Watch List

As you might have been able to tell from my last couple of posts, I’m getting a little grumpy about my entertainment options.

Just look at TV.  We are really in television’s golden age, with dozens of channels programming 24 hours per day, and an unprecedented number of high-quality series on networks or available for streaming.

Unfortunately I don’t have an unprecedented number of hours in which to watch all these series, so maybe a little culling is in order.  I’ve got a number of series just stacking up on the DVR, or sitting in my Netflix queue, so I thought I’d ask you for advice.

Mr Robot.  I was deeply impressed by Season One, but its cunning and subversive excellence didn’t make me crave a second season at all.  I’ve got quite an number of Season Two episodes recorded, but I’ve been hesitant to look at them.  I mean, the first series was so stunning, that I couldn’t see how it could go anywhere but downhill.  Am I wrong?

Daredevil.  I started watching the second season, but somehow lost interest.  Without Vincent d’Onofrio as Fisk, the series seemed to have lost much of its savor.  Ought I to finish it?

Killjoys.  Brainless but unpretentious space opera that bravely returns the subgenre to its roots as Westerns-in-space.  I didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, yet there it is on my DVR.  Is there an answer to the question, “Why bother?”

Queen of the South.  An American remake of a Mexican telenovela based on a novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte.  Kate del Castillo, the star of the Mexican version, inspired “El Chapo” Guzman to do, well, whatever the hell he did, including the famous meet with Sean Penn.  I’m a fan of Perez’s fiction, but while watching a female drug mule being disemboweled on the USA Network version, I decided maybe I’d better stick to the novel.  Was it the smart move?

Orphan Black.  Season Four started out strong, with the spooky-weird drug-delivering mechanical implant worms, but it seemed to be devolving into yet another series in which people chase clones around for no detectible reason.  ‘Long about Episode Four, I began to realize that what I really wanted was all these people to be in a sitcom together, and forget the silly conspiracies and chase-stuff.  Was I wrong?

Incidentally, I’m on the verge of finishing the second season of Amazon’s Bosch, based on the works by Michael Connelly.  Which I liked, but I noticed it took them only till the second season to discover Williams’ Law of Genre, “the functional purpose of family in genre is so they can be kidnaped and held hostage.”