With a heavy background growing up in the 80’s watching sitcoms, that’s something that I’ve carried through the years. I’m drawn to the shorter form of comedy like this, the different ways they can be filmed, the evolution of the format over the years, and so forth. One of the more prolific sitcom creators of the past decade+ is Chuck Lorre, who brought out Two and a Half Men, Mom, and the Big Bang Theory along with a few others. While Mom never clicked for me I enjoyed the others as the team Lorre worked with knew how to cast and work that dynamic well over the years.
So I was delight in how Netflix is continuing to target older audiences (older than me, such as my mother) because for me it brings back stars I grew up with in leading roles when they usually get supporting or bit roles. Lorre’s latest is a new series on Netflix with The Kominsky Method. I’ve long enjoyed Michael Douglas since Romancing the Stone and was thrilled that he had a role in Ant-Man. Similarly, I’ve enjoyed Alan Arkin a great deal in so many supporting roles over the years and the inclusion of Nancy Travis hits a sweet spot. With Lorre and his team writing all the episodes, the eight-episode series deals with a lot of things that people have to deal with in terms of loss of spouse after decades, the loss of friends, and the struggle of being brittle in a world that’s evolving faster and faster. It’s not a perfect show but it’s a show that really lets its characters have natural flaws, amplified by the sitcom model, and really connects well. It’s an easy to burn through show that delivers.
This week also saw me polishing off the last couple of episodes of Altered Carbon, leaving me more excited for what’s to come. There’s a lot of neat stuff to explore in it when it comes to future-tech/social issues and that’s an area that science fiction has long explored well. This goes big toward the end and I really like how it wrapped things up while setting up for changes to come with the second season as Anthony Mackie takes over as the lead.
Beyond that, this past week was a bad week for TV for the most part thanks to Thankgiving. A lot of shows go off the air since people are traveling but we at least had new episodes of Legends of Tomorrow with a really fun kaiju work involving one of the creators of Godzilla, as well as more Arrow and Walking Dead. But mostly the week was just lots of holiday prep and running aorund.