The Carmichael Show and The Ranch: Throwbacks to the Sitcoms of Yesteryear

Two of the best new sitcoms to be released within the past 12 months are The Ranch, which had its entire first season drop on Netflix on April 1, 2016, and The Carmichael Show, which premiered on NBC on August 26, 2015. Tonally and spiritually, these two shows have nothing in common; however, both shows represent The Ghost of Sitcom Past. The landscape for sitcoms is remarkably different from what is what when Friends and Seinfeld left the airwaves. Nowadays, sitcoms have to be fully formed right out of the gate like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or be able to be traditional with a different perspective like Black-ish or Fresh Off The Boat. There is seemingly no room to be good and “working on it” as seen with the recent cancellations of The Grinder and Grandfathered. Yet two sitcoms have recently emerged that have helped buck this trend, and they have been able to do so in large part by going back to the original drawing board.

The Silver Age of Television and The Shows That Defined It

TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote elegantly about The Golden Age of Television in his book The Revolution Was Televised. It’s a phenomenal read for any television junkie, and while it doesn’t explicitly detail The Golden Age (the book purposefully leaves out comedies), it’s a great overview of the era.

I would recommend reading the nuances and specifics about the era in Mr. Sepinwall’s book, but the basic tenants of the revolution were an increase in prestige programming (which in turn led to more serialized series) which also led to an increase in networks. At the very beginning you had the three basics, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Over time the number of networks grew. The Golden Age saw an expansion of networks and having those networks get into the original programming game. HBO started to produce great original television content which led other networks like FX, AMC, and Showtime to do the same. That in turn led to great dramas such as The Shield, Dexter, and the aforementioned Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

I know many people would argue that we are still in The Golden Era of Television. We still have amazing television programming and television has become more serialized over the procedural nature that it used to be for decades. The Golden Era has changed things in television and that change is moving at a rapid pace. Further, what we used to know as television has almost disappeared.

All The Way Only Goes Half of the Way Towards Greatness

Lyndon Baines Johnson, our country's 36th president, is one of my personal favorite presidents. I studied him in depth in my A.P. U.S. History class junior year of high school and was lucky enough to be able to write about him on my A.P. Test. He was thrust into the presidency as a result of one of the most heinous acts ever committed on American soil and managed to pass some of our country's most important legislation, all while fondly whipping out his junk whenever he wanted to. Johnson was a larger than life character onto his own and that's what helped him become a successful president. That is why I found it odd that he seems to have been left behind in the zeitgeist. There are a litany of TV shows and movies all about JFK (and his assassination), but almost nothing about his successor. That is why I have been anxiously awaiting for HBO to release All The Way, a semi-biographical look at LBJ based upon the Tony-award winning play of the same name. Plus, we get to see Bryan Cranston's glorious return to television since Breaking Bad.

A Review of The Jungle Book (2016)

The best music covers tend to be songs that improve on a song with great lyrics but mediocre music behind it. Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” has amazing lyrics because it’s a Bob Dylan song, but so-so music behind it, well, because it’s a Bob Dylan song. Jimi Hendrix was able to take those lyrics and, using his incredible talent as a guitar player, give Dylan’s lyrics the appropriate music they deserved. The Byrds version of Dylan’s “Tambourine Man” is a similar situation. The same rule for remaking songs should also be the same rule for remaking movies. A movie should only be remade if the original is subpar, but has some good stuff in it.

Disney’s 1967 animated classic The Jungle Book is not a good movie, certainly not by today’s standards. I have fond memories of the movie from when I watched it as a kid, but kids are dumb and their tastes can’t be trusted. Re-watching the 1967 film, I realized what a jumbled mess it is. The film starts off on the right foot by having the panther Bagheera watch over a “mancub” Mowgli that he found when the boy was just a newborn that he then has to protect from the evil tiger Shere Khan. However, the film quickly devolves as Bagheera and Mowgli set off on their journey out of the jungle and away from Shere Khan. There’s an extended scene between Mowgli and a pack of elephants that makes absolutely no sense, Mowgli meets a group of vultures that weresupposed to be voiced by The Beatles, and Bagheera comes and goes as he pleases.

Disney’s live action version takes the same basic premise of their 1967 film, Bagheera and Mowgli journey to find humans to escape the wrath of Shere Khan, and makes a coherent story out of it. The 1967 animated movie is like a Bob Dylan song, a sub-par whole with excellent parts in it, and the 2016 version is like Jimi Hendrix who made an excellent whole that improved on the good parts of the original.

New Girl Is Now One Giant Game of True American

Fox’s New Girl ended its fifth season recently where the fictional drinking game True American, played by the main characters of the show, reared its beautiful head. No one quite knows what the rules of the game are (although The Internet claims itknows how to play), but the rules are unimportant. The game is an excuse for the characters to shout random, funny things, and the few True American scenes we’ve seen throughout the series’ run have always been guaranteed laughs. The second half of New Girl’s series run has essentially become a version of its fictional game- random, unstructured, nonsensical, and really funny.

Back in 2014, my Cord Cutters Podcast host and I werediscussing the series finale of How I MetYour Mother, which led to a discussion of our favorite sitcoms of all time. I mentioned that New Girl had a chance to make my Top 5. While it was coming off of a horrendous first half to its third season, the show had an excellent second season to follow up a very good rookie year. I though at the time that if New Girl could right the ship and return to the level it was at for its sophomore season, then it had the potential to be transcendent.

The Girlfriend Experience Is Your New Guilty Pleasure

The plot and story of Starz new show The Girlfriend Experience, loosely based off Steven Soderbergh's 2009 film of the same name, seems cliche. A young 20-something law student struggles to pay her bills so she turns into a high-end escort to pay the bills. However, Amy Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan tell this story in such an interesting and slick way, that you won't be able to stop yourself from binge watching all 13 episodes, all of which are now available.

The show is cold and distant, like its lead Christine Reade (played spectacularly by Riley Keough- the daughter of Lisa Marie Presely and the granddaughter to The King himself) which in turn makes its voyeuristic tendencies hauntingly beautiful.

Unfunny Kimmy Schmidt: My Review of Season 2

There was always something off about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. After all, the show is set in an off-kilter, goofy version of New York City about a kidnap victim finally living on her own after being trapped in an underground bunker for 15 years. But for some reason, that extremely dark concept worked in Season 1 of the Netflix comedy created by 30 Rock alums Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Yet, there is something off about Season 2 that just is not clicking the same way Season 1 did.

The entirety of Season 2 dropped recently and I have seen the first 7 episodes. While the episodes have gotten better as the show has gone along, the first half of the season has been underwhelming.

Season 2 of Kimmy Schmidt essentially takes place right where Season 1 left off (I say essentially because the very first scene of episode one is a flash forward). Kimmy (played perfectly by Office and Bridesmaids alum Ellie Kemper) is still living with Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), hanging out with her landlord Lillian (Carol King) and helping out her former boss, now going by Ms. White (played by 30 Rock alum Jane Krakowski) whose maiden surname was given to her Native American family back in the day as a joke by a sarcastic census taker.