Some Television Notes

Today I'm just making a quick post on what I'm watching (or, in some cases, re-watching). Two new, two rewatches:

1. Succession. 
Look, everyone is watching Succession. Or, at least, so it seems. And they should, because it's really good. Great, even--and I mean Great with a big G. I probably wouldn't have said that a season ago; I liked it a lot, but I wasn't ready to say that it's a permanent work. But now? Absolutely. The run of episodes starting with Logan's death and running through his funeral are all a step above anything the show's done before. I'm not sure I've ever seen on television a sequence as rending as the death episode. It brought back some bad old memories of my mother's death and the numbness and disbelief that attends such an event. And when you follow that with the next episodes--the extreme emotional violence of the Shiv-Tom argument on the balcony, an argument so intense that you almost wish they would do something physically violent just to break the tension--the election-night episode with its echoes of 2016--the funeral where self-interest and mourning blend in strange and magical ways.... It's just a fantastic show and one that I expect will maintain a following long after the finale drops.

2. Oh, No! Here Comes Trouble!
This one's an odd one. I'll just give a summary here from MyDramaList:

Pu Yi Yong is a typical high school student. When he unexpectedly gains superpowers after waking up from a car accident, his previously uneventful life is suddenly not so ordinary anymore.

This summary doesn't do the show justice. Neither does the English title, which is goofy and doesn't at all convey the mixture of genuine human emotion and silliness that characterizes the show. The protagonist here can see dead people and help them through the power of...traditional Chinese calligraphy. It's an odd little idea, but one that I vibe with. I just finished teaching The Waste Land for the semester, and one of the things I continue to adore about that poem is the hope at the end that, somehow, the poet can make a broken world whole. There's something of that in this show as well. Also something of Alan Moore's contention that artwork is a kind of magicwork. I wouldn't say this show is either Great or great, but it's charming and intriguing.

3. Atlanta 
I watched the first two seasons of Atlanta some time back, but frankly I found the second season so anxiety-inducing that I gave it up. That's not a judgment on the show; I would have been watching it around 2019/2020 and those were stressful years for everyone. I decided to give it another go, so now I'm halfway through season 1 again. The really weird stuff hasn't kicked in yet, but I'm enjoying the humor and the streaks of absurdism woven through it.

4. Twin Peaks
I love this show. Obviously, I've watched it several times before, and I frankly don't know if I can ever write about it in a way that really conveys how I feel about it. Season 1 is obviously solid, but season 2 is good, too, in spite of its reputation. I do think that this rewatch convinces me more than ever that certain multi-hour videos about how it's all really about television are...not only wrong, but absurdly wrong. It's a show about a lot of things: Lynch/Frost's own peculiar metaphysics, violence against women, the hypocrisy of American mythology. It might even be partly about television. But anyone who says it's really, really about television is high on their own supply. Maybe I'll have more to say when I finish this rewatch.