Daniel's TV Blog

SNL season 44 starts on Saturday. Here is my list of best sketches from season 43.


10) Kumail Nanjiani - The Nursing Home
Would it make you feel any better if I said no?


9) Jessica Chastain - What even matters anymore?
A perfect portrayal of what watching too much news feels like right now. Sponsored by Little Ball.


8) Saoirse Ronan - The Office Race
This sketch is very odd and gets odder at the end.



7) Chance the Rapper - Wayne Manor
Batman, someone gotta do something about him



6) Larry David - Celebrity Price is Right
Bernie Sanders on Price is Right could never fail. But everyone on this sketch hits it out of the park.



5) Amy Schumer - 'Lil Rent
Let's just change HIV/AIDS to diabetes and everything will be fine.



4) Natalie Portman - My Little Stepchildren
Sadly this was cut for time and never aired. But it will live forever on the internet.



3) Bill Hader - The Californians
I can never have enough of The Californians.



2) Chadwick Boseman - Black Jeopardy
Karen, keep your bland-ass potato salad to yourself



1) James Franco - The Spelling Bee
Easily the funniest sketch of the season with words like Urophiliac



Best Weekend Update Character - Angel, the boxer's girlfriend
She's going to take her kids to her sister's

Best Monologue - John Mulaney
Prove, prove, prove you're not a robot!

Best episode - Bill Hader
Lots of other great sketches and the return of Stephan

Labels: SNL

I never finished up my upfront review from last May. And now the fall shows are about to start. So here's the rest of them.

FOX

The Cool Kids
It's the new Golden Girls. Three friends at a retirement community have their lives shaken up with the arrival of trouble maker Vicky Lawrence. Great additional cast include Martin Mull, David Allen Grier, and Beverly Leslie himself, Leslie Jordan.

Rel
From comic Rel Howley and based on his life, this sitcom is about a divorced dad starting over. Even without all the church stuff, this show is not for me.

Midseason:
The Passage - A secret government research facility is trying to fight a pandemic.
Proven Innocent - Legal drama about overturning wrongful conviction


The CW
Charmed
Charmed is back but without Shannon Doherty, because no one would hire Shannon Doherty. I never watched the original but I never heard good things about it so I won't watch this either.

All American
Football something something. This will probably be a hit but I'll never watch one episode.

Legacies
Yay, more Vampires. I usually like The CW, but these three shows are crap.

Midseason:
In The Dark - A blind women solves murders. I don't know what more to say except, sign me up.
Roswell, New Mexico - A reboot of the original show Roswell but with adults instead of teenagers. This I will watch as I loved the original.

Labels: upfronts

There's not a lot new from NBC this fall.


Manifest

A plane hits turbulence and land five and a half years later. With the airplane device, this mystery draws a lot of parallels to LOST. But unlike most LOST wannabees (Invasion, Threshold, Surface, The Event, FlashForward) this one looks good. Although I said that about a lot of those shows.

New Amsterdam
Doctor show with a far too young medical director at the country's oldest hospital. I didn't make it through the trailer as there is a zero percent chance of me ever watching this.

I Feel Bad
This looks hilarious. It's a family comedy and an office comedy. A working mom has a chaotic home life and works at a start-up with a bunch of millennials. Amy Poehler is producing.

And that's it, except for the...

Mid-season
Abby's - Unlicensed backyard bar
The Village - This is Us, but in Brooklyn
The Enemy Within - A spy in prison helps solve crimes
The Guilded Age - Downtown Abbey in New York in the 1880s

Labels: upfronts

Magnum PI
Everything old is new again. And a lot of time, that is OK with me. Magnum looks as sexy as ever. And I love Higgins as a woman and mega-hacker and possible love interest.



God Friended Me
This looks so bad I couldn't make it through the trailer. An atheist radio host gets a literal friend request from god. So either god is a dick and can present evidence of his existence and just doesn't for all but one person or this guy is having a psychic break. Either way, dick god or mental illness does not make for a good show. Keven (Probably) Saves the World was a much better version of this concept. Too bad ABC cancelled that after only of season.

The Neighborhood
A white family from Michigan moves into a black neighborhood in LA. I didn't find one thing funny in the trailer.

Happy Together
The biggest pop star in the world, moves in with his accountant to get away from the poparazzi. Unlike The Neighborhood, this trailer made me laugh all the way through. And I love Damon Wayans Jr.

FBI
Remember Quantico? It's mostly that without the huge cast and non-linear storytelling. Seems like a good fit on the network with all the CSIs and other letters.

Murphy Brown
She's back and like Magnum PI, I'm on board. I stopped watching after the first baby season.


The Red Line - White cop kills black doctor in Chicago
The Code - Military lawyers
Fam - Train-wreck sister moves in

Labels: upfronts

The upfronts were last week. Let's start with ABC.


Single Parents
An ensemble comedy about a group of single parents with kids in the same class. SNL's Taram Killiam looks hilarious as the over zealous dad dealing with the other jaded parents.
The Kids are Alright
A family comedy set in the 70s. It's Eight is Enough meets That 70s Show. I'm more of an 80s guy myself. The trailer looks funny. There might be too many characters to follow.

The Rookie
I might be the only one who remembers a one season late 80s drama called The Oldest Rookie. It was a cop who had worked in the public relations department since the academy who transfer to become a beat cop. This is basically the same story but with Nathan Fillion. Considering I love Nathan Fillion and love LA based cop shows with a twist, I'm sure I'll give this a chance.



A Million Little Things
A group of friends deal with the suicide of one of their friends. I'm not sure what the long term story is going to be or if the guy from Office Space who is dead will pop up on flashbacks. I'll consider this more in the fall.

The Alex Baldwin Show
Alec Baldwin had a short lived weekly interview show on MSNBC a few years ago. I found it refreshing and intimate. I remember know what happened to it. But this show seems like a similair concept.


Midseason
Grand Hotel
The last non-corporate family owned hotel in Miami is staffed with sexy waiters and maids. I love the sexy Latinx cast, but this looks like it might suffer from the Dynasty problem. Everyone is too focused on the one property instead of doing what is best for themselves. It's classic sunk costs mentality.

Whiskey Cavalier
I'm not sure if this is a comedy or not. It is an action romance between an FBI agent and a CIA agent. Not sure how this is going to turn out.

Labels: upfronts