The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May 2nd, with the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joining them on the picket lines to strike in mid-July.
They are striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the studios, which includes Netflix, who happen to have offices not far from where I live. So I have seen a picket line there on a couple of occasions. Not every day. If you’re a serious player you probably live in LA or New York, but we have some people up here.
The AMPTP’s strategy for the strike seems to have been devised by C. Montgomery Burns and involves not negotiating until the line members are losing their homes. That and the dystopian nature of some of their proposals, things like a perpetual license to use a digital likeness of somebody, cast them poorly against the wage and benefits requests of the unions.
We won’t be getting any new seasons of anything until this is settled, so maybe we should be rationing out the TV have left. But we’ve been burning out what is left somewhat fresh on the shelf like it was a normal time.
- Black Mirror – Season Six – Netflix
Oh my. The danger here for this ongoing anthology is whether they put their best show in the season up front, leaving everything else to feel like a letdown, or if they save the best for last and then maybe nobody gets there.
They went with the former, running Joan is Awful first, and it is so on point with so much of what is wrong with corporations and privacy and AI and greed today while being awesome and hilarious, that the rest of the season feels kind of tepid. Anyway, watch that first episode at least. It feels like it was written for the strike. The rest aren’t horrible, but feel dull and drawn out in comparison.
- For All Mankind – Apple TV+
There are soap operas and space operas, but now we have a space soap opera. FAM asks the question, “What if the USSR landed on the moon first and the US got all pissed and decided to keep going with the space race onward into the next 40 years rather than punting on it after five moon missions?” Also, what are the flaws and motivations of the people in the program at NASA?
While the progress through the decades… each of the three season covers one, 70s, 80s, then 90s… is of interest, a lot of the fun for me is the peeks at the changes in the timeline, where Ted Kennedy is president in 72, Reagan is president in 76, John Lennon’s assassin misses, but John Paul II succeeds, Jimmy Cater is the senior senator from Georgia, and we all get iPods a decade earlier due to the technological advances driven by the space program. Oh, and the Soviet Union survives into the 90s.
It has been renewed for a fourth season… but the strike means nobody is working on it yet.
- Three Pines – Amazon Prime
A Canadian mystery series, so everybody is polite, though it takes place in Quebec, so maybe not as polite as you might expect. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, played by Alfred Molina, a member of the homicide division of the Surete du Quebec, keeps ending up in the small town of Three Pines because… murder. The season runs for eight episodes, which are divided into four two episode cases along with a season long story arc that revolves around a missing teen, who is also from Three Pines.
A decent set of mysteries, though one benefit of the show is that we didn’t know many of the players outside of Alfred Molina, so it did not suffer from the whole “the most famous person did it” problem that so many police procedurals run into. The season ends on a big reveal and a bit of a cliff hanger… but since it didn’t get renewed for another season you’ll just have to make up your own resolution.
Tired of a bunch of rando survivors pottering about the woods trying to have normal lives, but think launching nuclear weapons from a beached submarine was a step too far? Hey, how about we take Negan, everybody’s favorite self-reflecting bad guy, and Maggie, whose husband was killed by Negan right before her eyes and whom she has vowed to kill, and team them up to go find Maggie’s missing son Herschel in post-apocalyptic NEW YORK CITY!
Kind of fun, largely driven Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s humor and Lauren Cohan’s rage, and better that where ever Fear the Walking Dead is these days. At least we have a new setting with some new factions. It feels like a place where Gary King from The World’s End might show up.
They put out six episodes, took a break, then the strike hit. Also, they are having the show runners and such do and after episode commentary, which are starting to become pretty self-indulgent rather than adding anything to viewer knowledge of the show. Also, during the pandemic they were doing them in casual settings with low quality video because we were all stuck at home, but they have decided to keep that low quality aesthetic for… reasons? Anyway, better than a lot of later Walking Dead, most because it shed so many back stories to track.
- Jack Ryan – Season Four – Amazon Prime
Jack Ryan becomes a heist movie or something… at least for a couple of episodes. More international intrigue in the field and betrayal back at home. It works pretty well, though overall the series feels a little flat. John Krasinski plays Jack Ryan just kind of flat, which is right for the character, but then doesn’t have enough flamboyance to play off of unless Wendell Pierce is on screen.
Also, a “me problem” with the series is that I read all the Tom Clancy books in the 80s and 90s, at least until Executive Orders, when the whole series became a Tom Clancy power fantasy, such that various character have biographies in my head, so I get tripped up when he isn’t married to Cathy in the show when in my head canon they are wed and have kids.
The fourth season is the end of the series, so if you want a show you can binge all of, it is now ready. They are reported to be working on a Domingo Chavez spin-off with Michael Pena… but, writer’s strike and all of that.
- FUBAR – Netflix
If you are looking for a smart, sophisticated, and subtle twist on the action spy drama… boy, did you come to the wrong place. This is an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle that is something of a mix between fan service and simply indulging Arnold in being Arnold… or Ahhnald, if you prefer.
So the whole thing is kind of a big silly good, with lots of comic quips and unlikely situations. Fine if you like that sort of thing. I made it through the season and its story arc. But now I’ve read it has been renewed for a second season and… I’m not sure I’m ready for that. There is only so much Arnold one can take before the novelty wears off. But, once again, writer’s strike.
That is what we have been watching of late.