her lifetime, while dabbling in things like modelling, museum curating, and being Baz Luhrmann's muse. She may come across as a bit conceited and condescending but it's nothing intentional on her part. The key thing we learn though is under that perfection, she's as insecure and desperate to feel like she belongs as Eleanor is. Her inability to connect with silent Jianyu, which was played for laughs in Flying gets some actual pathos here as we find out just how depressed she is by the fact that he won't break his vow of silence for anyone, even his soulmate. It's what really breaks through to Eleanor and gets her to reluctantly embrace Tahani ("Ugh, of course your hugs are amazing", she grumbles).
Really though Tahani's main purpose in the episode is still to teach us something about Eleanor. Throughout the episode Eleanor is determined to prove that Tahani is not who she seems to be and is someone sinister and evil underneath her shiny surface. All the while a housewarming plant Tahani gave her withers and dies as Eleanor keeps trying in vain to prove Tahani wrote the note that's been giving her so much stress. Meanwhile flashbacks show how she broke up with a boyfriend because she saw his efforts to do the right thing by boycotting a coffee place where the owner sexually harasses people as him lording over how much better than her he was. Eventually after Chidi (William Jackson-Harper) suggests that the note was written by her own guilty conscious manifesting itself through the good place, Eleanor is able to admit that perfect people make her insecure and that when she sees someone she feels is better than her she has to try and drag them down to her level. It's a realisation that puts Eleanor in a new light, showing how insecure she's always been about the kind of person she was. The note hit her so hard because she just wants to belong to and once she has admitted this, she's able to help Tahani feel better about herself and cause the plant to bloom.
Eleanor's realisation also allows her to help Chidi who's been feeling insecure himself about his life's work and his place here. Tahani Al-Jamil wisely lets us get to know Chidi as a person outside of Eleanor by pairing him up with Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D'Arcy Carden) for a story in which Michael tries to find Chidi a hobby. It turns out Chidi has been obsessed with ethics all his life, spending 18 years working on a manuscript about his findings and Michael wants him to have new adventures while he's here. It's a great chance for Jackson-Harper to show off how funny he is and Chidi's inherent nervousness plays well off of Danson's trying-to-help Michael. His efforts reveal new things about Chidi as we learn cartography won't work because exploring makes him nervous (he has what doctors diagnosed as "directional madness"), and journalism is a no-go because he doesn't like deadlines. Ultimately though, we learn that Michael is just trying to find him a hobby because Chidi's 3600 page manuscript is so convoluted and muddled, it took Michael (who can read all the world's literature in a hour) two weeks to get through it. This raises a lot of questions (like if the book was so bad, how did Chidi's knowledge of ethics qualify him for the good place) and causes Chidi to doubt himself and his purpose, before committing himself to starting over and writing the book again with Michael's help. Chidi wants new experiences but he truly does love ethics and he owes himself to be true to that. Even Janet gets the chance to be insecure through a comic runner where Michael tries to help her personality as she tries to be his assistant. This is mainly an excuse to watch Carden string together a bunch of colloquialisms, toss off increasingly ridiculous fun facts, be overtly sexual, and then cold and cruel but she's great at every iteration of Janet before she eventually reverts back to her original self. It also opens the door for Eleanor to be Michael's new assistant, which along with him taking on the role of Chidi's advisor opens the door for Danson to be much more involved with our leads, which should complicate their attempts to keep Eleanor's secret from him.
All of this makes Tahani Al-Jamil a perfectly enjoyable episode of television. The kind of third episode you'd expect from a show figuring out it's rhythm. Until the last two minutes upend everything we thought we knew so far. Confronted with another anonymous note telling her to meet the sender at town square, Eleanor learns she wasn't the note sender after all. Jianyu was AND he can talk. It's a good twist, but also a fairly predictable one. Why have Jianyu in the main cast if his only function is to be silent and perfect? What really takes Tahani Al-Jamil to the next level there is the episode isn't content to stop on that reveal. Jianyu doesn't belong in The Good Place either and he doesn't know how or why he got there. And suddenly the question of how Eleanor got to the good place becomes significantly more interesting. Who else isn't supposed to be in The Good Place? How perfect is the system for figuring out who gets in the afterlife? Who is Jianyu really? It's a big reveal and the impressive thing is it comes in the third episode instead of the 7th or the 9th. It shows Michael Schur has bigger plans in mind for this show and he's not going to string us along very long before giving us a look at them. It makes me that much more excited for next weeks episode and to see what will happen next and what else isn't what it seems. One thing's for sure: the characters on this show might be insecure, but The Good Place certainly isn't. And it's not afraid to show it.
Memorable Moments
-As a symbol, the housewarming plant a bit too cutesy and on-the-nose, but it does lead to a great bit where it literally bursts into flames after Eleanor steals Tahani's diary.
-"Who died and left Aristotle in charge of ethics?" "Plato".
-"So now I’m supposed to be nice and make friends and treat her with mutual respect?" "Yeah." "That’s exactly what she wants me to do Chidi. Wake up!" "That’s what everyone wants everybody to do".
-The reveal that Tahani translates to "Congratulations" and Al-Jamil translates to "Beautiful" is a terrific joke.
-In her fun fact phase, we learn from Janet that Columbus is in The Bad Place on account of the raping and slave-trading and genocide, as is every deceased member of the Portland Trailblazers. Her best fun fact though? "Fun fact: Janet is me."
-Chidi really likes taking his time on things. "You never even named your dog, did you. When it ran away you posted signs saying 'responds to long pauses'".
-Malala Yousafzai and Kylie Minogue wrote forwards for Tahani's diary. Of course.
-"First of all, throwing sand is an excellent way to put out vodka fires". "Why would you even know that?!"
-"I don't know how I got here, I don't know what's going on, and I am freaking out homie!" Jianyu frantic delivery of the word "homie" turns a major twist into the biggest laugh of the night.
As the title suggests, perfect neighbour Tahani (Jameela Jamil) is the focus of Tahani Al-Jamil, as Eleanor gets to know her neighbour as an excuse to find out if she's the one who left her the "You don't belong here" note at the end of the last episode. It also gives us an excuse to get to know Tahani, who didn't have much to do in the first two episodes beyond serve as a symbol of irritating perfection to contrast Eleanor with and try to connect with her soulmate Jianyu (Manny Jacinto). So what do we learn about Tahani? Well it turns out the reason she seems so perfect and friendly is because she just really is that perfect and friendly. She raised over 60 billion dollars for charity in her lifetime, while dabbling in things like modelling, museum curating, and being Baz Luhrmann's muse. She may come across as a bit conceited and condescending but it's nothing intentional on her part. The key thing we learn though is under that perfection, she's as insecure and desperate to feel like she belongs as Eleanor is. Her inability to connect with silent Jianyu, which was played for laughs in Flying gets some actual pathos here as we find out just how depressed she is by the fact that he won't break his vow of silence for anyone, even his soulmate. It's what really breaks through to Eleanor and gets her to reluctantly embrace Tahani ("Ugh, of course your hugs are amazing", she grumbles).
Really though Tahani's main purpose in the episode is still to teach us something about Eleanor. Throughout the episode Eleanor is determined to prove that Tahani is not who she seems to be and is someone sinister and evil underneath her shiny surface. All the while a housewarming plant Tahani gave her withers and dies as Eleanor keeps trying in vain to prove Tahani wrote the note that's been giving her so much stress. Meanwhile flashbacks show how she broke up with a boyfriend because she saw his efforts to do the right thing by boycotting a coffee place where the owner sexually harasses people as him lording over how much better than her he was. Eventually after Chidi (William Jackson-Harper) suggests that the note was written by her own guilty conscious manifesting itself through the good place, Eleanor is able to admit that perfect people make her insecure and that when she sees someone she feels is better than her she has to try and drag them down to her level. It's a realisation that puts Eleanor in a new light, showing how insecure she's always been about the kind of person she was. The note hit her so hard because she just wants to belong to and once she has admitted this, she's able to help Tahani feel better about herself and cause the plant to bloom.
Eleanor's realisation also allows her to help Chidi who's been feeling insecure himself about his life's work and his place here. Tahani Al-Jamil wisely lets us get to know Chidi as a person outside of Eleanor by pairing him up with Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D'Arcy Carden) for a story in which Michael tries to find Chidi a hobby. It turns out Chidi has been obsessed with ethics all his life, spending 18 years working on a manuscript about his findings and Michael wants him to have new adventures while he's here. It's a great chance for Jackson-Harper to show off how funny he is and Chidi's inherent nervousness plays well off of Danson's trying-to-help Michael. His efforts reveal new things about Chidi as we learn cartography won't work because exploring makes him nervous (he has what doctors diagnosed as "directional madness"), and journalism is a no-go because he doesn't like deadlines. Ultimately though, we learn that Michael is just trying to find him a hobby because Chidi's 3600 page manuscript is so convoluted and muddled, it took Michael (who can read all the world's literature in a hour) two weeks to get through it. This raises a lot of questions (like if the book was so bad, how did Chidi's knowledge of ethics qualify him for the good place) and causes Chidi to doubt himself and his purpose, before committing himself to starting over and writing the book again with Michael's help. Chidi wants new experiences but he truly does love ethics and he owes himself to be true to that. Even Janet gets the chance to be insecure through a comic runner where Michael tries to help her personality as she tries to be his assistant. This is mainly an excuse to watch Carden string together a bunch of colloquialisms, toss off increasingly ridiculous fun facts, be overtly sexual, and then cold and cruel but she's great at every iteration of Janet before she eventually reverts back to her original self. It also opens the door for Eleanor to be Michael's new assistant, which along with him taking on the role of Chidi's advisor opens the door for Danson to be much more involved with our leads, which should complicate their attempts to keep Eleanor's secret from him.
All of this makes Tahani Al-Jamil a perfectly enjoyable episode of television. The kind of third episode you'd expect from a show figuring out it's rhythm. Until the last two minutes upend everything we thought we knew so far. Confronted with another anonymous note telling her to meet the sender at town square, Eleanor learns she wasn't the note sender after all. Jianyu was AND he can talk. It's a good twist, but also a fairly predictable one. Why have Jianyu in the main cast if his only function is to be silent and perfect? What really takes Tahani Al-Jamil to the next level there is the episode isn't content to stop on that reveal. Jianyu doesn't belong in The Good Place either and he doesn't know how or why he got there. And suddenly the question of how Eleanor got to the good place becomes significantly more interesting. Who else isn't supposed to be in The Good Place? How perfect is the system for figuring out who gets in the afterlife? Who is Jianyu really? It's a big reveal and the impressive thing is it comes in the third episode instead of the 7th or the 9th. It shows Michael Schur has bigger plans in mind for this show and he's not going to string us along very long before giving us a look at them. It makes me that much more excited for next weeks episode and to see what will happen next and what else isn't what it seems. One thing's for sure: the characters on this show might be insecure, but The Good Place certainly isn't. And it's not afraid to show it.
Memorable Moments
-As a symbol, the housewarming plant a bit too cutesy and on-the-nose, but it does lead to a great bit where it literally bursts into flames after Eleanor steals Tahani's diary.
-"Who died and left Aristotle in charge of ethics?" "Plato".
-"So now I’m supposed to be nice and make friends and treat her with mutual respect?" "Yeah." "That’s exactly what she wants me to do Chidi. Wake up!" "That’s what everyone wants everybody to do".
-The reveal that Tahani translates to "Congratulations" and Al-Jamil translates to "Beautiful" is a terrific joke.
-In her fun fact phase, we learn from Janet that Columbus is in The Bad Place on account of the raping and slave-trading and genocide, as is every deceased member of the Portland Trailblazers. Her best fun fact though? "Fun fact: Janet is me."
-Chidi really likes taking his time on things. "You never even named your dog, did you. When it ran away you posted signs saying 'responds to long pauses'".
-Malala Yousafzai and Kylie Minogue wrote forwards for Tahani's diary. Of course.
-"First of all, throwing sand is an excellent way to put out vodka fires". "Why would you even know that?!"
-"I don't know how I got here, I don't know what's going on, and I am freaking out homie!" Jianyu frantic delivery of the word "homie" turns a major twist into the biggest laugh of the night.
Wednesday, 21 September 2016
Speechless Is A Smart, Funny Look Into The World of Special Needs
Maya DiMeo (Minnie Driver) races to the family van with a coupon for 50% off breakfast that expires in 3 minutes. Her husband Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) and daughter Dylan (Kyla Kennedy) buckle up. Her son Ray (Mason Cook) objects, pointing out that the restaurant is 10 minutes away and there's no way they can get there in time. Maya takes this as a challenge and the van speeds off. Jimmy hands his wife coffee and navigates as she calmly and confidently avoids construction by barrelling down a one-way alley, and goes off-road when a broken down car causes a traffic jam, only stopping so Dylan can yell at the annoyed driver for not putting oil in the car before getting on the road. She speeds past a cop car that wisely declines to go after her ("Life's too short", advises the older cop to his young partner) and makes it to the restaurant, snagging the last handicap spot. An older lady objects to their lack of handicap placard, but the DiMeo's are too busy unloading their secret weapon, J.J. (Micah Fowler), their wheel-chair bound teenage son with severe cerebral palsy. The older woman drives off as two bystanders smirk and laugh. Maya calls them out and J.J. flips them off to the best of his abilities. "Work in progress", Maya explains. Cue title card.
That opening scene is Speechless in a nutshell and perfectly introduces Maya as someone who won't let anything or anyone get in the way of what her family (J.J. in particular) deserves with the rest of the DiMeo's along for the ride whether they like it or not. Created by Scott Silveri (who grew up with a brother with cerebral palsy), Speechless (which debuts tonight on ABC, where it'll air every Wednesday after The Goldbergs) is a smart, gutsy comedy that like other family comedies that have debuted on ABC in recent years (black-ish and Fresh Off The Boat chief among them) showcases a family that doesn't get portrayed on TV that often: a family with a special needs child. More importantly, it showcases them in a way that allows them to be complicated and flawed and funny, wisely avoiding the urge to go overly saccharine with the show or put J.J. on a pedestal to be admired as an inspiration (as J.J's new classmates are ready to do in the pilot).
That treatment of J.J. is essential to the success of the pilot. Brought to life by Micah Fowler, an actor who has cerebral palsy (though not as severe as J.J., who is nonverbal strapped to his ear and needs a laser pointer and keyboard to communicate.), J.J. comes across as a normal teenage boy who just wants to talk to girls and be cool. He gets annoyed when his mother makes a fuss over him or when his new classmates want to elect him student council president before they've even met him. He knows how to take advantage of his condition to get his way. He's a bit of a jerk, picking on Ray and running off his initial aide because her voice isn't cool enough for his liking, but he does love his family and will do what it takes to help them out. All of this is expertly portrayed by Fowler who brings a lot of personality to everything J.J. does and making his limited range of motion an asset. It makes you confident that J.J. won't be treated as a prop or conduit for other character's stories, but as a compelling character in his own right.
In the first episode Fowler makes a strong impression, but the biggest and strongest impression by far belongs to Minnie Driver. As Maya, the mother who has moved her family six times in the past two years in search of the perfect situation for J.J. and who has fought tooth and nail to ensure he gets something close to a normal life, Driver is perfect, bringing an intense ferocity to everything Maya does, but also a bit of underlying weariness. You get the sense that that this woman is always fighting because that's what she's had to do for J.J's entire life. Maya's intensity could grow quickly exhausting in lesser hands, but Driver brings enough warmth and understanding to the role to keep her likeable, even with her flaws.
It's an impressive performance and one that could dominate the show, but luckily it's surrounded by strong performances across the board. The pilot is wisely told largely from the perspective of Ray (Mason Cook). Cook does excellent as a kid who loves his family, but is tired of all the moving around and a bit resentful that Maya puts J.J.'s needs ahead of everyone else. He comes across as a sensible voice while still being a kid who's prone to making mistakes like kids do. As Jimmy, John Ross Bowie isn't given a ton to do yet beyond play sarcastic, yet supportive, but he brings a lot to those notes to make Jimmy a funny, interesting character who gets a lot of the pilots bigger laughs (His tour of "the worst house in the best neighbourhood" has the family has moved to is an episode highlight). Kyla Kenedy also doesn't get a lot to do yet, but Dylan's ultra competitiveness in a school environment that tries to celebrate everyone should lead to comic dividends down the line. The character who needs the most fleshing out going forward is Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough), the school groundskeeper who butts heads with Maya immediately but seems set to be J.J.'s new full-time aide by the end of the pilot. Yarbrough's dry delivery is terrific and he and Driver have good rapport, but hopefully Kenneth will get more dimension than just simply "the cool guy".
Beyond casting, what Speechless really has going for it in the pilot is a sense of perspective. Having a child with special needs can be a challenge and a strain to a family and the show isn't afraid to highlight that. When Ray and Maya fight because he's tired of her putting J.J over everyone else, he isn't presented as being in the wrong. There's real pain there and it will be interesting to watch the show explore that going forward. Of course having a child with special needs isn't a total burden either and the show gets that too. It's unafraid to mine the situation for comedy, from the terrible house the DiMeo family has to move to so J.J can go to his latest school, to the school itself, which is desperate to come across as inclusive and progressive (they recently changed their mascot from the Vikings to the Sea Slug, which has both male and female genitalia) to a late-episode quip from Jimmy about which child would be best to run after Maya and which would be best to wait in the van (This earns him the finger from J.J, which he admits is fair). It makes Speechless warm and welcoming, but also clever and biting and fearless. All in all Speechless is off to a strong start and if you're into comedies with a strong perspective, it definitely looks to be well worth your time.
That opening scene is Speechless in a nutshell and perfectly introduces Maya as someone who won't let anything or anyone get in the way of what her family (J.J. in particular) deserves with the rest of the DiMeo's along for the ride whether they like it or not. Created by Scott Silveri (who grew up with a brother with cerebral palsy), Speechless (which debuts tonight on ABC, where it'll air every Wednesday after The Goldbergs) is a smart, gutsy comedy that like other family comedies that have debuted on ABC in recent years (black-ish and Fresh Off The Boat chief among them) showcases a family that doesn't get portrayed on TV that often: a family with a special needs child. More importantly, it showcases them in a way that allows them to be complicated and flawed and funny, wisely avoiding the urge to go overly saccharine with the show or put J.J. on a pedestal to be admired as an inspiration (as J.J's new classmates are ready to do in the pilot).
That treatment of J.J. is essential to the success of the pilot. Brought to life by Micah Fowler, an actor who has cerebral palsy (though not as severe as J.J., who is nonverbal strapped to his ear and needs a laser pointer and keyboard to communicate.), J.J. comes across as a normal teenage boy who just wants to talk to girls and be cool. He gets annoyed when his mother makes a fuss over him or when his new classmates want to elect him student council president before they've even met him. He knows how to take advantage of his condition to get his way. He's a bit of a jerk, picking on Ray and running off his initial aide because her voice isn't cool enough for his liking, but he does love his family and will do what it takes to help them out. All of this is expertly portrayed by Fowler who brings a lot of personality to everything J.J. does and making his limited range of motion an asset. It makes you confident that J.J. won't be treated as a prop or conduit for other character's stories, but as a compelling character in his own right.
In the first episode Fowler makes a strong impression, but the biggest and strongest impression by far belongs to Minnie Driver. As Maya, the mother who has moved her family six times in the past two years in search of the perfect situation for J.J. and who has fought tooth and nail to ensure he gets something close to a normal life, Driver is perfect, bringing an intense ferocity to everything Maya does, but also a bit of underlying weariness. You get the sense that that this woman is always fighting because that's what she's had to do for J.J's entire life. Maya's intensity could grow quickly exhausting in lesser hands, but Driver brings enough warmth and understanding to the role to keep her likeable, even with her flaws.
It's an impressive performance and one that could dominate the show, but luckily it's surrounded by strong performances across the board. The pilot is wisely told largely from the perspective of Ray (Mason Cook). Cook does excellent as a kid who loves his family, but is tired of all the moving around and a bit resentful that Maya puts J.J.'s needs ahead of everyone else. He comes across as a sensible voice while still being a kid who's prone to making mistakes like kids do. As Jimmy, John Ross Bowie isn't given a ton to do yet beyond play sarcastic, yet supportive, but he brings a lot to those notes to make Jimmy a funny, interesting character who gets a lot of the pilots bigger laughs (His tour of "the worst house in the best neighbourhood" has the family has moved to is an episode highlight). Kyla Kenedy also doesn't get a lot to do yet, but Dylan's ultra competitiveness in a school environment that tries to celebrate everyone should lead to comic dividends down the line. The character who needs the most fleshing out going forward is Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough), the school groundskeeper who butts heads with Maya immediately but seems set to be J.J.'s new full-time aide by the end of the pilot. Yarbrough's dry delivery is terrific and he and Driver have good rapport, but hopefully Kenneth will get more dimension than just simply "the cool guy".
Beyond casting, what Speechless really has going for it in the pilot is a sense of perspective. Having a child with special needs can be a challenge and a strain to a family and the show isn't afraid to highlight that. When Ray and Maya fight because he's tired of her putting J.J over everyone else, he isn't presented as being in the wrong. There's real pain there and it will be interesting to watch the show explore that going forward. Of course having a child with special needs isn't a total burden either and the show gets that too. It's unafraid to mine the situation for comedy, from the terrible house the DiMeo family has to move to so J.J can go to his latest school, to the school itself, which is desperate to come across as inclusive and progressive (they recently changed their mascot from the Vikings to the Sea Slug, which has both male and female genitalia) to a late-episode quip from Jimmy about which child would be best to run after Maya and which would be best to wait in the van (This earns him the finger from J.J, which he admits is fair). It makes Speechless warm and welcoming, but also clever and biting and fearless. All in all Speechless is off to a strong start and if you're into comedies with a strong perspective, it definitely looks to be well worth your time.
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