The Old Man
Liam Mathews who writes for TV Guide said of season one of The Old Man that it "had one of the most precipitous in-season declines in recent TV history. If it had maintained the level of thoughtfulness and tension of its first two episodes, it would have been one of the best shows of 2022... But it fell apart as it went along, becoming mired in portentous monologues and baffling plot choices before ending with a reveal so obvious that I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be surprising or not." And I honestly can't disagree with that statement. At all. In fact I couldn't have said it better myself. And that's why I chose to quote another writer. This show thrives on one thing and one thing alone, Jeff Bridges kicking ass. So what do they spend all their time doing? Waffling around issues and bogging down the show in bewildering plotlines in what feels like a deliberate attempt to draw it out for as many episodes as they can. Because striped bare this show isn't about politics it's about daddy issues. And Alia Shawkat's "Angela Adams" dealing with her three dads. She's got her real dad, her stepdad, and her work dad... And is this really supposedly prestige TV because it sounds like it could be a comedy in the eighties? This bait and switch from action to family angst couldn't have been good for ratings. If it wasn't for the fact I respect the actors and was mildly intrigued by the annoying cliffhanger I wouldn't have even tuned in for season two. And if I'm honest, I wish I hadn't turned in. The poster for this season I think captures it all, they're treating the Middle East like the Wild West and it's all about exploiting the indigenous people and leaning into the white savior complex all our characters carry around like a millstone. I don't care if this is about a girl stuck between words, or whatever they were trying to do with Parwana/Emily/Angela. If they gave out Razzies for television shows Alia Shawkat would have taken all the prizes. This show was so out of touch with reality and with utlizing the talent they had at their disposal that they ended up making one of the worst television shows in recent years that, like an old horse, as been thankfully put out of it's misery. To show how badly this show dragged out it's plot Janet McTeer, who here plays John Lithgow's ex-wife, shows up in the second to last episode and in ONE SCENE summarizes everything that we have been forced to endure and explains why this has happened and what the goals are and I was blown away. You mean I could have been saved hours of my life by just having Janet McTeer show up and just tell me what was happening in a few short minutes? Can I opt for that in the future? Or maybe not. She and John Lithgow are on my shit list because of a certain long term commitment they recently entered into with HBO. At least I never have to her about Parwana/Emily/Angela again and that right there is a goal I never knew I needed in my life.
The Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine started in summer 1992. Seeing as I viewed myself as a sophisticated adult because I was just about to start high school I wasn't the target demographic. That would have been my brother who is four years younger than me. He loved authors like John Bellairs, so of course this fell into his wheelhouse. He wasn't a fanatic because his main loves were video games and WWF and WCW wrestling, but I remember him having a few books on his shelves, particularly Night of the Living Dummy. One thing R.L. Stine gets is what Rod Serling did before him, and that's that dummies are terrifying. Which is lucky, because this season is all about Stine's evil dummy. For the most part. It's about how the dummy has influenced, one might even say destroyed, two generations in Port Lawrence, Washington. The problem is it's hard to categorize this show, there's a nostalgia element but there's a lot of cheese too. You have horrific moments and then you have Justin Long doing some of the most insane physical humor you will ever see as the dummy possesses him. There's no inbetween. And the show isn't able to find a common ground. It doesn't know what it wants to be and I think this is because it's made by Disney. It wants to reach the widest audience possible so it hedges its bets. When it could go dark it goes funny, when it could go terrifying it goes gross. In that regard it does kind of want to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even with an alum of that show, the late and unlamented Forrest. But here's the thing, even Buffy wasn't able to find the sweet spot in telling a story about an evil dummy. The season one episode "The Puppet Show" is one of those ones if I was a person who skipped episodes when rewatching favorite shows I just might skip. It's a shame Sid had to show up in the second Buffy video game, because he's a horrible fighter, but it is what it is. What I'm trying to say is that it's like a once in a lifetime situation to get this balance right and in the end Goosebumps failed. I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, because there are solid episodes here, but the finale left me cold. Instead of bringing our Port Lawrence Scooby Gang together to vanquish the big bad instead we get a rambling episode about the origins of the dummy. We're in Egypt and traveling circuses, we're far away from our core cast. The town then gets possessed by the dummy and everyone has makeup like the henchmen from the Buffy musical as my brother pointed out. And I guess they win, it's very convoluted and Justin Long appears to still be possessed at the end and that's where we're left. Because while the show was renewed it was renewed as an anthology. So guess what? Next season we'll get new stories and characters that they might just as well leave on another cliffhanger. I mean, really!?! I invested my time in this uneven show and I'm not going to get closure!?! Not to mention that I feel like I need therapy because I realized I'm now the age of the parents of the teens on the show. At least the flashbacks to their high school years had the requisite amount of flannel. The flannel is all I have to comfort me now.
