What To Watch While Quarantined - #4 Avenue 5

Series #4 – AVENUE 5

Streaming Service- Crave TV

Seasons – 1 (2020 - ???)

Starring -  Hugh Laurie, Josh Gad, Zach Woods, Lenora Crichlow, Suzy Nakamura, Kyle Bornheimer

Tone and Feel – Star Trek meets Gilligan’s Island

Memorable Quote – “It was true when I said it. Like marriage vows.”

— Matt Spencer (Zach Woods), Avenue 5, Season 1: He's Only There To Stop His Skeleton Falling Over

Avenue 5 is the newest of my recommendations having debuted only earlier this year, and yet, it is quickly becoming appointment television for me. The series stars Hugh Laurie as Ryan Clark, the Captain of a futuristic ‘Love Boat in Space”. (Note: If you’re too young to know what the Love Boat is, go away, I don’t want to know you)

Captain Clark is there mainly to glad-hand and schmooze the passengers of a luxury cruise ship in space during its three-week voyage. However, when an accident knocks them off of their flight path and delays their return window to earth significantly, it soon becomes clear that the Captain may be in over his head. The reason for this becomes evident as the pilot unfolds.

Laurie is surrounded by an all-star comedy cast led by Josh Gad, (perhaps best known as the voice of Olaf in the Frozen movies) who is amazing as Herman Judd, the clueless, arrogant, and narcissistic billionaire whose company owns the cruise line. Gad plays Judd as the perfect combination Richard Branson and the White House guy.

Zach Woods (Gabe from The Office) is always delightfully weird in everything he does, and he is never better than as Matt, the guy in charge of passenger liaison. His best lines are often in promotional videos for the ship’s amenities, “Be sure to try our amazing five-star buffet. “If you’re not completely satisfied – you’re wrong.”

The fun in the series comes from watching a crew of mostly inept cruise line staff deal with crisis situations in space better suited for the crew of the Starship Enterprise. One of my favorite running gags is the fact that people can’t tell is Captain Clark is American or British because the accent keeps oscillating between the two. It is hard to imagine but there would be a sizeable chunk of the viewing audience who recall Hugh Laurie as the American Dr. House and don’t realize he started out as part of the British comedy team Fry & Laurie. It’s clear Laurie hasn’t lost a comedic step over the years.

As the first season is still in progress, I can’t say for certain the long arc of the series will build to a logical and gripping season finale. It is possible the show, like the ship, could be lost and adrift. What I can say is I finish each episode, wanting to watch the next one, which is really all you can hope for at this point.

For this reason, I strongly recommend you watch Avenue 5 while quarantined.

And millennials, do yourself and Google the Love Boat. Come on board, they’re expecting you. That will be much funnier after you Google it. Okay…marginally funnier.

What to Watch While Quarantined #3 - OZARK

What To Watch While Quarantined

Series #3 – OZARK

Streaming Service- Netfilix

Seasons – 3 (2017-2020)

Starring – Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Julie Garner, Jordana Spiro, Esai Morales

Tone and Feel – Breaking Bad

Memorable Quote: “If I want to put all $7,945,400 into a hot tub, get buck naked and play Scrooge McDuck, that is 100% my business. Now, where’s my money?”

— Marty Byrde S01E01

Ozark is the first pure drama/suspense series on the list, and it is definitely a must-see. I wanted to write about it now because season three will be released on Netflix in ten days (March 27). That should give you just enough time to power through the first two seasons. Unless, of course, you’ll be busy at the office, gym or maybe travelling overseas.

Too soon?

Ozark tells the story of Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a Chicago-based financial advisor and family man who happens to have one special talent. He’s the best money launderer in the region and has used this gift to enrich both himself and a Mexican drug cartel for quite a while. As cartel drug money launderers go, he is a fairly straight arrow.

Without spoiling too much, let’s just say things go a bit off-kilter for Marty and his operation and the ensuing circumstances lead him to the Lake of Ozarks. Sometimes, known as the ‘Redneck Riviera’, the area is a holiday destination resort for people from all walks of life from the Midwest and southern states.

Marty has been tasked with uprooting his family and setting up a new, higher volume money laundering operation in this bizarre new land. What makes the series special is it is both a family fish out of water story along with the most gripping crime drama in recent memory.

Ozark likes playing in the grey zones with its characters which is what makes the show so compelling. It’s not a good guys versus bad guys dynamic but rather a really complicated group of people stuck together in a difficult and stressful situation. Jason Bateman has never been better (sorry Arrested Development fans but it’s true) playing Marty, the moral centre of this universe. When you consider the moral centre is a money launderer you begin to see what makes the series so interesting. Laura Linney plays Marty’s wife Wendy who has her own checkered past that complicates their façade as a typical happy family.

As the series evolves, Julie Garner’s character Ruth Langmore begins to steal the series. Ruth is part of a notorious family of local petty thieves but unlike her kinfolk, she strives to be better and years for something more. She attaches herself to Marty because she sees a class and dignity in him that she hasn’t seen in her family. Garner won an Emmy for her season two portrayal of Ruth Langmore this past fall. I believe Ozark has the strongest ensemble cast of any series in the past 20 years.

The hillbilly locals are just one side from which Marty and his family are being squeezed. It seems at all times, he is feeling pressure from the cartel, law enforcement, and the locals, all while trying to keep his family from unraveling at any moment.

The pilot episode is a masterclass in setting up a drama series. There is so much I want to say about it, but I fear I may have given away too much already. I’ll just say this – watch the pilot episode and if after that, you aren’t completely hooked on this series, then Ozark was never your bag in the first place.

If you love suspenseful crime dramas, I highly recommend watching Ozark while quarantined.

What to Watch While Quarantined - #2 Lovesick

Series #2 – LOVESICK

Streaming Service- Netflix

Seasons – 3 (2015-2018)

Starring - Johnny Flynn, Antonia Thomas, Daniel Ings, Joshua McGuire, Hannah Britland

Tone and Feel – The Office (UK) meets How I Met Your Mother

Memorable Quote: “I want kids, but I don't want to have to raise them. I want visitation rights, not custody. Even if I'm married to their mother.”

— Luke S01E02

Over the coming weeks and months, I will write about 30 of these streaming series recommendations and if you only take my advice on one, it has to be this one. I’ll put it as clearly as I can. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this show! It is my favourite show I’ve discovered in the past 10 years.

Lovesick is a laugh-out-loud, raunchy yet heartfelt, series about four single friends in the UK looking for love and relationships in both the short term and long term varieties. In the opening scene of the series, we discover Dylan (Johnny Flynn) has been diagnosed with an STD and is instructed to contact his former lovers to let them know they need to be tested.

This serves as the engine of the series where each episode Dylan contacts a past lover to break the news. What makes the show so effective in its storytelling is the way it cuts back and forth in time within each episode and between episodes in the series. After his diagnosis, Dylan decides to tackle his list alphabetically which takes us back three years to the day he met Abigail.

The pilot does a great job of introducing us to the rest of the cast. Dylan’s best friend is notorious womanizer Luke whose views on love and relationships run opposed to everything Dylan holds dear. I compare this to How I Met Your Mother because, in many respects, Dylan is a British Ted Mosby, yearning to find the one, constantly cursing his ineptitude with women, and often messing up what could have been a really good thing. If Dylan is Ted then Luke is his Barney Stinson, only looking for love in overnight doses at most.

Then there is Evie (The Good Doctor’s Antonia Thomas) who is the true object of Dylan’s affection. If you were captivated by the storylines of Ross and Rachel, Ted and Robyn, or Jim and Pam, you will quickly fall for Dylan and Evie. This ongoing will-they-won't they romantic tension is the glue that holds everything together.

Rounding out the main cast is Angus, an impulsive and often foolish little man who always seems to find the crap end of the stick. Watch the first episode which centres around Angus’ wedding and you’ll know all you need to about this character. He is the source of a tremendous amount of comedy in the series.

You may have seen the show on Netflix when it was first released under its original name – Scrotal Recall. That was the title when it ran in its first season on Britain’s Channel Four. Series Creator Tom Edge picked it as a working title that they liked as an inside joke. Unable to come up with a better one, they stuck with it. Unlike Cougar Town which desperately wanted to change its title but never did, Scrotal Recall jumped at the chance to change it when Netflix picked up the series for season two. They found that people loved the show but refused to recommend it to friends because they were embarrassed to say the title out loud. This could explain why it didn’t get the word of mouth it deserved.

Lovesick is sweet, funny, raunchy, and an overall brilliant ensemble comedy. If you enjoy those types of TV shows, you must, must, must watch Lovesick while quarantined.

What To Watch While Quarantined - #1 Red Oaks

Series #1 – RED OAKS

Streaming Service- Amazon Prime Video

Seasons – 3 (2014-2017)

Starring -  Craig Roberts, Paul Reiser, Richard Kind, Jennifer Grey, Ennis Esmer, Oliver Cooper, Alexandra Socha

Tone and Feel – Caddyshack meets The Wonder Years

Red Oaks is a comedy series set in the mid to late 1980s that pays homage to everything great about movies and TV of the time. Set at a New Jersey country club where the one percent spend their leisure time, Red Oaks features themes of the little guy versus the mucky-mucks which were a staple of the time. But just when you think it’s going to be a poor man’s Caddyshack reboot, Red Oaks proves to be so much more genuine, honest and raw than the early 80’s comedies were. It shows flashes of the sincere yet awkward coming-of-age moments that were so prevalent in the John Hughes movies of the time.

The series is centred around  David Frye played by Craig Roberts, a teenager who is working at the Red Oaks Country Club through the summers to pay for his education. His father Sam (played brilliantly by Richard Kind) wants David to follow in his footsteps and become an accountant. David, however, dreams of moving to New York and going to film school after which he will become a successful film director. This generational conflict is a common theme throughout the series and is set up beautifully in the very first scene of the pilot. Just when you think you’ve seen this same scene a hundred times before, you quickly find out that you haven’t.

The supporting cast is nicely rounded out by David’s best-friend Wheeler, his girl-next-door girlfriend, Karen, his tennis-pro boss Nash who vacillates between immature playboy and sage mentor, and Skye, the mysterious teenager who catches his eye.

For a series that is centred around teenagers, the older generation of actors almost steals the series. Paul Reiser is both convincing and compelling as a master-of-the-universe a-hole. David’s parents, played by Kind and a sexually confused Jennifer Grey, are laugh-out-loud funny while serving as an appropriate foil for David as he longs to break free from his crazy household. The ongoing theme of chasing after what you want versus going the safe route is as apt for the older generation as it is for David and his friends.

The three seasons of the series are set in the summers of 1985, 86, and 87 so if you are close to my age, there will be a bonus appeal to watching Red Oaks. There is something ultimately satisfying about seeing characters living in a time when you were that same age. This explains why TV creators seem to want to write about when they were young. Think Happy Days in the 70s, Wonder Years in the 80s, and that 70s show in the 90s.

More than just great 80s nostalgia, Red Oaks boasts fully developed characters, romantic subplots, and story arcs that feel genuine with endings that are well-earned, not merely tacked on.

If you enjoy period dramedies with as much heart as laughs, you should do yourself a favour and watch Red Oaks while quarantined.

Unbroken

Walking out of the theatre after seeing Angelina Jolie’s inspirational triumph-of-the-human-spirit offering Unbroken, I was reminded of one of my favorite lines from the early Simpson’s episodes. Attorney Lionel Hutz tells Homer “This is the most blatant case of false advertising since my suit against the movie The Neverending Story.”

I think if Lionel Hutz had seen Unbroken, he may have another lawsuit on his hands. Before I explain why, I will give a full SPOILER ALERT that I am going to discuss the ending of this movie (and an 80’s classic) in full detail so if you really want to see it, please do not read any further. If you think you might want to see it, please continue reading so that I may save you $13 that would be better spent almost anywhere.

I remember seeing the trailer for this film a few months back and I recall thinking – what a great story this will be. The best stories are the ones that see the greatest internal transformation in the protagonist. When done correctly, our protagonist goes through a harrowing ordeal and emerges a changed person, usually, but not always, for the better. From the trailer, I saw this would be the real life story of American Louis Zamperini who after competing for the U.S. in the 1936 Berlin Olympics served his country in WWII, was shot down, and survived adrift at sea before being taken in to a Japanese P.O.W. camp where he was regularly beaten by a sadistic Japanese Officer.

If we stop here, this is an incredible though not original story. Zamperini is not the only person to go through a trying ordeal at the hands of wartime captors. What made me want to see this movie is what happened after he was released from the camp. Zamperini rededicated himself to his Christian faith and sought out his captor so he could forgive him. I dropped my $13 so I could be taken on this journey of redemption through a real life triumph of the human spirit story. What I got instead was…I’ll get to that shortly.

What I will say for this film is it does not shy away from showing the audience just how brutal Zamperini’s experience was. Zamperini and two of his aircraft colleagues spent more than 45 days on an inflatable raft in the Pacific Ocean. Their ordeal made Tom Hanks experience in Cast Away look like a episode of Fantasy Island. (If you’re under 40, google Fantasy Island and you’ll see what a clever reference that is)

After finally being rescued (?) by a Japanese ship, Zamperini is taken in to a P.O.W. camp where they discover his identity as a former Olympic star. This along with his naturally defiant disposition leads to several severe beatings which are played out for us in graphic detail. I read that these scenes were so intense to shoot that the actor who played the sadistic camp Warden Wantenabe (Takamasa Ishihara) was so distraught after one of the scenes that he vomited on the set. There is no doubt that the actors all did a superb job with the material they were given, especially Jack O’Connell who played Zamperini.

So after two straight hours of being subjected to the most graphic torture and hardship scenes I had seen in a while, Zameperini and his buddies were released and greeted at the airport by joyous family and friends. Perfect, at this point I was ready for the redemption part. Show me how he overcame his bitterness, hatred, and rage and found enough strength in his faith to find love and forgiveness in his heart and express this to his captor face to face.

And then it happened.

They started running the epilogue captions. Those are when they tell you what happened to the character in real life at the end of one of these true story movies. They went something like this:

Louis went on to marry the girl of his dreams in 1946.

After spending years battling severe post-traumatic stress disorder, Louis Zamperini sought out Wantenabe to forgive him but Wantenabe refused to meet.

Then they showed a real life clip of an 80 year old Louis carrying the Olympic torch in the lead up to the 1998 Nagano Olympics.

I have so many problems with this “ending” I have no idea where to begin. I will start with that the fact that we never met the girl of his dreams in the movie except through a single photo so that doesn’t give us any emotional payoff.

Most importantly, they “epilogue captioned” the most important part of this story. We needed to see his battle with post-traumatic stress and what he had to go through to bring him to a place of forgiveness. You can’t offer a redemption story and not show the redemption. Without it, all you are offering is two hours of torture porn. Yes I understand it is problematic because Watenabe refused to meet. But you have to show Zamperini’s efforts to seek him out and make us understand why he must do that. Without this piece to the story it feels like if they ended E.T. where he was dying in that big tent and then flashed up on a black screen: “E.T. eventually recovered and was saved by Elliot who rushed him to the space ship via a magical bicycle ride. Elliot and E.T. had a heartfelt goodbye before E.T. was safely returned to his home planet."

It’s just not the same as seeing it for yourself.

When I think back to how I felt immediately after seeing Unbroken, I again have to go back to another Lionel Hutz classic. I wanted to kind of run over someone with my car. And by “kind of” I mean “repeatedly” and by “someone” I mean “the filmmakers.”

Horrible Bosses 2

Is there any genre we have a greater love-hate relationship with than the comedy sequel? Sequels to our favorite comedies are often the most anticipated releases of the year. Even just hearing that one is in the works can create as much internet traffic as an oiled-up Kardashian. And yet all too often, the experience of sitting through a comedy sequel leaves us feeling angry and let down. Not unlike after seeing the photos of an oiled-up Kardashian. 

So as I sat in the darkened theatre waiting for Horrible Bosses 2 to begin, I hoped for the best but braced myself for the worst. I enjoyed the 2011 original which benefited from exceptional screen chemistry amongst the three leads (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day) as well as fearless supporting performances from the titular horrible bosses. (Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Collin Farrell) For the sequel to live up to the original, it would have to buck a long standing cinematic trend.

I have created four categories that all comedies sequels fall under and the percentage for each. They are:

AS GOOD IF NOT BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL (7%)

A Shot in the Dark (Pink Panther sequel), Austin Powers the Spy Who Shagged Me, 22 Jump Street

NOT AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL BUT PASSABLE (63%)

Beverly Hills Cop II, Wayne’s World II, Anchorman II, Clerks II, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

REMARKABLY BAD (22%)

Ghostbusters II, Back to the Future II, Weekend at Bernie’s II, Look Who’s Talking Too, Short Circuit II

A GLOBAL AUTROCITY REQUIRING A UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION (8%)

Caddieshack II, Blues Brothers 2000, Teen Wolf Too

Just going by the (completely made up and arbitrary) numbers, comedy sequels have a 70% chance of not being truly awful but only a 7% chance of actually being good. It would seem that comedy sequels are why they invented the phrase – Meh, it was okay.

In Horrible Bosses II, Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis), and Dale (Day) decide to go into business for themselves after Dale comes up with the idea for The Shower Buddy, a shower nozzle that automatically dispenses shampoo and conditioner. The guys get approached by billionaire Burt Hanson (Christolph Waltz) who wants to be the exclusive distributor for the product and orders 100,000 units. This turns out to be a power play to bankrupt the guys and take over their company. To prevent this from happening, our guys need to come up with a way to make a lot of money in a very short time to pay off their bank loan. They land on a kidnapping plot where they abduct Hanson‘s douchebag adult son Rex (Chris Pine) and hold him for ransom.

This plot device gets the movie where it needs to be – our bumbling leads stumbling their way through a high level criminal plot well beyond their competency. And the role Rex plays in the kidnapping turns out to be a fun aspect as well. However this plotline also exposes the movie‘s greatest weakness. The first movie worked so well because the guys were constantly pitted against and reacting to their horrible bosses. Remove that constant force of antagonism and you’re left with a low rent three stooges dynamic. There are too many scenes of the guys bickering and fighting amongst themselves and not enough really big laughs.

The scenes that were the most enjoyable and really popped off the screen were the brief cameo appearances by the former bosses played by Aniston and Spacey. The bumbling nature of our protagonists only really works when contrasted against the strength and awfulness of the antagonists. I would have liked to see more of Aniston, Spacey and Jamie Foxx who returned as Mr. (shall we say) Jones. Without more of these amazing supporting characters, what plays out for most of the second half is yet another inept kidnapping movie. It’s not terrible but it’s not special either.

To make this movie a real success they needed to follow the path of Austin Powers and 22 Jump Street and make the laughs huge and keep them coming through the entirety of the film. A sequel cannot give us the joy of meeting the characters for the first time as in the original so it needs to hang big laughs on a solid plotline. Fail to do so and what do get?

Meh, it was okay.